I visited Valley Malt in Hadley this weekend. Andrea was inside this huge stainless-steel container with a shovel and pounds of beautiful malt. She was watching for an important part of the malting process where the grain begins to germinate. It smelled amazing. And I started to realize what the New York Times had already reported. Valley Malt is on the forefront of what could be a big change in our local food systems. For the first time in hundreds of years, grain is being grown, milled, and malted in Massachusetts.

Which is why we are really excited to announce that Clover is going to be the Boston pickup spot for an experimental Grain CSA from Valley Malt.

Here are the details. $200 for 3 pickups – June, August, and September. There will be a Homebrewers option and a non-Homebrewers option. Each pickup will contain 5lbs freshly milled flour, 10lbs malt, 2lbs popcorn, 2lbs wheatberries, 3-5 lbs of another specialty item that will change each pickup (ex: corn, dry beans, polenta, oats). Andrea’s going to include recipes for beer, homemade corn tortillas and malted milk balls! You can sign up here.

Or you can come to Meet the Farmer Night at CloverHUB tomorrow night, 6pm-9pm. We’ll have signups there as well. There’s going to be a limited number of shares of this one, and I already bought the first one : )