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Subject: "Daily Special" Farm Tour! Sign up now for the first ever... "Daily Special" Farm Tour! Saturday, July 22, 1-3 p.m. Steve-n-Sons Grassfields Cheese in Coopersville Tour is free, but space is limited: RSVP to 616-558-6490 Marie Catrib's Cafe is offering daily specials featuring ingredients sourced as much as possible from local farms that raise crops and animals in a sustainable manner. This means the farms are small in scale and use methods like natural pest control and composting that maintain ecological balance and avoid depletion of natural resources. "Our goal as a restaurant is to offer the healthiest food possible to our customers and to be a responsible member of our community," said Fouad Catrib, co-owner of the popular East Hills neighborhood eatery. "Supporting local farmers and those who are raising their food without chemicals and with respect for the environment and animals is the best way to accomplish our goal." As part of the "Daily Special" series, monthly public tours of the farms from which the food is sourced will be offered from July through October. The first "Daily Special" Farm Tour takes place Saturday, July 22, from 1-3 p.m., at Steve-n-Son's Grassfields Cheese, a Coopersville farm supplying cheese for Marie Catrib's meals. Participants will get a to meet Chef Fouad Catrib and tour the farm. They'll see cows being milked and cheese being made and learn about the history of the Meerman family, which owns this fifth-generation dairy farm. The family switched from confinement operations to grass-based, pasture farming in 1991 and began making cheese in 2002. Future "Daily Special" Farm Tours: Sunday, August 20 -- Crane Dance Farm, a sustainable, regenerative, pasture-based farm with heirloom pork, poultry, vegetables and grains in Middleville September -- Trillium Haven Farm, a50-acre family sustainable produce farm in Jenison October (tentative) -- Creswick Farms, a Ravenna farm featuring chemical-free, pastured beef, lamb, heritage pork, turkey, chicken and eggs * To sign up for the July 22 "Daily Special" Farm Tour, call 616-558-6490 or email [log in to unmask] If you would like to access previous postings to the Mich-Organic listserv you can copy and paste the following URL into your browser address bar http://list.msu.edu/archives/mich-organic.html