Fish-O-Gram! Duck Luck! Chef Sweepstakes! Pink Letter Week!! Fresh Island Meats! Sunchokes! New Email & Fish Doldrums...... Halibut Countdown!!

If you have missed your scheduled, Friday, Sat, Sunday Fish-O-Gram, you are correct.  It is tardy.  Your dedicated Fish-O-Gram writer has been otherwise occupied, with the eye strain to prove it, hunched over over a tote full of geoducks trying to induce them to spawn.  No dice thus far, the males are willing, but the females just aren't performing.  But if it means anything, I have missed you terribly.  

I'd rather be writing a Fish-O-Gram

Also, this week, we have transferred from Outlook to Gmail.  We hated Outlook, and now we are learning to hate Gmail.  A week of free fish to the customer who turns us on to an e-mail system that functions and does what we want it to, and finds us an accounting program that doesn't turn evil and try to control us from the computer monitor.  Your e-mails are still coming in, and we remain attentive.  Please bear with us through the transition. Please note all of the old addresses still work, but to reach Ivan directly email "ivan@jffarms.com" and to email Paisley directly write to "sales@jffarms.com". Nick & Sara's email remains the same as does Logistics & Office.

Family Time

For those of you who have never spanked off a duck, the process involves alternately exposing the ducks to water temperatures of 10 and 16 degrees centigrade, bombarding them with food, oscillating PH between 7.8 and 8.9, leaving them dry for extended periods to concentrate their minds and spending endless hours with a flashlight, trying to detect the first curls of sperm or eggs ejaculating from their siphons.  At a certain point of desperation we pick out a particularly un-co-operative duck, slice it open and mash up the gonads to swirl in the water with the other ducks, pour encourager les autres.  When they begin to spew, we hustle the lucky, lusty duck to a private bucket to work things out, then mingle sperm and eggs at a specific ratio in another bucket.  Once the cells begin to divide, we put eggs in a 1500 liter tank to complete the process.  In four hours the resultant larvae is swimming, in 24 hours it has a shell.

If this sounds awful, it is, but also quite miraculous.  In season, which begins now, we are spawning something, ducks, oyster or clams, at least once every two weeks.  We encourage any and all of you to schedule a farm visit around spawning time.  Together, we will create life.

Family Fun.

Pink Peril.

Pink Scallops are now a reality.  This past Saturday Eric Donnelly served the first public scallops in almost 20 years at the POP event.  Go Eric! Go Scallops!  Our dream is becoming a reality!!!!!!!!!  This week we have a very limited quantity of live pink scallops for sale.  Next week will be more abundant.  Hooray for the divers, Hooray for legislators Kristine Lytton, Doug Erickson, Brian Blake, hooray for you, lucky pioneer chefs!  Countless hours of slogging through mindless bureaucracy, redeemed!  Call Paisley!  Order restrictions will apply.

Pink Scallops, Limited Supply

Department of Radial thinking.  

The Pink fishery is a great triumph, but it bears pointing out the degree to which our food system is controlled by unaccountable, out-of-touch bureaucracy.  In our opinion, government control bears a great deal of blame for the sorry state of the American food system.  It is part of our mission at JFF to expose the iron fist beneath the neoprene glove and work to free food for the people.  The ongoing food revolution demands no less.  Today Pink Scallops, next stop legal cultivation/sale of seaweed in Washington State. One clam, one vote.

I'd rather be spanking off Dux.  

Seafood and Bespoke Fresh Meats--Confrontation Therapy.  
This week we have whole/half hogs, lamb and fresh Lopez beef cut to your specifications.  It is our ongoing contention that meat deserves the same consideration that seafood receives--namely, appreciation of subtle distinctions of location, season, breed and flavor.  For those of you who demand source-specified shellfish, proudly sing the river origin of your salmon, require that bottomfish be hook-and-line caught--all rightly so--why are meats exempt from this equation?  We aim to supply you with meats to match our seafood, grown by ourselves or other equivalent producers.  Yes, big label, greenwashed meats are cheaper.  But so is mushy, drag caught black cod from Pacific Seafoods.  Would you serve that?  Would your customers support it?  If so, please alert us, and we will take you off the Fish-O-Gram list.  Think about it.

But I'm the low price supplier.....I'm a broadliner....

JFF is here to help.  Weekly supplies of Island Lamb, Pork and beef from our farm or the Mainland Cattle Company.  Move away from the darkness. Embrace the Grass. Call Paisley! Call Sara!

Garden Corner.

The Jones Boys have decided to work towards a family trip to Madagascar, partially to see a Mouse Lemur in person and partially in hopes of seeing an Omuras Whale, a species of tropical waters Baleen whale, discovered only 10 years ago.  The tropical Baleen thing is significant because warmer waters tend to be lacking in krill and other baleen-worthy prey.  Omuras Whales are either uniquely efficient or know something marine biologists do not.  

To finance this trip they have set to make the Jones Ranch kitchen garden a commercial Venture.  Being protein oriented, we have long held that Shrubbery is Garnish, but in the interest of good parenting and the prospect of a Madagascar Vacation, we now embrace produce.  All proceeds go to the Jones Boys Madagascar Fund.

First harvest is over-wintered Sunchokes.  We have very abundant supplies.  $4.00#  Please call.

Help us live the dream.  

Fish Update.

Fresh Fish remains....fairly static.  The Quinalt river has blown out with all this rain, so Steelhead is touch-and-go right now and our Rhode Island friends are hard-pressed with nasty weather.  Local bottomfish is fairly available, crab pricing remains as it has been, but on the whole not much is happening, except for Pink Scallops.  But what an exception!  Later in the week we will have Black Seabass and Dirty Squid.  The fresh RI  Ling is also something special.  Eastern Ling is kind of like a midget cod.  Very delicious.  Lemon Sole is also wonderful and priced right.  Fresh from the bay, guaranteed unspanked, Jamestown tidelands geoducks are also available, Call Paisley 24/7.  After midnight, if she doesn't pick up, just keep calling!

Halibut Looms

We are now on the Four-week countdown to the opening of the halibut season.  We will be delivering the first halibut of the season to Seattle Sunday the 20th, weather permitting, and again, daily throughout the week.  Again, San Juans Halibut has a flavor and flesh quality not found in fish from other areas, including the Washington Coast.  Our unique combination of big, fast water and warm, shallow bays yield fish that are tender, rich and flavorful.  Last year, while gutting Halibut, the most common food we found in Halibut bellies was Spot Prawns.  With a diet like that, it's a no-brainer why Islands halibut are the best in the world, bar none.  Place your orders now! Don't flounder around, ring in the Halibut New Year with the flatfish highpoint of the year.  If you would like to offer your customers just a little bit more, trained JFF staff is available for Halibut-centric events, we have props, costumes and more.  Call Paisley to schedule your Halibut Hootenanny.

We can do balloon animals too

We are, belatedly, your devoted JFF Crew.