July 2017 Produce Parable
By Adam Calder

With all of the corn and soybeans that are grown in Iowa, it can be easy to forget how much of the variety of nature’s bounty can come from Iowa’s fertile soil.  We’ve got a great selection of fresh, high quality Iowa grown produce just waiting to go home with you.

From Lee’s Greens in Nevada we have baby kale, heirloom tomatoes, gold tomatoes, blackberries and black raspberries.  We’ve got red slicer tomatoes, green zucchini, gold zucchini, eggplant, yellow onions, cherry tomatoes, and yellow summer squash from Hassevoort Farms in Leon.  Salama Greenhouse in Boone is bringing us his tasty Lil’ Joey grape tomatoes and we’ve got them on deal all summer long 2 pints for $6.  Onion Creek Farm, located right here in Ames, has been bringing us some huge yellow onions and firm leeks with bright white stalks. Meadowlark Flowers in Radcliffe bring us dozens of beautiful bouquets twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays.  These flowers are truly a beauty to behold and are cut the day before they arrive so they are fresh and long lasting when you get them home.  We’ve also got a limited supply of garlic from our old friend Gary Guthrie, the former owner of Growing Harmony Farms in Nevada.  We also have some really cool looking cone-shaped cabbages from the Iowa State University Horticulture Research Farm, as well as some of their red Russian kale and romaine lettuce.  The Berry Patch is living up to its namesake by suppling us with copious amounts of their sweet blueberries.  As always, we have assorted fresh herbs in stock from Mariposa Greenhouses in Grinnell.

From our certified organic Iowa farms, we have flat sweet cabbages from Small Potatoes Farm in Minburn.  We’ve also got their broccoli, red beets, green zucchini, bi-color zucchini, white onions, lacinato kale, carrots and parsley.  Organic Greens in Kalona brings us micro-greens year round, but also are keeping us stocked in green cabbage and red cabbages.  Flint Ridge, also in Kalona, brings us fresh cucumbers, zucchini, green bell peppers, delicata squash, spaghetti squash, jalapenos and yellow cherry tomatoes.  We get beet bunches, broccoli, winterbor kale, red kale, kohlrabi, cucumbers, snap peas, sweet corn, green cabbage and red cabbage from State Line Produce in Lime Springs.

This isn’t a complete list of the local produce we carry, it just happens to be what we have this month.  Things move fast in the produce department.  If you don’t stop in and look around once and a while, it might all just pass you by.