We Are OPEN for Business at Pittsburgh Public Market!

We’d LOVE to see your face at the Market! Come visit us and the many fine vendors at the Public Market at 25th and Penn in one of Pittsburgh’s greatest destinations. It’s been fun to build our own little homey kitchen just off the main aisle of the market.

Open Hours – WED – SUN 10am – 4pm (SAT 9am)

Come and get delicious iced and hot tea service, loose leaf by the pouch, as well as ice pops for enjoying on the spot or taking home by the box. And our newest fun herbal edible our delightful herb infused simple syrups.

Check Out Our Calendar of Upcoming Markets and Events

SPECIAL EVENTS

• MAY 14-17th – PGH Children’s Theater Festival, Lilypad Park

• MAY 25 9am-2pm, Lawrenceville, Memorial Day Celebration, Allegheny Cemetery

• JUNE 5 6-10pm Garfield Night Market N.Pacific & Penn

• JUNE 20-21 PGH Jazz Festival ALL DAY, Cultural District

• JUNE 21 Children’s Museum Maker Fair 6/21/201

• JULY 3 6-10pm Garfield Night Market N.Pacific & Penn

• JULY 24-26 Pittsburgh Blues Festival, Hartwood Acres

• AUG 7 6-10pm Garfield Night Market N.Pacific & Penn

PUBLIC MARKETS

• CitiParks East Liberty Farmer’s Market, 5900 Penn Circle North
  Mondays, 3:30-7:30pm May 11th – November 2 2015

• Bloomfield Saturday Market, 505 Liberty Avenue, Bloomfield
  Saturdays, 9am-1pm, May 30-November 7 2015

• COMING SOON TO – Pittsburgh Public Market, 2401 Penn Avenue, Strip District
  Wednesdays 10 am to 4 pm
  Thursdays 10 am to 7 pm
  Fridays 10 am to 4 pm
  Saturdays 9 am to 5 pm
  Sundays 10 am to 4 pm

RETAIL LOCATIONS

FIND OUR ICE POPS!

• 52nd Street Market, 601 52nd Street, Pgh, PA  15201 (LVille)
  
• East End Food Coop, Penn Ave & Braddock Ave (Point Breeze)

• Klavon’s Ice Cream Parlor 2801 Penn Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15222

• Commonplace Coffee, Penn Ave (Garfield) & Forbes Ave (Sq. Hill)
• Sewickley Confectionery 600 Beaver Street, Sewickley, PA  15143
• Biddle’s Escape 401 Biddle Avenue 15221 (Regent Square)

FIND TEAS!

• 52nd Street Market, 601 52nd Street, Pgh, PA  15201 (LVille)
• Commonplace Voluto 5467 Penn Ave  Pittsburgh, PA 15206
• Penns Corner Farm Stand Online CSA w/ Farm Stand Pick-up
• Klavon’s Ice Cream Parlor 2801 Penn Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15222
• Breathless Beauty 108 Route 6 Bdg. 2 Milford, Pennsylvania 18337

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We’re Headed to the Regatta at Lake Arthur this Weekend!

We have a very busy weekend ahead and we are excited to see all of you at one or more of our five events!

Maria, Savi, Justice, and Suzy along are traveling North for the Annual Regatta at Lake Arthur. We were invited to join this event as a first time vendor in their Natural Vendor’s Village and we are excited to try a new market in a beautiful setting! Read More Here.

Friday night Dana will be enjoying herself as usual and serving TeaPops and Tea at the First Friday Garfield Night Market. Always a great time full of delicious food, local arts, and good company as always with your friendly local neighborhood vendors.

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On Saturday visit Meg in the Strip District at another exciting new market, Farmers at the Firehouse. We love our weekly farmers markets, where our resident farmers get to talk with patrons, and where we bring out some of our other products and service. Keep an eye out for bouquets, herb bundles, apothecary items, classes at the farm, and sign ups for our Fall/Winter herbal CSA!

Also on Saturday you can find Michelle holding it down at the Bloomfield Saturday Farmers Market. Stroll along the market this week and enjoy live music with BeLove, food and wellness demos, and always delicious food. Come to the Healcrest PopUp for Hot & Iced Tea, TeaPops, and check out Cutting Root Apothecary products. Talk to Michelle about all the wonderful benefits of herbal wellness support.

 

 

 

Come to Wigle Whiskey Distillery this Friday – July 25, 2014!

We’ll be slinging TeaPops at the Wigle Distillery! Come get all kinds of great street food and participate in a curiously named event! See you Friday in the Strip!!!It’s that time of year again. Join us for our third annual Tar & Feather Party–our biggest event of the year! Help us celebrate the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, read more…

We’ll Be Joining Farmers @ the Firehouse this Saturday!

The ladies of Healcrest are excited to bring you delicious Summer refreshment at a new market this weekend! We are so fortunate and grateful to have wonderful new market opportunities.

Visit Maria at Farmers @ the Firehouse for Iced Tea, TeaPops, Loose Tea, and other amazing herbal edibles. Our flavors this week are Blueberry Lemon Balm, Roasted Peach Basil, Fresh Apple Mint, and Cucumber Surprise.

We are excited to see you this Saturday in the Strip at “Pittsburgh’s first & largest mostly organic or Certified Naturally grown farmers’ market.” Read more about Farmers @ the Firehouse.

Voted Best Farmers’ Market in Pittsburgh, Edible Allegheny 2010; 100 Best Things About Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Magazine; Best Farmers’ Market, City Paper Staff Picks.

SUMMER HAS ARRIVED AND IT IS HOT!

So to refresh and recharge you we have Savory Strawberry Creamsicle; Cucumber Lime Mint, and returning champs Chocolate Lavender, & Fresh Apple Mint. In addition we are bringing freshly brewed Iced Tea by the cup. Try our original Tea Blends like Goddess Blend or Everyday Tea. We look forward to hosting you for volunteer days, tours, and classes. And we are always happy to see you at market.

A Rainy Day Photo Shoot!

By Michelle Soto

Meg and I thought we could use this rainy day to our advantage and show some photos of our muscle powered tools that we use to create the gardens.  As we were planning and budgeting to create new gardens and revitalize more green spaces at Healcrest, we made a decision to not rent heavy gas powered machinery and to invest in quality earth moving tools that we can use for years to come.

We still use lawn mowers for grass cutting, but pretty much everything else up at the farm is a hand tool.  This definitely increases the time and energy it takes to build a garden bed, but the finished products are high quality beds that will be around for years to come, completely free of knotweed roots, rocks, and anything else that might impede the growing process.

We’ve found that the beds that we built last year have needed a few wheelbarrows of compost of them and some leaf mulch in the aisles, but are free of invasive weeds.  The hard pan clay that is just right under our top soil was turned with compost last year and has matured into a dark rich layer of soil, perfect for growing.

Planting into these beds will continue for a few more weeks! Official volunteer days are on Sundays from 11-4.  We won’t make you jump on a broad fork for you can help some baby seedlings find a good home!

Michelle loves to use the little digging fork to turn earth

Meg attacks knotweed, clearing a new path through the woods

Michelle jumps on the broad fork, using all her body weight!

Meg is shifting soil with the brand new shifter that Suzy built or the farm

Family Time on the Farm

By Michelle Soto

This past week my family came into town ready to work on the farm!  Many of my memories of childhood involve helping my dad in the yard and in the garden.  Every spring we’d get a load of wood mulch delivered to the house and I would use my child sized shovel and wheelbarrow to mulch the rose bushes and the edges of garden beds.  I loved the smell of the mulch.  It smelled woody and alive and signaled that spring was here.  My dad’s biggest hobby was working in the yard, he’d come home every day after work, take a power nap, change into work clothes and spend the rest of the afternoon outside.  He’s the type of guy who only has ONE kind of grass in his yard, and absolutely no weeds.  Anywhere.

It was reminiscent of these afternoons to spend some days with him at Healcrest.  His assignment: tree stump removal.  And not just any tree stump.  A 50 year old black locust (he counted those rings during a break one day) which was in the middle of our newest garden.  While my dad worked on the stump, my mom and aunt weeded our garlic patch, which had mulched itself with garlic mustard plants.  They caught them all before they went to flower, and the garlic patch is vibrant and sending up what soon will be delicious garlic scapes.

Other areas of the garden are quickly growing as the days and nights are warming up.  The mints: lemon balm, peppermint, horehound, catnip, catmint, and chocolate mint are providing us with new herbs to harvest every week.  About half of our seedlings are moved into the greenhouse and awaiting transplant.  And of course, the lovely wild cherry trees are going to burst into bloom any day this week.

Till next time,

Michelle and the Farm Team

It’s a Weed Walk! This Sunday MAY 18th – 3 to 5PM

Healcrest is hosting herb walks and classes with Michelle!

We’re kicking off our season:
this Sunday MAY 18th – 3 to 5PM
It’s a Weed Walk!
to learn about the plants poppin out NOW that its spring!

We’re going to walk and talk about what’s growing now and what it looks like. Curious about how to harvest burdock to get the most out of it? Or simply want to know what burdock is and looks like? We’ll talk about medicinal uses, cultivation techniques, wildcrafting habits, and whatever you want. There’s going to be a number of these kinds of classes this year where we can visit the same plants in different seasons and growing stages and identify and use them is a variety of ways.

the walk and talk is $10 and our rain date’s set for may 20, 4-6.

Register Here let us know if you have any questions, 615-804-0064 thanks! and happy spring,

Spring Has Sprung at Healcrest Urban Farm!

Whew! Spring has sprung and we are seeing the evidence of that all over the farm!

The daffodils are in full bloom, the forsythia has one whole garden in a wash of yellow, the hawthorns are budding out the cutest little leaves, and our perennials are coming back from the intense winter hibernation we were all in.

Meg and Michelle have been busy tilling the ground in several gardens to get beds ready for the hundreds of plants we have started inside.  Many herblings are more delicate than vegetable starts so we’ll wait till after the last frost to plant outside.

We are orienting garden beds differently this year in one garden and are breaking ground the what we used to call “the knotweed field”.  Although it does have medicinal qualities: the knotweed root contains high amounts of resveratrol- the feel good chemical in red wine, we are striving to eradicate our pristine piece of land from this invasive creature.  Slowly, but surely.

Suzy has built a rain barrel system to catch rainwater off the roof of our shed so that we can water everything grown on the farm with water collected from the farm.

 

 

As usual, the chickens have the run of a garden during the day to dust bathe and sun themselves.

 

We will post soon about upcoming classes and volunteer days!  Here’s to spring!