SPROUT and VEGGI are raising funds for value chain coordination and direct purchasing of local produce during the disruption of markets. Produce is being be distributed as cooked meals and fresh produce for those with power. Let’s keep farmers selling and keep people fed with the food we’re growing closest to home!
Please visit the link here to donate to the fund:
This past month, Mei-ling Hom and David have been volunteering at the farm and working on their Tea Square project. Both are artists in residence and have done varied visual artwork about living organisms, often using biodegradable materials for agricultural art-related projects. They envisioned VEGGI experimenting in the tea niche, growing a local and culturally relevent product for community members and wanted to create a rest area to accompany it.
Last minute budget withdrawal called for improvisation and Mei-ling and David sold their artwork to raise money, and found many dumped materials to repurpose, such as palm log and untreated wood. Dash Lumber & Supply also kindly donated wood for this project. The tea plants should be ready to harvest from in 2 or 3 years time.
We really appreciate your hard work and contribution, Mei-ling and David! And thanks to Dash Lumber & Supply for donating the materials!
VEGGI Farmers Cooperative will be hosting a fundraiser to celebrate Tết, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, on Saturday, February 13th at 3pm. If you are in the New Orleans area, come join us as we celebrate a fresh start to the new year along with great food and company.
We will be making traditional bánh xèo, a Vietnamese style rice flour crepe, shaved ice, alongside food from several restaurants. Beer, soft drinks, and water will also be available.
To join in the fun, purchase a ticket by clicking here and join us. There are two types of tickets:
We will have food from the following restaurants:
Sneaky Pickly
Carmo
MoPho
Brigtsen’s
Boucherie
Sylvain
with possibly more!
Details:
Saturday February 13th, 3-6pm
4626 Alcee Fortier Blvd., Ste. E
New Orleans, LA 70129
Your ticket and beverage purchases will go towards helping us reach our fundraising goals for the year. This is also our farewell party for Daniel Nguyen, who has been at the forefront of VEGGI’s development since the beginning. He will be transitioning to a new job in Feb 2016. As you know, VEGGI operates as a non-profit and relies on the support of our customers, grantmaking foundations, and people like you.
FJC members Arie and Ron are semi-finalists for Propeller’s PitchNOLA competition and will be pitching the Food Justice Collective as a youth-led farm cooperative. The PitchNOLA competition is a platform to reward the best solutions for social and environmental impact for all New Orleanians. Arie and Ron will do their best to show the judges why FJC should receive their share of the $10,000 total prize.
We need you to come out to Freeman Auditorium at Tulane University on Jan. 28 at 6pm to show them your support. Click here for the RSVP and additional information:
We’ve partnered with Broadmoor Improvement Association to provide a new option for our CSA customers: You can now pick up your CSA box at the Rosa Keller Community Center Kitchen in Broadmoor on Fridays!
If you live in the Broadmoor area and are not available for home deliveries, you can now set the Rosa Keller Community Center as a pick up location. It is quite simple. When you order, select Rosa Keller Community Center as a pickup spot under Delivery Options, and pick up your box anytime between 12 noon and 4pm on Friday.
By Ron Triggs, Grade 8, Edgar P Harney Spirit of Excellence Academy, New Orleans
This month, VEGGI will be returning to the Crescent City Farmers Market on Thursday afternoons at the American Can Company. We haven’t had a stand at the market since June because of the heat, which restricted our crop varieties and harvest.
But now that the season is changing, we are seeing a lot of beautiful colors on our farm, with lots of veggies growing bountifully again. Because of this, we look to be back at the farmers market and hope to see all of you there.
We will have our usual salad mixes, tofu, soy milk, radish, turnips, beets, herbs, eggplant, etc. and we still collaborate with SUA to bring you great products grown in the lower 9th as well.
What’s new this season is that our youth led Food Justice Collective will have some of their produce for sale as well. They’ve grown eggplant and okra, and have their own reusable grocery bag that you can purchase right here on our website and pick up at the market (we’re working on being able to sell the bags at the market as well).
We started our CSA delivery program this summer as well, and a presence at the farmers market, we’ll be able to use the site as a pickup spot for anyone who orders our box. You can also order a box at the market if you’d like.
We’re excited to get back to the market and be able to connect with our customers directly. Please follow us on twitter @veggifarmcoop to know which day we will be there and in case we take a day off.
We are beginning a series of blog posts to update you guys on what goes on with our farm operation. There will be a new blog post every month so come back to stay up to date on everything VEGGI!
Here’s our first post for September 2015:
Last season, the farm team began book club nights with Masanobu Fukuoka’s One-Straw Revolution. We studied his self-developed philosophy on agriculture. The goal is to work more closely with nature to grow food, instead of working to dominate nature. Continue reading
With the closure of Good Eggs New Orleans, we’ve received lots of questions on where you can order our tofu, soy milk, and produce. We had these items on Good Eggs for over two years and we appreciate all the people who have used the online market to buy our products.
Currently, we have all our flavors of tofu at both Hollygrove Market & Farm and at the New Orleans Food Co-op. Our soy milk and other products can be bought directly from us at the Crescent City Farmers Market on Thursdays starting in a few weeks (Late Summer). Some of our produce items will be available at the New Orleans Food Co-op later in the year as well.
We also currently offer a weekly CSA box that includes all of our in-season products including the option for tofu and soy milk. Click on the CSA tab above to find out more.
We’d like to thank the people at Good Eggs who allowed us to be more accessible to many of our customers. Going forward, we hope that our customers will be able to find our products as easily as possible through our current markets and CSA.
Thank you for your continued support!
VEGGI’s goal is to create jobs for community members through sustainable urban agriculture. The members in our cooperative are small farmers who take it upon themselves to grow fresh, natural, sustainably grown vegetables in an area that lacks access to healthy food. Our CSA program is an important piece in achieving our goals and helps support the ability of our farmers to grow food all year long.
In mid-October of 2014, we started turning a school’s 4-year dream into reality – by partnering with ReThink to build a garden for the students of Edgar P. Harney School of Excellence. The young Garden Visionaries of their school wanted students to have curriculum tied to learning how to grow food and eat healthier. They now have an outdoor environment in their school backyard to do just that. Continue reading
The weather is cooling down for fall but we’re just getting warmed up.. for bridging interracial gaps that is. We are beginning a collabo program with Rethink – 9 months of education on food justice with 14 young people, ranging in age from 12 to 22. Together, we will become stronger advocates by learning about the food history of major ethnic groups in New Orleans, maintaining a plot on the VEGGI farm and forming our own solidarity economy.
You may or may not know, but on Tuesday morning, March 2, our van was stolen from the Marigny neighborhood. Someone had broken our driver side lock, pulled out the starter, and wired the ignition to steal the van. We were fortunate enough to find the van in Jefferson Parish, but not without the thief taking a few crucial, and valuable, parts from the vehicle.
At this point, we have put more money into the van to keep it running, than the amount we paid for it. We recognize times are hard and can completely relate, however we realize it is time to turn to our community and ask if you could help us buy a new van.
We absolutely love providing naturally grown greens, herbs, and produce year around to you, our New Orleans community. It brings us so much joy to operate our annual CSA program, and to live in a place where our farm is abundant year around. We are dedicated to empowering growers in the Greater New Orleans area, starting in New Orleans East and by selling at farmers markets we provide income for our 5 Vietnamese farmers; Thanh Nguyen, Tham Nguyen, Canh Ngo, Xuan Nguyen, & Phuc Nguyen.
Here’s a breakdown of the crucial role our van plays…It makes VEGGI’s existence possible:
-Provides transportation for staff to pick up crop in New Orleans East 3 days a week at our farm
-Gets us to 4 different farmers markets a week,
-Ensures we’re able to deliver CSA boxes to New Orleans residents,
-Produce deliveries to restaurants around New Orleans.
Please support our effort by going to our GoFundMe page and make a donation. Click here to go to our page: VEGGI gofundme
We appreciate any and all donation amounts, and thank you from the bottom of our hearts! Your donation will help make our VEGGI work possible, and support the growth of our small but mighty Cooperative.
Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions, introductions to people who may also care about this project, comments, concerns, anything! We are so grateful to serve you through our Cooperative.
