If you have not discovered the Weekly Market Bulletin (https://www.hws.nh.gov/agric/bulletin/index.php)  from the NH Department of Agriculture, Markets, & Food, you are missing out. This little four-page newsletter comes in the mail every Thursday and I drop everything to read it immediately. Oh sure, you can receive it as a digital newsletter but sometimes I just need to read without the hum of electronics in the background.

The Weekly Market Bulletin will tap you into the New Hampshire food and agriculture world in the most basic of ways. Short tips (this issue: preventing barn fires), consumer news, agricultural news, a nice classifieds section (livestock sales, farm equipment, wool & fleeces, trucks, wanted), a note from Lorraine Merrill of the Stuart Farm family in Greenland and our very own Agricultural Commissioner, going prices (strawberries this week), auction results, workshops calendar, and pricing of grain, eggs--whew! What four pages on anything gives you this much information? And over the years the WMB has had an increasingly global perspective (this issue includes a short clip from "Lancaster Farming" on Yubari, Japan, which is apparently Japan's Melon Kingdom).  And I often enjoy the occasional humorous clips poking fun at one farmy thing or another.

Even if you live on no more than a hen's peck for a plot of dirt,  this little journal can connect you to the land in short order. And I am willing to bet you will not only, like me, be looking forward to Thursday's mail with renewed interest but after just a few issues you'll have a chicken or two clucking around the backyard!

And yes, for those of you Seacoasters across the bridges, although Mainers can't place ads, the Weekly Market Bulletin will happily take Maine currency and send the newsletter over the border.

Comment (0)