The current CSA season runs February - June 2012. The CSA shares will be delivered monthly for five months.

An important difference between our deliveries and some vegetable CSAs such is that North Mountain Pastures (NMP) will not leave any shares for customers to pick up. Because this meat is frozen, it is important that our product is in our hands or yours at all times. We will hand your shares directly to you. We will be at each of the South Central PA delivery points for one hour, 5:00p to 6:00p, and at Washington, D.C. sites throughout the four hour farmers' market.

Note:  Please contact us for special arrangements if you can't make one of our delivery times.

If you miss your delivery, please contact us so that we can arrange to bring your share to another delivery point or to hold it until the next month. If you want to change your delivery point, please contact us within one week's notice.

Camp Hill

Delivery day: First or Second Thursday of the Month
Time: 5-6pm
Delivery dates: 2/9, 3/8, 4/5, 5/3, 6/7

[Private residence]
1908 High St.
Camp Hill, PA  17011

Carlisle

Delivery day: Second or Third Tuesday of the Month
Time: 5-6pm
Delivery dates:  2/14, 3/13, 4/10, 5/8, 6/12

[Private residence]
242 Walnut St.
Carlisle, PA  17013

Harrisburg

Delivery day: Last or 2nd to last Wednesday of the month
Time: 5-6pm
Delivery dates: 2/29, 3/28, 4/25, 5/23, 6/20

[Private residence]
3515 Schoolhouse Ln.
Harrisburg, PA  17109

Hershey

Delivery day: Third or Fourth Wednesday of the month
Time: 5-6pm
Delivery dates: 2/22, 3/21, 4/18, 5/16, 6/13

[Private residence]
1051 W. Areba Ave
Hershey, PA 17033

Mechanicsburg

Delivery day: First Tuesday of the month
Time: 5-6pm
Delivery dates: 2/7, 3/6, 4/3, 5/1, 6/5

The Rosemary House
120 S. Market St. (Parking lot is behind The Rosemary House, in an alley off W. Simpson St.)
Mechanicsburg, PA  17055

Middletown

Delivery day: Wednesday
Time: 5-6pm
Delivery dates: 

[Private residence]
220 Keystone Dr.
Middletown, PA  17057

Takoma Park Farmer's Market

Delivery day: last Sunday of the month
Time: 10am-2pm
Delivery dates: 2/25, 3/25, 4/29, 5/27, 6/24

Caroll Ave and Laurel Ave

Takoma Park, MD

14th&U Farmer's Market

Delivery day: Saturday
Time: 9am-1pm
Delivery dates: Delivery to 14th&U will start in May.

14th St. NW, U St. NW, Washington, DC

Silver Spring Farmer's Market

Delivery day: Saturday
Time: 9am-1pm
Delivery dates: 2/18, 3/17, 4/21, 5/19, 6/16

Georgia Ave and Ellsworth Dr, Silver Spring, MD

Bloomingdale Farmer's Market

Delivery day: Sunday
Time: 10am-2pm
Delivery dates: Delivery to Bloomingdale will start in May.

1st and R Streets NW, Washington D.C.

Recipe Book

It is not too late to send us your favorite recipes! We are compiling our favorites along with member-sourced favorites to put together a good selection of recipes in a "booklet".  These recipes will be shared with our CSA members and on the website.  

If you have a minute, please send us a quick email (feel free to reply to this email) with something that you like to do with our meats or eggs. We're specifically looking for meal ideas that are simple and easy, requiring little time in the kitchen and not too many ingredients. It doesnt have to be an original recipe, it could be something you saw on TV or got the idea from a magazine or website! And you do not have to type out the recipe in perfect recipe format, we will do some editing if necesary. 

Thank you in advance!

CSA Season starts in February

The next CSA season is approaching fast. If you haven't signed up yet, you still have time to sign up without missing the first delivery. We will take CSA membership orders until 2 days before the delivery for each site. After that, signups will be pro-rated each month until June.

If you haven't done so yet, check out and share our video and project on Kickstarter.com - we're on the www.kickstarter.com homepage today!

Stay warm,

Brooks & Anna
www.NorthMountainPastures.com 

Many of you know us as Brooks and Anna, or North Mountain Pastures. For those of you who don't, we are a young family from central Pennsylvania that runs a pastured livestock business. We're both engineering graduates from Penn State, but turned to farming as a more fulfilling and challenging life. We've been farming together now for over six years.

We're writing to you because of a major deficiency in our local food system. There is a growing number of farmers out there like us, who raise animals on pasture, providing permanent access to sunshine, woods, and grass. There are not, however, a suitable number of small processors – also known as butchers - who can handle the number of animals we are raising. The butchers we do have are generally a considerable distance from the farm, and are overbooked.

We want to change this. We want to be able to raise as many animals as our farm can sustainably handle, and enough to support what our customers want, and produce the value-added meats our customers want ON OUR FARM. This will mean taking more responsibility for the final product, having more control over the entire process from pasture to plate, and adding value to the meat we raise to be able to make a living off the land. We think that if we can do this, then other farmers across Pennsylvania, and hopefully the country will have the confidence to replicate it.

We've already begun construction on our shop, but to complete the facilities we need for dry-curing meats like prosciutto and salami, we need to invest in an aging room. The link below will direct you to our kickstarter.com project page, with a video and description of the farm and the project we're trying to complete. We need your help to send this link out there. When you and your friends give support and investment in local, sustainable food systems through our Kickstarter project, we'll send you our thanks in meat!  Please pass on this link to as many interested people as you can!

If you know any farmers who are interested in our construction plans, food safety plans, or any other resources we're developing throughout the duration of this project, please pass along our contact information! We want to share our experiences so others can learn from them and adapt them to their local food climates.

Thanks for your time, and please check out the video:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847634712/north-mountain-pastures

Yours in natural farming and high quality food,

Brooks Miller and Anna Santini

A full share is 20 pounds of meat each month, and a half-share is between 10-12 pounds a month, depending on the share type.  Our small everything share is 9 pounds of meat each month.

Full Shares

Full-size shares work well for families and groups of 3 or more people, and 2 people if you are heavy meat eaters and cook at home most days.  You can make a lot of delicious, healthy meals out of 20 pounds of meat each month!  Here are the weight distributions you can expect from each full share option.

Medium Shares

Medium-size shares work well for 1-2 people.  Our medium shares translate to less than $20 per week, or about a quarter of an average $80 weekly trip to the grocery store.  Here are the weight distributions you can expect from each medium share option.

Small Shares

We also offer a Small 9 lb Everything Share.  With this share, you receive 3 lb chicken, 3 lb pork, 1.5 lb beef and 1.5 lb lamb.  It runs about $85 per month or $423 over the course of a 5 month season.

CSA Cuts

While we can offer customization on share types, we need to maintain a little bit more control over what types of cuts are contained in your monthly distribution, in order to ensure the whole animal is put to use and not wasted.  This sometimes results in cuts you may be less familiar with, which you may find scary or you may see as a new cooking challenge.  Either way, we have recipes available here on the web site, or we advise investing in a copy of "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman or "American Cookery" by James Beard.

What types of cuts can you expect?

Original, Trio, Everything and Pork-Free CSA members can regularly expect whole chicken and ground beef in each monthly delivery.  We try to keep track of what cuts we have previously provided to each member to ensure everyone gets an interesting and fair rotation of cuts over the course of a season.  See the "sample share contents" lists on the right side of the page for what you might see in your bag one month. 

 New - Convenience Share Add-Ons

We offer two convenience share add-ons that you may purchase as an option WITH a regular share.

1. Convenience share will be 6lb per month in addition to your regular share of quick thaw, easy cook cuts, such as ground beef, patties, sausage, and chicken pieces.

2. Cut Chicken option is a service for us to cut, divide, and package all your chickens in pieces (boneless breasts, legs and thighs, and wings). Note that for a cut chicken option, you are upgrading to all chicken in pieces, and must select whether you have a small, medium, or full share.

Why CSA?

North Mountain Pastures Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) offers a variety of "shares" of what we produce on the farm to customers in Central Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.  Members purchase a "subscription", and in return, receive meat from us every month.  This helps our farm's cash flow and gives us an opportunity to know the people who eat the food we produce.  And our members tell us they get more flavorful, healthier food and learn more about how food is produced.

Our members tell us they buy from us for a variety of reasons:

• Superior Taste and Quality: Many people tell us our meat "tastes like it used to taste". And because all of our animals have permanent access to pasture, they are dense in nutrients and omega-3 fatty acids.  Click on the "Our Animals" page to learn more about what breeds we raise and how we raise them.
• Buy Local: Many of our members want more of their money to stay in the local economy.  We're near where you live, and we make every effort to buy from local suppliers.
• Know Your Farmer: Everyone you meet from North Mountain Pastures works on the farm, and Brooks and Anna work the farm each and every day.  We are always happy to answer questions or share the latest goings on around the farm.
• Convenience: Our Washington, D.C. members receive their dropoffs at their local farmers' markets.  What could be more convenient?  Many of our Central Pennsylvania members are also Spiral Path Farm CSA members, which makes things easy because we share the same dropoff sites and dates.
• Access to our Artisan Products: Many of our members buy extras in addition to their shares, including artisan salumi, bacon and sausage, and handmade organic fermented pickles, sauerkraut and kimchi.  Not yet found in stores!
• Responsive Customer Service:  Meeting and exceeding your expectations is very important to us.  If there is anything we can do better, please let us know.  We are constantly trying to improve what we do.

What an Average Member Can Expect

Let's say you ordered a Medium Trio Share, which means you will have paid in advance for 12 pounds of Chicken, Pork and Beef for five months at a price of roughly $78 per month.  We can't promise any specific cuts, but your monthly bag will be composed of 5 pounds of chicken, 3 pounds of beef and 4 pounds of pork.  Overall, that turns out to be less than $20 per week, or a quarter of an average 2 person family's weekly grocery bill.

A Full Everything Share is 20 pounds of Chicken, Pork, Beef and Lamb for five months at a price of roughly $165 per month.  This works well for four person families and meat eating 2 person families.  Again, we can't promise any specific cuts, but your monthly is likely to include 8 pounds of chicken, 6 pounds of pork, 3 pounds of beef, and 3 pounds of lamb.  We don't know about you but we can make a lot of meals out of that much meat.

Our Share Sizes and Cuts page has additional details on precisely how much meat you can expect.

And again, we do pro-rate shares every month, and a installment payment plan is available if you prefer to be billed monthly.

 New - Convenience Share Add-Ons

We offer two convenience share add-ons that you may purchase as an option WITH a regular share:

1. Convenience share will be 6lb per month in addition to your regular share of quick thaw, easy cook cuts.
2. Cut Chicken option is a service for us to cut, divide, and package all your chickens in pieces (boneless breasts, legs and thighs, and wings). Note that for a cut chicken option, you are upgrading to all chicken in pieces, and must select whether you have a small, medium, or full share.

Ready to sign up?  Click hereto start your order in four easy steps.

If you are interested in purchasing meat from us, but none of the above share options fits your family, please join our mailing list (on the right side of the page) to receive notices of Buyer's Club dates, where you will have the option to order a la carte.

Community Suported Agriculture (CSA) is a way of connecting farmers to their customers in a relationship of mutual support.  We sell "shares" at the beginning of the season, which supports the farmer in buying feed and necessary supplies, and supports the community by making local and nutritious foods consistently available and convenient.

The meat CSA provides customers with the following:

• Convenience: to purchase the equivalent of a “share” of a whole animal, made up of an assortment of meat types and cuts, without having to buy a whole animal and a large freezer. Small, regular deliveries, make eating locally easier.  Receive cuts of meat that are familiar and easy to use (such as boneless chicken breasts and ground beef). 
• Superior Quality:We aim to provide our CSA customers with access to the highest quality of food available in the same time it takes as going through the drive-through (well, almost).  Our farming practices are exclusively grass based, with all animals pasture raised and/or grassfed, humanely treated, and when necessary fed pure GMO-free feeds.  We are not Certified Organic at this time because we do not own our own farm yet. In terms of production practices and quality, we hold ourselves to standards beyond the current Organic standards.
• Availability and consistency: CSA members receive meat shares year round, with a guaranteed quantity of meat delivered. 
• Local food shopping ease: An added advantage of the CSA is the ability to purchase extras when members pick up their share -  fresh pastured eggs, grassfed cheese, nitrate-free all natural handmade cured meats, and fermented vegetables such as sauerkraut.  No pre-order necessary. And for those of you who are Spiral Path Farm veggie CSA members, our delivery locations are the same as theirs so you can combine errands.

Meats offered with a CSA Membership:

All of our meats are humanely raised on pasture.  The beef and lamb are 100% grassfed.  The chickens and pigs are fed a grain mix of GMO-free grain and minerals.  The pigs also get whey from a grassfed cheese-making operation.   If you have any questions at all about how the animals are raised, please visit our livestock webpages and feel free to contact us. All meat is delivered frozen.

Chicken: whole chickens, about 4.5 lb each.  Some shares contain smaller whole chickens as well as chicken pieces: boneless breasts, legs and thighs, and wings. See the descriptions below for more details.
Pork: cuts included are an assortment made up mostly of chops, ribs, ham steaks, ground pork, and shoulder roasts.
Beef: cuts for all shares are a mix of ground, steaks, and roasts, reflecting the yield from a whole animal.
Lamb: a mixture of lamb chops, ribs, shoulder roasts, leg roasts, and ground lamb, reflecting the yield from a whole animal.

At the delivery sites, CSA members will have the opportunity to buy extras in addition to their shares: pastured eggs, local grassfed raw cheese, all natural cured pastured pork products like sausage and bacon, and our handmade organic fermented pickles such as sauerkraut and kimchi.

CSA Share Delivery:

Our current delivery season is running five months: July 2011 – November 2011. The next season will be 5 months: February 2012 - June 2012.

We deliver to Central PA and Washington D.C. locations. Please visit our delivery page for all delivery sites and dates.

Share Options and Prices:

Please see our CSA online ordering page for share descriptions. 

Below is a price comparison:

Some of our customers order a share with someone else to split it, if it seems like too much for one or two people. Talk to your friends and neighbors to see if you can find someone to go in on it with you.

Please Note:  We do pro-rate shares every month.  Please see our Online Ordering page for up to date pricing if you are signing up late in the season. Also, there is a payment plan available if you would prefer monthly installments.

 If you are interested in purchasing meat from us, but none of the above share options fits your family, please join our mailing list to receive notices of Buyer's Club dates, where you will have the option to order a la carte.

Earth Springs Farm - Soon-to-be certified organic vegetables and fruit

Spiral Path Farm - Organic veggie CSA with deliveries all over central PA, Loysville

Shared Earth Farm - Small veggie CSA in Mechanicsburg

Joshua Farm - urban CSA in Harrisburg

Everblossom Farm - CSA in Adams County

Cheese/Dairy

Sunset Valley Farm - Grassfed Jersey dairy products, Millerstown

Keswick Creamery - Artisan cheeses from Jersey cows, Newburg

Otterbein Acres - Artisan sheep and cow cheeses and meats in Newburg

Meat

Painted Hand Farm - Meat goats, rose veal, turkeys, and other goodies, Newburg

Garden Path Farms - Lamb, beef, pork, and poultry in Newburg

JuJo Acres - Grassfed organic beef in Loysville

Coulter Farms - certified organic, 100% grassfed lamb and beef

Sheer Awesomeness

Garage Strength - Brooks' brother who trains athletes in sport and life...and the art of eating well.

They are a small family farm with 25 Jersey cows.  The cows spend most of their time grazing grass out in the pastures. Their cows are on pasture with a fresh new plot to graze on every 12 hours during the growing season.  They milk their cows once a day to supply their delicious creamy milk and the many products they make from it.

On the farm they operate a state inspected milk processing facility, and the milk is used to make various dairy products like chocolate milk and yogurt.  Some milk they run through a cream separator to separate the cream from skim milk.  The skim milk is used to make cottage cheese, and the cream is made into butter, whipping cream, and ice-cream.

They pasteurize some of their milk and dairy products in a vat pasteurizer.  It is heated to the lowest temperature required by law, and non-homogenized which means it is kept in it's natural form.  The cream naturally rises to the top.  Homogenizing milk is a forced process that uses high pressure to break up the milk fat into very minute particles. 

Why is all mainstream milk homogenized?
1. Uniformity (ALL milk now looks the same, and you can't tell one farmers milk from another's by the cream line)
2. Longer shelf life
3. Convenience, no need to shake the jug before use.

Contact Emanuel Smucker at 717-438-3881 for questions.

Like our chickens at North Mountain Pastures, these turkeys begin their lives in our barn, protected from the elements. When they are big enough to be safe from predators (hawks, owls, and foxes) we move them out to pasture. There, they have constant access to grass, weeds and insects - and turkeys forage a lot. They actually graze the grass down like sheep would, getting around 50% of their diet from pasture! The balance of the turkeys' diet is custom-mixed at a local mill. It consists of organically-grown corn, oats, and soybeans (all locally-grown) plus a balanced combination of natural minerals.

All turkeys are priced at $4.75 per pound.

We don't know until butchering day exactly how big our turkeys will be, and there is a wide variation.  We will do our best to match your order to the below approximate sizes:

Small    12-15 lbs
Medium 12-18 lbs
Large    16-24+ lbs

We butcher our turkeys in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, and they are all delivered FRESH.  

Local deliveries:
On-Farm pickup Saturday 11/19 5-6pm
Mechanicsburg Sunday 11/20 3-4pm
Camp Hill Monday 11/21 7-8pm
Carlisle Sunday 11/20 4:30-5:30pm
Hershey Monday 11/21 5-6pm
Harrisburg Tuesday 11/22 5-6pm

Washington D.C. & MD deliveries:
14th&U Farmer's Market Saturday 11/19 9am-1pm
Silver Spring Farmer's Market Saturday 11/19 9am-1pm
Bloomingdale Farmer's Market Sunday 11/20 10am-2pm
Takoma Park Farmer's Market Sunday 11/20 10am-2pm

Delivery location adresses are on our CSA delivery site page.

Order a turkey or two for the holidays!  

Pastured Chicken

We raise Cornish Cross chickens on pasture. For the first two weeks they are carefully protected in a brooder area in the barn. This allows us to give the young, fragile birds optimal temperature and moisture conditions. Then we move them to portable pasture houses. These houses protect them from predators, such as foxes and hawks, and provide shade and shelter from wind and rain.

Twice daily, we move the chickens to a fresh spot on pasture. The chickens enjoy constant access to new weeds, seeds and insects, which make up about 30% of their diet. The pasture diet is a valuable source of vitamins and minerals necessary for strong immune systems, which is evidenced in their bright orange feet and red combs.

The rest of the chickens' diet is custom-mixed grain from a local mill. It consists of organically-grown corn, oats, and soybeans (all locally-grown) plus a balanced combination of natural minerals from Fertrell.

Our chickens thrive on a varied diet and a healthy environment.  Their meat is tender and flavorful, with yellow-tinted skin and fat due to the increased vitamin A content. Chicken for the CSA will be whole chickens (for the full and medium shares) or half chickens/pieces (for the small share).  At farmers market we have whole as well as cut up chicken available in boneless, skinless breasts, tenderloins, legs, and wings.

Pastured Eggs

We sell our eggs during CSA deliveries and at farmers markets. 

Our eggs come from our flock of Rhode Island Reds. Our hens live in our pasture next to the Eggmobile (pictured above) with constant access to live grass and vibrant soils. They are in a rotation that puts them three days behind our cows and sheep. The rotation gives the hens a steady diet of grass, seeds and insects. This diet gives the eggs lots of nutrients, and a balanced ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s. Our eggs are rich and flavorful, and the yolks are bright yellow in color.

We supplement our hens' diet with a combination of organically-grown grains: corn, soybeans, wheat and oats. This mixture is balanced with sea minerals.

Pastured Pork

We raise a variety of heritage breeds of pigs on pasture, including Tamworth, Yorkshire, Berkshire and Large Black pigs (really, "large black" is a breed of pig).  Each of these hog breeds have been selected over centuries for their foraging abilities, which means they are constantly rooting and grazing, looking for their next meal.  Tamworths are reddish-brown and Yorkshire are pinkish-white, but  both Berkshire and Large Black pigs are black; you can tell the difference by how a Large Black's large floppy ears cover its eyes.

We feed our pigs whey from a local grass-fed cheese operation and supplement their diet with a ration of organically-grown grain from a local feed mill. Raising pigs on pasture not only allows the animal to fully express its instincts to root and forage, but it also changes the fatty acid composition of the meat. 

We've started making nitrate-free cured meats from our pork.  We only use the meat, Himalayan sea salt, and spices to cure the meats.  They are salted for a week or two, then transferred to a drying room where they hang for one month up to a year.  This process creates new flavors, different for every locale where meats are cured.  Traditionally, these meats were cured in winter for consumption throughout the year, with no need for refrigeration.

Pastured Turkeys

Like our chickens at North Mountain Pastures, these turkeys begin their lives in our barn, protected from the elements. When they are big enough to be safe from predators (i.e., hawks and owls) we move them out to pasture. There, they have constant access to grass, weeds and insects. The balance of the turkeys' diet is custom-mixed at a local mill. It consists of organically-grown corn, oats, and soybeans (all locally-grown) plus a balanced combination of natural minerals.  

Order a turkey for the holidays!  Turkeys are available for Thanksgiving 2011.

Grassfed Beef

Our beef cattle are Herefords, Devon cross and Angus. The cows are pastured and 100% grass-fed and certified organic. 

The grass for the cattle is grown without the use of fertilizers, pesticides or other chemicals. The cattle are raised without hormones or antibiotics. Beef will be a mixture of ground, roasts and steaks. Approximately half of all of the beef will be ground (reflecting what comes off the animal).

Grass-fed beef tends to be leaner and needs to be cooked a little differently than typical corn-fed beef. See the recipes page for more information.

Grassfed Lamb

We raise registered Romney and Katahdin Hair Sheep at North Mountain pastures. They are pastured and 100% grass-fed. Like our cows, these lambs are not fed hormones or antibiotics. Lamb is available through our CSA in our everything share .