Hello, The Green Door, Castleberry's Local Fresh Market is not now taking applications for the 2009 growing season. This is an exciting time for historic Castleberry Hill, a vibrant community bustling with boutiques, coffee shops, restaurants, and art galleries. Residents are looking for a fresh alternative to the areas chain grocery stores. The Green Door is seeking sustainable and small batch food producers for our weekly Sunday market. The space is covered with bathroom facilities, ample parking, and a loading bay. Please email us for an application.Complete the application and return it to us with your $20 application fee for consideration. The market will open May 24, 2009. Questions? Please contact us. The Green Door 404-245-9836 431 Fair Street Atlanta, GA 30313 thegreendoormarket@gmail.com Sincerely, Charles M. Bryant Pictures: http://atlanta.craigslist.org/bfs/1145860514.html

We only sell at Farmers Markets. I have sold to our school district (the one I work at) and at a grocery store in our hometown and at one 30 miles away where I grew up. We have several chefs who purchase produce from our market and they have a "Local Special" every week. I also had a chef who bought pickling cucs for homemade pickles for their sandwiches for weeks. I don't actively seek out chefs or wholesale markets. I am not large enough to justify it, IMO. Also, if I sell wholesale, that doesn't give me much to sell at the Farmers Markets. All my wholesale "Sales" were because of an excessive amount of produce and low sales due to a glut of produce at the market. My sales to my school were because the head person came and talked to me about it. Problem is, I don't work for free and her budget for food required extremely cheap inputs. I wasn't going to plant, grow, harvest, wash and bag Romaine lettuce for 50 cents a head, when I was selling it for $2.50-3.00 a head at the market. She ordered 15 heads of romaine and 5 pounds of spinach(baby leaf) for the salad bars. I dropped it off at the central Kitchen and submitted my bill for $45. I got an email later that said basically she thought my bill was too high and she was expecting something in the $10-15 range. She paid me and never ordered anything from me again. I have also been insulted by chefs. it was several years ago and a local chef (who is no longer in business) stopped by the market and said he would give me 50 cents a pound for the nicest red slicers I had available. Keep in mind this was mid June and I was selling out at $3.50 a pound. I laughed to my wife after he left. I guess my experience with wholesale, food service and chefs has been nothing but bad, so I never went back to it. If the chef is willing to pay for a quality product, I will work with them. For me, I limit the quantity of what I grow and grow a larger variety of produce. This makes my stand more attractive to customers and helps me gain and maintain my customer base. Also it spreads out my risk over many crops and many plantings. Just my experiences, Jay

I would say, just get an FD fridge without the in-door water/ice dispenser. You'll save a ton of space (not to mention, those in-door water/ice makers seem to be the most trouble-prone part of any fridge--so avoid those, and you avoid all that potential trouble). My aunt-in-law (is that a word?) has a big beautiful Whirlpool FD that she loves. I think it's this one: http://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/GX5FHTXVA.html The Frigidaire below (see link) is bigger, if that matters to you. And I haven't seen the Samsung you mention. But right there you have three options. There are also Electroluxes like this, but there are some iffy reviews on those and they almost never go on sale. The HUGE advantage of an FD over a SxS is that you can fit wide items in your fridge. Like trays and platters of food, those wooden baskets some fruits come in, pizza boxes, the Thanksgiving turkey and so on. You simply cannot fit those in a SxS because the fridge area is less than half as wide (the divider between fridge and freezer is easily 3" so you lose more than half the shelf width). Why "limp along" on something inferior when there are plenty of huge FD fridges available without in-door water/ice? It'll just cost you more money--it's not as if prices are going to go down. It makes sense to narrow it down to 3 or 4 fridges and then watch to see if one of them goes on sale or finds its way to eBay (some of the sales there include extended warranties)--but it doesn't make much sense to just postpone the decision indefinitely. Personally I also think it makes sense to get an FD fridge with as much REFRIGERATOR space as possible, even if it skimps on the freezer space, because it's a lot cheaper to get a chest freezer for the basement or garage than to get a second refrigerator. Here is a link that might be useful: Huge Frigidaire FD

Sounds like a fine haul to me! Today I got an email from a nearby organic farm that is now starting their season. And get this....they will deliver! Free if order is over $20 and $1 extra if under $20. And they have pickup in 2 locations, one which is only a couple of miles from my office. You email or call the farm with your order and they bag it up and put your invoice on the bag. This week they have squash, beets, baby celery, Swiss chard, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, green onions, green garlic, herbs, and herb plants. Yes, they are higher than the grocery store, but not that much, and this is organic and local - only about 7-10 miles as the crow flies. I will be away this weekend, but I let them know I planned to order next week. Go to LocalHarvest.com and find farms near you, then you can sign up for emails on activities and new listings for local foods. Teresa