September Twenty-Fifth The farm is falling down. With each gust of wind, each cool night, and each shortening day. The plants know that their time is limited and are all giving their last surge toward making seed to propagate their species, sending down roots deeper in the softened soil, and ripening their fruits and seeds […]
September Eighteenth There is a fight for food freedom going on in Wisconsin right now. Maybe you’ve heard about the raw-milk bill that is in the Wisconsin Senate. Their seems to be a growing number of people who wish for the right to know where their food is coming from, wish for it to be […]
September Eleventh I believe I have forgotten to mention one of the hardest workers on the farm. She’s been here as long as we’ve had the farm and has helped us through the muddiest, the heaviest, and the dirtiest of jobs. She pulls her weight one hundred times over each day we set to work, […]
September Fourth Bounty. The good earth is giving. Despite the drought this season, the land is fruitful. Because Adam has been working so hard this summer to keep the irrigation lines dripping, we have beautiful looking food right now-and lots of it! Because we finally got a little heat wave last week, our tomatoes and […]
August Twenty-Eighth I do my best to write about the beautiful side of the farm and keep the newsletters on the up beat so as to portray a beautiful image for you for where your food is coming from. The truth is that the farm is beautiful, the workers are happy and the food is […]
August Twenty-First The waning summer days have a way of sounding a bit like a ticking clock. Almost all wild and domestic plants are in fruiting and seeding stages. Nature knows that her time is limited. She knows that the warm days we are enjoying now are fleeting and her chances for reproduction are now. […]
August Fourteenth Sweet corn, melons and tomatoes oh my! The box this week is pretty “sweet” as we like to say. Our sweet and crunchy carrots, amazing melons and a surprising sweet corn harvest make the box interesting this week. Many thanks to our good ol farm dog, Mugzie, for protecting the sweet corn from […]
August Seventh We canned peaches this week. We bought a couple cases of organic peaches and attempted to preserve the summertime flavor of the sunny North Carolina. Every summer when we see the locals selling peaches and cherries and blueberries along the side of the road, there is a deep, child-like desire for a sweet, […]
July Thirty-First The harvesting is getting real now. The items that we are harvesting are heavy and solid and long awaited. Last week we began our garlic harvest. The life of garlic is a surprisingly difficult one. Kind of like a penguin- minus the migration part. Garlic is planted in the fall just before the […]
July Twenty-Fourth The heat is on folks! We survived a week’s worth of hot and muggy weather reaching up in the 90’s. The heat-loving plants like the peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, sweet corn and melons are thriving in the heat and humidity. If you were still enough, you could almost hear the plants growing last week […]
July Seventeenth Do you ever wonder how we get it all done? Do you wonder how many people it takes to get the labor done to fill your boxes full of these beautiful vegetables? I’m the orchestrator of this symphony, and I still wonder how we pull it off every week. I’m the lucky gal […]
July Tenth Summer on the farm is busy. From the insects to the birds to the people, the farm is bustling. The farm is vibrating with a low hummmmmm. The lightening bugs, moths and crickets keep the night sky active and the bees and birds keep the day sky alive and moving along. The activity […]
July Second Farming is really mothering. It is a short-term life cycle of germination, birth, and infancy. You nurture your little family along by watering them and feeding them and protecting them from the harsh realities of the big bad word until they are ready to be transplanted into a field wide open to the […]
June Twenty-Sixth We farmers are dirty folks. The earthy kind. We do our best to keep our minds and carrots out of the gutter, but these days we’ve got the “F” word on the mind. Now that we’re parents of a little girl, we try not to use bad words anymore. Not the one you’re […]
June Nineteenth Strong to the finich because you eat your spinach! For the first time in what feels like a very, very long time, it is starting to feel a bit like summer. The warm breeze blows against the sweat on our brow and makes us feel cool, the sound of the neighbors mowing their […]
June Twelfth We find ourselves in another wet week on the farm with more rain in the forecast. We’re a little more hopeful this week because warmer temperatures will remain steady throughout the week providing our plants with the warm, humid and moist weather they will thrive in. We’re getting a little behind on our […]
June Fifth Welcome to the Summer Share deliveries of 2013. We are excited about our 8th year running our little Small Family CSA Farm. We enter this growing season with fresh enthusiasm for life and all things that grow and live. Still, even after “all these years” it is exciting for me to watch all […]
CSA Family! Never before has the passing of one season been so markedly magnificent as the summer of 2012. Despite severe drought, record high temperatures and the added challenge of re-learning how to manage our time and energy so that we could share every last drop of it with our new daughter, we grew as a […]
October SeventeenthIn back on tractor: Loras. In top row from left to right: Adrianne, Joe, Jillian, Adam and Steven. In front row, Julie, Olivia and baby Ayla. A completed season. It sounds so golden, so sweet, so much like a fresh-baked apple pie. Baseball has a season. Birds have a season. A well-seasoned cast iron […]
October Tenth A blessed 3/10th of an inch of rain fell on our drought-laden farm on Tuesday. When I woke in the dark of the morning before sunrise and was stiring around the house, I saw rain on the window pane. It felt like salvation, like a reprieve from doing something hard for a very […]