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Farmer Jack!

Musician Jack Johnson and his wife Kim are doing their part to support local, sustainable agriculture.

From the Santa Barbara Independent:

Strawberry shortcakes just might save the world, and that’s why Jack Johnson is spending the last Friday morning of July on his knees, picking the ripe red fruits from a green patch at Goleta’s Fairview Gardens. Surrounding the world-famous surfing rock star, UCSB alum, and sporadic Montecito resident are children gathering strawberries, including two towheaded boys of his own, but mostly kids from the garden’s summer farm camp. Together, in a much-needed exercise for all ages, they’re learning exactly where our food comes from, how it gets onto our plates, and why eating locally grown vegetables and fruits  —  even if that equates to sweet tooth-friendly strawberry shortcake  —  is the first step in global salvation.

Full article is here.

Update on the Spring Peepers!

I've fallen off a bit with updating on the peeping balls of fluff, now nearly fully grown, that John surprised us with earlier this spring.

Of the six chicks intended to join our small laying flock, three of them turned out to be roosters. I've spent the last month trying to find new homes for them via Craig's List and the local papers and as of this past weekend, they are all gone!

I had very seriously considered processing them myself (having witnessed and assisted with that process earlier this summer) but it really is a messy and labor-intensive job. One that I just didn't have the energy to tackle right now. I also am not quite ready to share the full reality of the life cycle of farm animals with my young children.

We talk about it and they seem to get it but I am not yet comfortable with them observing the process.

So I posted multiple ads and eventually found two families who were interested in taking them.

Mercifully, Lily's three favorite hens (Sarah, Cocoa, and Clarabelle) are indeed hens and will stay to live out their days in and around our barn. Phew.

The tomatoes are in!

We picked up these gorgeous tomatoes at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm on Friday.

You won't see tomatoes like these in your grocery store. Heirloom tomatoes are lumpy and bumpy and, by many standards, quite funny looking. But trust me, once you've tried a fresh, juicy heirloom tomato, (which you can do this Saturday at the Coastal Grower's Market if you are in Rhode Island), you won't want to go back to the tasteless orbs sold in grocery stores.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I decided to only eat tomatoes that are fresh and in season. (I'm not fanatical about it. If a friend serves me a tomato in January, I eat it, but I do not buy tomatoes out of season and opt out of them at restaurants whenever I can.)

The decision has not really been a big deal or one that I've given much thought to -- until this week when I saw the first tomatoes in the CSA barn! Wow! SO worth the wait!

Making Pizza!

Like just about everyone else in the world who read Barbara Kingsolver's inspiring book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, I decided that we should start having once a week homemade pizza nights.

I ordered Ricki Carroll's book from the library and started dreaming about the fresh mozzarella cheese we'd make and enjoy on our pizza.

But just like the canning kit I bought to make jam this summer, the cheese-making supplies remain on a shelf gathering dust.

As discouragement and frustration set in every time I popped another frozen pizza in the toaster, I decided to shift my perspective.

What if we started to consciously enjoy and appreciate our frozen pizzas and make eating them a special event (not just a default dinner)?

And then what if we switched from frozen pizzas to pizza shells that the kids could spread (store-bought) sauce and (store-bought) mozzarella on, so things could start to feel a little bit more homemade?

And then what if we shifted from pizza shells to store-bought dough that we could roll ourselves. And from shredded mozzarella to fresh (store-bought) mozzarella for us? (The kids prefer the shredded mozzarella.)

Eventually we'll get to the cheese-making and homemade dough and our own canned tomato sauce, but for now we are really enjoying our own mostly-homemade, fun, toddler-friendly version of pizza night!

Here are some pictures from last night's pizza-making fun...

Kneading the dough:




Rolling the dough:


Adding sauce:


Pesto pizza with tomatoes, caramelized onions, pine nuts, blue cheese and fresh mozzarella:


We roasted corn on the grill:


The herb garden on the deck (basil, parsley and nasturtiums):

In the weeds!

There is so much that I wanted to happen this summer that is not happening.

The garden has--once again--been given over to weeds. The compost bin that seemed so simple to make is still a pile of wooden pallets in the driveway. The chickens are pretty much living a feral existence in our backyard.

I was thinking this week about my (brief) tenure as a waitress and the crazy-can't-catch-a-breath feeling we used to call being "in the weeds."

In my restaurant days being "in the weeds" was a shift where nothing seemed to go right. The kitchen was running slow. The hostess was seating fast (often double or triple seating tables) and no matter how fast you moved, you could just never shake that feeling of being three steps behind.

Now, as a full-time at-home parent of two little children, being "in the weeds" is when I don't get a chance to shower (sometimes for several days), and the dishes start overflowing the sink. The grass is suddenly knee-high and I can't get from one room to the next without tripping over toys and other junk. And the kids' needs (my full and undivided attention) and my needs (quiet time to clear my head and write) feel completely at odds and we spend most of the day annoying each other or trying to figure out how to get ourselves out of the muck we are stuck in.

And that's where we've been lately. In the weeds.

But even here in the muck, when I'm struggling to catch a breath, wonderful things are happening!

My Morning Glories are absolutely splendid.





We have been "putting up" as much food as we can. We're picking blueberries a couple of times a week (or buying them pre-picked when that feels much easier) and freezing them. (I lay them out on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper and put them in the cold oven over night to ripen. In the morning I move the cookie sheets into the freezer and when they are frozen I transfer them to bags.)



John has been making weekly batches of pesto, which we freeze in ice cube trays for later use.

And I have been chopping and freezing greens (like curly kale and rainbow chard) to mix into omelets, casseroles, sauces and smoothies.



And I've started dreaming and sketching and talking about "next summer's garden," when hopefully, I'll be feeling a little less "in the weeds."

CSA Cutting Garden: July 11

The benefits of knowing your farmer!

It's blueberry-picking time and my friends and I have again begun compiling lists of pesticide-free places to pick berries with our kids. It seems each year one of us discovers a new place that does not spray!

Today I spoke with my friend, who is also my children's daycare provider, and she had just returned from berry-picking at a nearby farm with good news.

Although the farmer is still using pesticides to combat worms, he is spraying significantly less than he did last year (he's now spraying once every three-four weeks, instead of weekly) due to numerous requests from customers who want safer berries for their families.

It's still not organic, and I know some purists would still consider it unacceptable, but I feel like it is a really good sign -- a consumer-led shift towards more sustainable and healthy way of farming!

In related news, my friend recently asked me to help her write a letter to her favorite local breakfast restaurant to encourage them to start serving local, pastured eggs. I think it's a great idea and decided to create a template letter that others might copy and tweak a little to follow suit. I will post it here as soon as it's complete!

DIY Project: Compost Bins

I borrowed this great book from the library and am feeling ready to 'dig' into composting.

We have been tossing scraps outside and calling it compost for as long as we've lived here. (Nearly all of our food scraps get thrown in the chicken pen where the hens scratch at it and take what they want.) But we've yet to cross over into actually cultivating compost for the benefit of our garden -- and that's just what I'd like to do next!

I've been looking around online and found some plans to build simple compost bins out of recycled wood pallets. (I e-mailed the local master gardeners' info desk to make sure that the pallets are suitable for use in an organic garden and they gave me a thumbs up.) And I found pallets at the nearby farm and garden store for $1.25 a piece.

The kids are spending the afternoon with my mom (basking in her air-conditioned first floor) and I'm heading out into the heat to start building!

CSA Cutting Garden: July 5

There are flowers in the garden this week!

Carrots!

We picked out these gorgeous carrots at our CSA this week. It's really hard to get excited about uniformly cut, pre-peeled "baby" carrots when you can enjoy these beauties:

The sweet sound of silence!

This morning was our first rooster-free morning since last fall when I got the idea that it would be really fun to have a rooster to fertilize our hen's eggs -- and hopefully, eventually, hatch out some chicks!

Lily was an easy sell. Quinn was too young to understand what was going on. John, on the other hand, was opposed to the plan from day one.

Unfortunately for my beloved husband, once I get an idea in my head (especially when it involves baby animals, or in this case the mere promise of possible baby animals), there is little that can be done to deter me.

So sometime last September a handsome young Dominique rooster joined our small flock of laying hens. Things were pretty good at first. He was still young and had not quite developed his full crowing ability. And then we moved into winter and the later sunrise and tightly-sealed windows made his morning crowing bearable for John and kind of charming for me.

Then spring (this year with its earlier changing of the clocks) and open-window season and a rooster who had most certainly found his crow -- and preferred to show it off starting at 4:30 a.m. and continue right on through to sundown -- was too much even for me to take.

I placed a couple of ads on Craig's List with no responses and was starting to feel desperate. He really needed to go. I composed another ad, posted it on the free stuff listing and hoped for the best.

I got a flury of responses this time but only one person who followed up and was willing and able to come pick "Roosty" up.

As we e-mailed back and forth I also offered her four of our laying hens (I want to clean out the stall and shore up the pen before we put the new layers in there), which she was happy to take.

When she and her son came to pick them up on Thursday, I felt a tiny pang of sadness. It wasn't so much that I was going to miss having a rooster around, but more just the realization that my vision of having a rooster home and how that would help to solidify the "farm" status of our yard, didn't work out the way I thought it would.

As the mother and son loaded Roosty into their truck, I heard her enthusiastically assuring her son that he'll get to have his chicks someday now that he has a rooster.

And I hope that's just how it works out for them.

Meanwhile, we are savoring the sweet sound of silence and the gift of sleeping past sunrise.

More nocturnal nibbling

Ugh. The pumpkins have also fallen victim to the night visitor.

I noticed yesterday that our garden is in the shade in the morning (something I knew but hadn't really tuned into before). This morning the kids are at their sitter's house so I was looking forward to a quiet morning working and dreaming in the garden.

Instead I found myself feeling totally overwhelmed and defeated. Whatever helped itself to our garden earlier in the week returned last night for the pumpkin plants. (It seems the only thing the nocturnal nibbler isn't interested in is the weeds, many of which are knee-high.)

I tried to muster some more optimism and thought about replanting (as I'm just beginning to learn about the moon cycles in relation to farming and today, new moon, is the perfect time to plant seeds) but it just felt too overwhelming.

I decided instead to come back up to the house and do some writing, send out a couple of query letters (which I've also read is a good "new moon" activity), and wait for the woman who is coming to relieve us of early-morning crowing (I found someone to take the rooster via Craig's List - yay!).

Perhaps in a little while I'll go back out and plant some seeds but for now it feels best to turn my attention to other things like the gorgeous Morning Glory (photo below) that is blooming on our back deck.

I have planted Morning Glory seeds/seedlings, just about every year for the last 10 years without ever growing anything more than a weak looking vine that never that quite establishes itself.

This year I started indoors, soaked and notched the seeds, and watered the seedlings daily before moving them to a planter on the back deck, where I continue to water them regularly.

The result has been most satisfying!

Munch, munch, crunch!

Something decimated our garden last night. Our dog was outside (not intentionally - sorry buddy) and he went crazy barking and then chased something off into the woods.

Eventually we got him back into the house and went to bed. I forgot about the whole incident -- until this afternoon when I went out to check the garden while the kids were napping/resting.

The first thing I noticed was the sunflowers -- the knee-high sunflowers that were the pride of my garden -- were now just stems. I had actually been thinking earlier in the day that even though the rest of the garden looks pretty bad (weeds are out of control), at least I have strong, healthy sunflowers growing in my garden for the first time ever. Or I, should say, did have strong, healthy sunflowers growing in my garden.

The next thing I noticed was the peas, which are trellised into a bean pole Tepee, broken and lying on the ground.

And then I saw the big, bushy wax bean plants were now also just straggly chewed off stems.

Lily and I went out to the garden together later in the afternoon. I mustered all the optimism I could find as we watered the damaged plants and sprinkled them with Rescue Remedy, which we've found the plants (and chickens), seem to respond really well to.

I'm so frustrated and disappointed and sad that I will (once again) not have big, beautiful sunflowers growing in my yard (last year it was the squirrels that took them out as seedlings).

But mostly I am very grateful that I am not dependant on the garden harvest for my livelihood or for my family's sole food supply and that this is just a minor aggravation and not a major catastrophe.

Well...I did it!

Here's a picture of Jim and me taking a break from our work (Did what? You ask. Background is here - see "in other news".):



I definitely intend to write more about this experience. But the short story is - I did it! I pushed through some big blocks and did things that I didn't know I was capable of doing. It was very intense and I am very grateful.

Tomorrow is the day!

I'm feeling quite a wide range of emotions, but primarily, oddly, excitement!

This feels like a really important step for me both personally and professionally and I'm honored that I get to be part of this "behind the scenes" farm experience.

I spoke with the farm manager today and he confirmed that Jim, a very nice community college teacher who I talked with for quite a while at last week's Solstice potluck, will be joining us. He, like myself, is a conflicted omnivore and he said he was inspired by his conversation with me (yay!) to come learn more about the food he is eating.

There are also several young farmhands (high school and college age) who will be part of the team -- though not for the first time like Jim and I.

I'm feeling a greater sense of peace knowing that this will be a multi-generational community experience!

CSA Cutting Garden: June 28

CSA - week two

Things were a little sparse at our CSA pick-up yesterday.

We got there towards the end of pick-up (which runs from 1-7 p.m.) and a few things (like broccoli rabe) had been cleaned out and there were (very) few peas to be found in the PYO field.

In the barn:

Green garlic
Beets
Spinach
Garlic scapes (I skipped them because I'm still not sure what to do with them and the green garlic seemed like enough garlic for one week)
Sunflower sprouts
Lettuce

In the fields, PYO:

Strawberries
Peas (though we didn't manage to find any)

No complaints though. We had a wonderful time picking TWO pints of strawberries (and probably eating close to that while we picked).

Yesterday morning I cleared out the fridge from last week's CSA left-overs (not that everything was "bad" but just because I'm wanting to stay ahead of the produce this summer). There was a bit more than I'd like to be in there at the end of the week, but the good thing about having chickens is that nothing really goes to waste. The chickens (and rooster, who is still here, but we hope, moving on to a new home soon) happily feasted on sunflower sprouts, spinach, chard, and lettuce, which we will absorb the benefits of via their eggs!

This morning we made pancakes with fresh strawberries - delicious!



In other news...

I have two "dates" set up in the coming weeks. During the first I will be helping to "process" chickens at our CSA farm and for the second I will be riding along with my friend Don, from whom we buy our grass-fed beef, when he brings three steer for "processing."

I sought out both of these experiences and crazy as it might sound, I am really looking forward to them.

But I am also find myself taking lots of deep breaths every time I think about it.

I was a vegetarian for over 17 years -- from sophomore year in high school until I was pregnant with our second child, while still nursing our first, and my body SCREAMED for red meat.

I tried to offer high-quality vegetable proteins and upped my intake of fresh eggs from our hens (as I had done during my first pregnancy) but the messages from my body were loud and clear -- it had to be red meat!

I tracked down a local source for grass-fed beef and we have been eating, and thoroughly enjoying, it ever since. (And incidentally learned that I was one of many former vegetarians who were now loyal grass-fed customers.)

I feel very much in alignment with eating (local compassionately raised) meat (more so in the winter or when I have extra demands on my body from pregnancy/nursing) but I am still not fully in alignment with the "process" by which a living animal becomes my food.

And so I've decided to lean into that discomfort and learn more about this process (I'm trying to type "slaughter" but my hands don't even want to type it).

I know, from talking extensively with local farmers every chance I get, that there are many gentle, peaceful, spiritual, loving people who raise animals for meat. I know some of them are former vegetarians themselves and so I want to talk to them more and learn from them and see if I can find peace around this subject.

Wish me luck...

Getting to know the "shuffle hoe"

Today was my first day working solo at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. My job, along with three other people, is to spend four hours a week weeding the cutting garden.

As I parked my car and walked over to the garden I felt a wave of discomfort realizing that I really don't actually know how to weed a garden. I mean I generally have an idea that involves picking out plants that you don't want to be growing in the garden so that the plants you do want to be growing in the garden have less competition for water and sunlight and nutrients.

But the flower fields are pretty large and the thought of hand-plucking stray grasses and other unwelcome shoots was pretty daunting.

After surveying the fields (and thinking that they really didn't look all that bad) I went over to the adjoining field where the farmer's market was taking shape. I located Pat, the farm manager, and told him I was there to work but not quite sure where to begin.

I actually felt really bad doing that. I really didn't want to bother him when he was obviously busy but I really wasn't sure what needed to be done.

But just like Rae, the assistant farm manager who I met two weeks ago, Pat seems to have a very deep well of patience for all the little questions farm-hands, volunteers, market customers, CSA members, field-tripping students and teachers, and visitors to the farm must throw at him every day.

He gave me a friendly welcome and noted that the weeds were already "getting pretty bad" (so much for my assessment). He asked me if I had ever used a "shuffle hoe", which I didn't know because I had no idea what a shuffle hoe was.

Once Megan, the other assistant farm manager, explained that it looks like the stirrup at the end of a long pole, I remembered one of my fellow weeders waxing poetic about the wonders of this hoe.

During a pre-season meeting where we set up a loose schedule of who would be weeding when, she told me that she loved this tool so much that last year she asked for one for Mother's Day.

So now that I knew what tool I was to use, I set off to find one in the tool barn, and returned to the market tent for a very quick tutorial.

Megan, who I was meeting for the first time, showed me the basic motion, which looks something like sweeping with a big push broom (the big institutional size ones).

Once I got back to the field and gave it a go, I learned that the shuffle hoe (which a later Google search told me is sometimes called a scuttle hoe, a scuffle hoe or a double edged action hoe) is a LOT of fun to use!

As I read on numerous blogs and gardening forums, the shuffle hoe really does glide through the dirt and as you move it back and forth the double edge blades chop the weeds at the roots.

Because the weeds were still pretty small, I was able to mostly just pull and occasionally push a little, which made it even easier, and I'm really not kidding, lots of fun!

Here's a before/after picture of the second field. The left side of the picture is before and the right side of the picture is after a once-over with the shuffle hoe.

CSA Cutting Garden: June 14

CSA Week One

Today was the first pick-up at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm.

It was HOT (mid-90's) today so we waited until the very end of the day to go.

While we waited for the heat to break we...

Planted flower seeds in little pop-up peat pots that John found while cleaning the basement.



And painted little buckets to use while picking strawberries.



I would just like to say, for the record, that I do not like painting with my kids. It gives me great anxiety because I know that at some point I'm going to leave the room for two minutes and come back to find this...



Actually, truth be told, I encouraged them to do that (but painting with a toddler and preschooler really does cause me stress and I try to avoid it as much as I can)!

I'm getting ready to paint that wall, which according to my many Feng Shui books, is our "angels, travel, and helpful people" corner and should be painted grey or silver. I went with "organic garden" in the new Fresh Aire Choice collection, which has no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and according to the nice man at Home Depot who put the pigment in and shook it up for me, it's "just like the other kind of paint but you can really enjoy it because there are no fumes. Your kids can even help you paint!"

I'm not sure how I feel about the kids helping me with any paint, but I'm glad to have an option that feels better for our family and better for our world!

And discovered that the "baby chicks" who are now about 10 weeks old (I think?) are bored with their little hog panel pen and had flown the coop! Guess it's time to come up with the next step of the plan for "Project Spring Peepers." (Below they are pictured later in the day roosting on the hog panel.)



______________________________________________
At the Farm

In the barn there were...

Sunflower sprouts
Green garlic
Mixed greens (we took spinach, chard and lettuce mix)

For Pick Your Own (PYO) it was...

Strawberries (Yum! Yum! Yum!)







We also got to choose three plants from several seedlings outside of the barn (we picked three different types of sunflowers).

________________________________________________
Back home

It's still hot here so it's hard to think about really anything, but especially cooking -- but it's the first week and I don't want to be wasting produce this early in the season!

This is our fourth summer in the CSA and I remember the first year (the summer Lily was born) feeling like I should just quit because I wasted SO much produce. One of our friends assured us that their first year was the same and that each year it gets easier and easier. Someone also recommended the cookbook From Asparagus to Zucchini, which has really been a HUGE help.

Each week when I pick up our veggies, I sit down with the book, which is organized alphabetically and includes nutritional information about the vegetable, how to serve it raw, how to preserve it and recipes that often pair the vegetable with another that is also in season.

For dinner tonight (we got home late so it was kind of a free-for-all) the kids had "yolky eggs" (over-easy) on toast. I'm not sure what John ate, or if he's even eaten at all.

For myself I made...

A whole wheat wrap filled with:
Scrambled eggs
Cheddar cheese
Sunflower sprouts
Chopped chard
And mashed avocado

It was really delicious. I'm looking forward to making another one tomorrow!

Speaking of things to make for tomorrow, the kids have requested a "breakfast ice-cream" (after I recently said no to chocolate ice-cream at 9:30 in the morning).

We buy fresh, raw cream at a nearby farm, and make the ice-cream ourselves, so I'm pretty convinced that we can come up with something that is both delicious and healthy enough to be served on top of our oatmeal.

I'm not quite sure what it is going to be but I'm thinking it will include cream, milk, maple syrup, egg yolks and some fresh strawberries.

And now back to tackling kitchen clean-up so I can get all this wonderful food we just brought home organized, rinsed, chopped and ready to eat!

We have a garden!!

It's been raining all week -- or at least enough that it feels like it's been raining all week and enough that I don't think I made it down to the garden more than once.

Wow! This afternoon when I got out there for a few minutes, I was delighted to find not just sprouts, but beautiful, deep-green, thriving seedlings growing in our garden -- the garden that I planted!!

I was so excited that I did a little dance of joy!

I very much intended to have a beautiful garden this year, but when I planted all the various seeds, I really wasn't convinced that it could actually happen.

I mean I know that's how it's supposed to work...

seeds + soil + water + sun = plants

...but I just didn't really believe that it was ever going to happen on my watch.

I have tried so many times over the years to grow various things from seed and so many times never made it past the sprout stage.

But today, in our garden, I saw healthy sunflower and morning glory seedlings, and lots of green onion shoots, and potato seedlings, tomato plants (though they are looking a little sad after weeks of neglect followed by transplant), wax been sprouts, and many white strawberries where blossoms were just a couple of weeks ago.

And speaking of blossoms...I had no idea that blackberries have beautiful blossoms and that they are in bloom right now.

I mean, yes, once again, I knew the natural progression from bud to berry but I have never seen blackberry blossoms before and had no idea that they are so beautiful!

It was really a treat to be in the garden alone today to soak up all that is happening.

I am very much creating our garden with our children in mind and I love sharing my love of gardening with them. But it is also SO nice to get into the garden without them once or twice a week.

John was home from work today to attend Lily's birthday party at school. It was so wonderful to have him with us. To know that he was inside while Quinn was napping and Lily was relaxing with her favorite shows, and that I could take my time and savor the silence and beauty of the garden.

It was in that silent space that I was hit with another wave of creative energy and ran up to the house to get pumpkin seeds to plant.

I'm not sure that the soil was properly prepared or that my "hills" were actually hills, but I feel very confident that at least a few pumpkin plants will sprout and grow and thrive and provide us wonderful fruit to savor at the end of the growing season!

I also thought of a fun art project to do with Lily - drawing pictures to label the various rows of seeds that we have planted, which we worked on later this afternoon.

She drew pictures and the first letter of the plant on index cards (R = Raspberries, pictured below), which we taped to wooden garden stakes that I had picked up at Agway a couple of weeks ago. Then we slid a plastic zip lock bag over the top of them to protect them from the rain.



When we finished that I made a quick sketch of the garden so Lily and John could match the correct pictures up with the correct rows and then John and Lil headed out to the garden!









I think Lily enjoyed her time in the garden this afternoon just as much as I did.

The thing about roosters...

...is that they crow VERY early in the morning.

I knew this before we got our rooster, Pretty...Susie...Roosty, last fall. And yet somehow I didn't quite get it.

It was not that big of a deal over the winter when all windows were tightly sealed and it was dark 'til 8 a.m.

But now, as we are entering "open window season" and dawn is somewhere around 4:30, we are seriously reconsidering our rooster acquisition.

I recently sent an e-mail to my adjoining neighbors to see how they feel about it and was surprised to learn they either a) sleep right through his crowing or b) like it.

I'm relieved to know the neighbor's were not secretly hating us (as we feared they might be) for disturbing their peace, but I guess I'm realizing that I'm not sure how much *I* like being awoken by his early morning crowing.

To be continued...

Planting a community garden

Today was my second work day at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, where I have a working share (four hours of work per week in exchange for a single share of vegetables).

The job at hand was planting flower seedlings in the beds that will become the cutting garden for our CSA, and in which I will work to help keep the weeds at bay throughout the growing season.

There were about a dozen people (and one farm dog) there to help with the process of popping seedlings out of trays, dropping them a foot a part and tucking them into the freshly-tilled soil.

Rae, the assistant farm manager laid the seedlings out at the top of each row before we got there. She also ran a seeder up and down the beds to create nice tracks in the soil for us to plant in.

It was a lot of fun to work with so many people, most of whom I had never met but happily chatted with as we planted.

Things got a little dicey when thunderstorms and driving rain barrelled through an hour into our planting.

I was not at all dressed for rain (nor was anyone else) and I expected us to all retreat into the barn or at least huddle under one of the tents set up for the Farmer's Market that happens every Saturday morning.

But everyone kept working. And I certainly didn't want to be the only wimp who left, so I kept working too.

It was cold and wet but actually still really fun. We started working faster. My digging partner decided to forgo his spade and dig with his hands and even in the driving rain we found a nice rhythm -- he would pull back the soil, I would drop the plant, and he would pat the soil down around the plant.

Everyone was so enthusiastic and happy to work. When we finished one row, we just made our way (carefully...in the tractor tire tracks -- not the planting rows, as we all had to be reminded a few times!) back to the top of the field and started another row.

Some people preferred planting. Others preferred dropping. Others liked to alternate so as not to stress one body part too much.

Occasionally we got a little over-zealous and simultaneously planted more rows than we had plants to fill.

Rae rolled with these little snafus very smoothly. Sometimes she asked us to pull the plants out and move them but mostly she just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Oh well. It's the cutting garden. It's fine."

In the end, after about two and half hours of planting, and several downpours, the gardens were full!

I'm so excited that I got to be part of the beginning of these gardens, which I know from past years will be absolutely splendid in the coming weeks!

CSA Cutting Garden: May 31

Planting the garden...

Spring greens

I spoke to my aunt in Vermont earlier in the week. She and my uncle, Lily's Godparents, are raising "meat birds" again this year. Two years ago when they did it the first time they specifically chose chickens that are not bred for meat because they had read that conventional meat birds (aka broilers) are not good foragers and have all kinds of diseases and health problems bred into them.

The experiment, though very tasty, proved not to be cost-effective as it took more than double the amount of time for them to grow to slaughter weight. So this year they have 60 baby broilers that they will soon put out on pasture, supplemented with organic grain, for eight weeks.

While we were talking she mentioned that her chicks, which are about a month younger than our's, have been devouring dandelion greens and worms that she brings out to them in the evening. She joked that it has become their nightly entertainment - much more entertaining than tv!

Hearing that got me thinking abour our chicks who are living in our barn eating mashed "grower" pellets made of soy and corn and I decided that I want to begin offering them greens, insects and worms and I also want to get our chicks outside into the sunlight where they can scratch for food they are biologically programed to eat as soon as possible.
 
For the last couple of days, Lily and I have enjoyed bring fresh salads (grass and weeds picked in the yard) to the chicks each evening and we are thrilled to observe that they too love their fresh greens!

The worm part of the feeding plan is going to be a little bit tricky as my daughter has recently devolped an affinity for worms and has been adding any that she finds to a container of soil on the back deck, which she created for her "pet worm", Squirmy.

Bloom where you are planted!

I spent the morning, which started early with a chicken hand-off (yay!), dividing and moving perennials in the front yard.

I didn't wake with the intention of doing so, but while out handing off the trouble-maker chickens, I spotted a plastic grocery bag containing Bearded Iris rhizomes that I intended to plant last fall but never did.

Despite being left out in the snow and freezing temperatures all winter, I saw a beautiful Iris flower bud about to open.

Remembering the beautiful Irises that I had just admired the previous day at my daughter's nursery school, I set to work to find a great spot to display these beauties, which needed only a little propping to straighten the stalk.

As I planted them I spotted another place that was calling for the tall, beautiful light purple flowers near the front door. So I decided to go out to my (long-neglected) mailbox garden and dig up some more.

While there I dug some Siberian Irises (small dark purple flowers), daylilies, creeping thyme, and lavender and found places along the stone path leading up to the house to show them off and give visitors some points of interest along the path!

Next I decided to relocate two small azaleas that have not been thriving where they are planted. Inspired by a recent visit to a beautiful azalea garden (photo left) -- a private garden that is made open to the public every spring -- I grouped the two azaleas on the edge of the woods in front of our house. At some point I will add a sitting bench tucked into them.

It was SO fun to work out there this morning, swiftly molding and shaping a new feel to the entrance to our house - and all using already existing plants!

Later this afternoon I got out into the garden for a half an hour to do some weeding. Quinn, and eventually Lily, joined me and had a blast creating and playing in a giant mud puddle. (Didn't have the camera with me and by the time John came out to see what we were up to, two mud covered kids were on their way in for a bath!)

The making of a meadow

A few nights ago I was out working in the garden -- my favorite retreat at the end of the day -- when I noticed that the grass is (already) getting very over-grown.

I started feeling annoyed and discouraged, but fortunately remembered fairly quickly how useless those feelings are and started searching for some better-feeling thoughts.

As I pondered ways to make peace with the time and energy-consuming task of mowing the lawn, I started thinking about my desire to create a flower garden that will attract butterflies and bees, which also feels like a time-consuming task.

And then, just like magic, as I looked up towards the barn I saw a beautiful meadow of wildflowers with a wide path through the center connecting the barn and the garden.

In the meadow is a mix of weeds, grasses, wildflowers, sunflowers -- all of which are enjoyed and appreciated by many varieties of butterflies, birds and bees!

I mentioned it to John and he thought it sounded like a great idea (read: less grass for him to mow) and so I set to work.

Lily has been joining me out in the yard in the evening while John puts Quinn to bed. While I weed and water and plan, she picks buttercups and dandelions and visits with her chicks, collects eggs from the nesting boxes and waits eagerly for the bats to descend from the barn rafters.

"Is it time yet, Mama?...When are they coming, Mama?...I think I hear them, Mama!"

It's actually still a little cold for the bats, but in a few weeks, there should be plenty swooping through the air, gobbling up bugs, to entertain her (and me)!

Last night the two of us spent some time digging up beautiful flowers (a.k.a. weeds) out of the path and moving them into the meadow. We also planted several packets of sunflower seeds and scattered several packages of "wildflower mix".

It's SO fun to share my vision of the farm with Lily because she is so receptive to all that I can imagine and is happy to join in with her own ideas, like a pumpkin patch and pear trees.

Very fun indeed.

In other news, I posted an ad on Craig's List this afternoon to re-home two of our Araucana hens. I'm tired of chasing these two escape-artists out of the garden and watching them tear up our sorry attempts at a lawn. Within a couple of hours, I had several offers to take them.

John is out catching them now and tomorrow they can move to their new home where they can happily free-range with a bunch of other hens and duck -- and I can plant flowers and vegetables without worrying about them being scratched up!

Piglets!

When we arrived at Barbara's farm today for our first official visit with our lamb, Heather, we spotted something new - piglets! Four of them!

They were as curious about us as we were about them and we had a nice time visiting with them while we waited for Barbara.

Barbara's husband, Gary, stopped over to visit with us and was (thankfully) happy to answer our many questions about them.

Here's what we learned...

~ They got the piglets two days ago and will have them until the Fall. And then they will have pig roasts.

~ Pigs are FANTASTIC at rototilling gardens and clearing land. They "root" around for, you guessed it, roots, and chop up everything else in their way to get to them.

~ Gary said if you have an old tree stump, partially pulled out, you can throw some grain under the stump and the pigs will clear out all of the roots for you.

~ Barbara said she will turn the pigs out in her flower garden (but not her vegetable garden because the fresh manure is too strong for the vegetables) this week instead of using a rototiller to turn the beds.

~ After that they will move the pigs around the yard in a portable pen.

~ In the fall, they will turn them out in the vegetable garden so they can till and fertilize the garden for the coming year.

Fascinating though I'm still not fully comfortable interacting with animals that I know are destined to become food.

I was a vegetarian for 17 plus years, until I became pregnant with our second baby, while still nursing our first, and my body called (loudly and clearly) for meat. I found a local farmer who sells grass-fed beef and stocked up our freezer.

That was two years ago and I am still thoroughly enjoying cooking and eating meat.

But I remain uncomfortable about the whole process by which a pig, or a cow, or a chicken become my dinner.

I'm happy to know another compassionate, animal-loving farmer who is raising meat animals. I look forward to getting to know more about the process, and hopefully getting more comfortable with it so we can incorporate small meat animals at Nadalada Farm in the near future.

Sprouts!

There are sprouts in the garden! From seeds that I planted!

I am SO excited - and a little surprised.

I planted them with the intention of them sprouting but I only half-believed it would happen. I have planted many seeds in the last several years that have not sprouted. Or they sprouted and the squirrels gobbled them up. Or they sprouted and I was too busy to notice.

But this year there are sprouts. And the squirrels are busy up by the house eating the peanuts Quinn and I have been leaving out for them. And I am VERY much noticing. (Actually this year I am very much noticing everything that is sprouting and growing - even random trees and plants that I used to label "weeds" or "scrub brush" are catching my attention.)

In the garden right now we have strawberry patch bursting with big beautiful flowering plants (something I have been dreaming about for the last 10 years), potatoes that are starting to sprout roots, sunflower sprouts, green onions, garlic (that John planted a couple of years ago), morning glory sprouts and pea sprouts.

We also have poison ivy, which I am, unfortunately, allergic to. And it is very close to the bean-pole hideout that I'm making for the kids so it really needs to go. I tried pouring vinegar on it tonight, which I've read is a good, non-toxic way to kill an unwanted plant.

When I poured the vinegar on the unwanted poison ivy, I saw how quickly it trailed through the dirt towards the very much wanted sunflower and pea sprouts. As I diverted the stream of plant-burning vinegar, I thought about a bumper sticker I've seen in the past that says, "We All Live Downstream."

Meanwhile Lily came out to help me (and collect worms - her new passion). I showed her how to weed, which is kind of funny because tomorrow I am starting my work-share job at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm and I am nervous because I don't really know how to tend a garden.

When I went last week to meet my fellow cutting-garden-tenders, who have been doing the job for a couple of years now, I felt way over my head. I hadn't even seen some of the tools they were using and had never used a garden hoe.

I'm excited to start my work-share job tomorrow. I know I am going to learn so much that is going to help us as Nadalada Farm grows!