We've moved! Check out our new blog

We are thrilled to announce that we re-designed our website this winter! You can check it out here.

With the new site came a new blog, which you can find here. You should look there for all our most recent posts and new content from now on. That said, we know that there is a lot of useful information in this blog, so we'll leave it up for you to peruse and reference when need be.

The Recipe Index and veggie Spotlights will all eventually move over to the new website, in the For Shareholders section under Produce Guide. It's a lot of information to transfer over though, and we're not quite ready to launch it. If you sign up for a spring share, we'll announce the launch in our weekly newsletter. If you're not a spring shareholder, keep checking back over the next few weeks - it'll appear soon!

We hope you love the new site as much as we do. As always, if you have any feedback or suggestions about it, let us know by emailing pr@brownmarketshares.com.

Thank you so much for being a part of BMSP. I have loved working with you the past two years.

See you at Market Day this spring,

Anna

Introducing the new BMSP Coordinating Team!

As you may already know, Market Shares recently hired some new coordinators, who will officially begin work next semester. We’re excited to announce next semester’s coordinating team, which consists of five new and two returning team members. To formally introduce them to the community, we asked them each a few key questions. What vegetable would they be and why? What food institutions in Providence do they love? Laughs were had, stories were swapped, and the results are aggregated here for your enjoyment.

Carlie Peters – Operations Coordinator

Mid-Season Survey Response, Fall 2014

Thank you so much to those of you who filled out our mid-season survey! We spend a LOT of time going through the responses as a team, and it is always a great opportunity for us to learn, and also to brainstorm how to make things better. We love hearing from YOU about this program, and appreciate the great ideas you share about what we can do to improve BMSP. In the feedback we got from you last week, there were a few key questions you had that we wanted to address.

The three main issues you brought up in the survey were:

1. Why are there so many greens?
2. Fruit variety
3. FAQ and our purchasing process

You will have another chance to share your feedback at the end of this season, and we would love to hear how you think we did in addressing your concerns over the next few weeks.

Thanks so much for being a part of this season! If you still have any questions about the following points or anything else, please don't hesitate to talk to a coordinator at Market Day, or email us at info@brownmarketshares.com.

-Anna, Meg, Erin, Taylor, Jenna, Blain, and Antonia

BMSP Finds Second Home in the Jewelry District

This fall we launched a pilot packed share program for Brown community members in the Jewelry District. Our intention was simple: we wanted to ensure that Brown staff and medical students in the Jewelry District had access to the same things offered up on the hill – in this case, weekly shares of affordable, fresh, local produce. We had conversations with previous shareholders who told us they loved the program, but their one-hour lunch break on Thursday was not enough time to walk one mile up the hill, pick up their share, return, and still have lunch. Others said that working in the Jewelry District was sometimes isolating and that they wanted local food too!

So, we responded.

Building a Community from the Ground Up

This summer, the coordinating team had the opportunity to help friend and fellow Brown student Tom Sullivan '15 with his photo essay on BMSP for the Swearer Sparks blog. We were thrilled when Tom contacted us in June saying he was interested in covering the program. Tom came to a few Market Days over the summer, showing up early to talk to farmers and snap pics while they unloaded, and later in the day to talk to shareholders (and pick up his own share!).

Farmer Chuck Currie of Freedom Food Farm delivering beets at Market Day.

Photo by Tom Sullivan.

BMSP is a USDA Recognized Food Hub!

Last week, the USDA launched their new search engine, The Local Food Directory. The Directory will help consumers easily locate farmer’s markets, CSAs, on-farm markets, and food hubs around the country and in their communities. Regional food hubs are businesses or organizations that actively manage the aggregation, distribution, and marketing of source-identified food products – and they are gaining lots of popularity as a way to create value chains over supply chains. The compilation of this list is part of a larger initiative by the USDA to remove barriers and ultimately make is easier for people to eat locally and support and engage with local food producers.

We are particularly excited about this initiative, because Market Shares is officially listed in the Directory, and we are the ONLY college campus Food Hub on there!

This is huge.

Mid-Season Survey Response, Summer 2014

Fruit, Purchasing Process, and Program Impact

Thank you so much to those of you who filled out our mid-season survey! We spend a lot of time going through the responses as a team, and it is always a great opportunity for us to learn, and also to brainstorm how to make things better. We love hearing from YOU about this program, and appreciate the great ideas you share about what we can do to improve BMSP. In the feedback we got from you last week, there were a few key questions you had that we wanted to address.

The three main questions you had for us were:

1. Where is all the fruit?

2. How does our purchasing process work?
3. What has our impact been as a program?

The first and second we answer for you below, and the third we wanted to write about separately, so you can read about our program's impact HERE.

You will have another chance to share your feedback at the end of the summer season, and we would love to hear how you think we did in addressing your concerns over the next few weeks. We've also now put a feedback form at the bottom of the newsletter that will be there each week, where you can submit any suggestions you might have for us in the meantime.

Thanks so much for being a part of this season! If you still have any questions about the following points or anything else, please don't hesitate to talk to a coordinator at Market Day, or email us at info@brownmarketshares.com.

-Anna, Meg, Erin, and Taylor

Summer 2014 BMSP Program Impact

A third of the respondents from the Mid-Season Survey indicated that the aspect of the program they know the least about is our overall impact as a program. As a team, we wanted to highlight this season’s impact and share some of our favorite types of numbers.

This summer we have 240 shareholders. By the tenth week of the season, we will have filled 2,400 bags of groceries. To make this possible, shareholders invested $60,000 in BMSP for the entire summer! And by the end of the summer we will have spent 94% of that directly in the local food economy ($56,400). Crossroads Resources Center estimates that local food spending in agricultural communities has 2.6 times the impact of the original purchase. This is because spending within a local food system means your dollars are recycling through the community more times than if we were investing in far away companies. Local farmers tend to buy supplies and equipment locally and employ local people as labor. By this estimate, our impact on the RI Food System for the summer is $135,840!

Coordinator Reflections: Lemme See Your Grill(z)

Perhaps nothing says summer more than trying to get my relatively unstable charcoal grill to catch fire. Stability and safety aside, I absolutely love grilling. I grill pretty much all things and would never discriminate based on food group - meats, veggies, fruits, breads, and cheeses all have a spot on my grill. This weekend I’ll be hanging out with my grill (and hopefully some friends) figuring out creative ways to grill this week's share.

First, I'll start by mixing olive oil, vinegar, thyme, and honey in a small bowl. Next I'll chop the tops off the sugar snap peas and snow peas from Freedom Food Farm and toss them in the mix with some salt and pepper. Then the fun part. Turn on the grill and massage the Red Russian kale with some olive oil and throw it on the grill once its hot! Keep the stems on because it will be easier to manage and you can remove them once it's done if you like. Flip it just once, after it is crispy and charred, about two minutes.

Once the kale is off the grill and cool, I'll rip it into smaller pieces and top with the sugar snap pea and snow pea mix. If you are feeling adventurous this whole dish is amazing over a 'schmear' of ricotta. And you can always add thinly sliced cucumber to the cold salad.
A previous BMSP coordinator used to call this a Hot-N-Cold salad and that is still what I call it today (Hey Leah!).

Make sure you have your summer shady/mojito/ice tea of choice in hand, as grilling is a hot adventure, and you will absolutely want something refreshing. Please share your grill successes and failures with the BMSP community - we want to know what's tasty when it's charred!

Taylor Lanzet

Program Development Coordinator

Mid-Season Survey Response, Spring 2014

Purchasing, Beets and Onions, and the Trade Box

Thank you so much to all of those who filled out our mid-season survey! We spend a lot of time going through the responses as a team, and it is always a great opportunity for us to learn, and also to brainstorm how to make things better. We came up with a list of some of the primary questions and concerns that you brought up in your survey responses that we wanted to address. These points include general confusion about our purchasing process, wanting fewer beets, wanting onions, and a lot of very mixed feedback about the Trade Box trial this season. Please click READ MORE below to read our responses. We hope they answer your questions!

Thanks so much for being a part of this season! If you still have any questions about the following points or anything else, please don't hesitate to talk to a coordinator at Market Day, or email us at info@brownmarketshares.com.

-The BMSP Coordinating Team
Katie, Meg, Anna, Jenna, Antonia, Julie, and Taylor

Mid-Season Survey Response, Summer 2013

As we approach the seventh week of the program, we are taking time to consider all of the feedback offered in our mid-season survey and would like to share some of your thoughts and ours.

To begin, thank you to everyone who filled out our survey! We appreciate the time and thought put into each response. We will do our best to incorporate your suggestions not only for the rest of this season, but in future seasons as well. If there is anything you forgot to say, be sure to check out our suggestions box, which is out at every market day.