Shittake harvest!

This week in color

loaded pepper plant, gomphrena or globe amaranth, indigo bunting (love these birds), my awesome new hat (Dolly Mama you are the best!), our full share CSA from this past week, complete with cantaloupes and heirloom tomaters.  

July 4th market

Great market this past Sat. We have succeeded in growing the nicest glads of yet this year. Some are as tall as me! but most are around four ft. It's so odd and amusing how with farming some years have incredible crops and some years have incredibly lame crops. For instance~ last year we had the best lisianthus ever, good enough to fool myself into thinking I could grow it well. This year it's blooming out at 6 inches tall. Last year we couldn't get a glad to bloom for the life of us, and this year they're like cutting small saplings at the base. I suppose it keeps us guessing and life interesting to know that there will always be certain successes and certain failures each year.

Farmers in Mule Magazine

Open publication - Free publishing - More steve james

Here is an interesting (and of course AWESOME) piece done by Alix Blair. We interviewed with her last year right after I pulled my hamstring, so if you do the flicker album photos (you can go to www.mulemagazine.com for these) that is why I'm weeding in that odd position! Thanks Alix, great article, and we love the magazine, can't wait for the hard copy. I love Kirby Lane Taylor's piece on the right hand side later on in the magazine.

Water Lilies

Unfortunately looks like the water lily is only good in a bouquet for a couple days and for day two it must be wired. The scent is very odd. Overwhelming, and almost a sickly sweet. But I am in love, captivated by its trembling petals. I really want to find some lotus flowers we can grow in the pond; there used to be a woman who sold lotuses at the Carrboro market, so they must have a decent vase life.
I've been revisiting Michael Holland's music of late. He's so great, AND a local.
His song "Chandelier" is one of my all time favorites.

House Walls are Finished

Unbelievable! The finished product, perfect for Stuart and I and the little ones we might have in the future. Now all we need is a roof, a floor, interior walls, windows and doors, electrical wiring, plumbing, fixtures, etc. etc. We hope to do a lot of the interior work ourselves with some help from friends and family. Move in date??? We're really really hoping by next spring. Miracles never cease, right?

Beautiful things this past week

CSA boxes of late, Dung beetle (?), and Parasitized Hornworm

Here are the CSA boxes we've had the last two weeks. The garden's production is down right now, but we think this next week will have the upswing we're looking for....a beautiful crop of haricot verts (that's fancy for green beans), eggplant, heirloom tomatoes and peppers from the field are all starting to come in, as are the gladiolas, sunflowers, and oriental lilies. Let's hope the fourth of July market is a busy one! The dung beetles (I think?) have taken up camp in the tree peony pot. They created this crazy hair ball from a previous year's bird nest. What on earth do they do with this ball? Maybe they have some kind of game they play with it. There are two of the beetles in the container and it was hard to get a good picture of them with the light. Fascinating creatures. Stuart had to pull me away as I was transfixed, sucked in to the viewing of their back legs twirling around this hairball. Who cares about weeding when you have dung beetles on the farm?
Also, the last picture is of a parasitized hornworm. Those little white cocoons are a wasps larvae hatching out from the horworm from the inside. Totally gross, but we love seeing these because that means that integrated pest management is working on our side.

House Walls almost done!

The first three pictures are from this morning and the ones after that are all from this afternoon.  You can see pretty clearly in the second to last photo the slope of our roof.  Beautiful.  

Infinity Farm

So this past Saturday Stuart and I went to visit a neighboring farm, Infinity Farm, located in Cedar Grove, about 8-10 miles from us.  Our good friend Adam Gori who is helping us out some is also working on Infinity Farm.  He wants to start up a goat farm so he's trying to get to know the animals better.  The farm is incredibly beautiful with around 150 acres total...the fields just go on and on, with acres of hardwoods on all the edges, several ponds, and a plethora of animals everywhere you look.  We were really taken with the goats so now I aim to convince Stuart that they would be a great addition to the farm, nevermind the fact that if you want to milk them it's a twice a day thing, as it is with cows.  We can make time, right?  We hear they'll eat poison ivy which we have in abundance on the farm.    
But we don't talk animals seriously yet as we're waiting until we live on our farm first.  We'd really love to acquire the 30 acres adjacent to us, making our farm total 60, which would give us plenty of room for crops and animals and give us more room for expansion.  More space for all the endless possibilities of growth and economic viability on our small farm.  We'll see what the cards of fate have in store for us.  Right now life is all about our house; it's been hard to concentrate on the farm with the thrill of seeing our walls go up, the idea of permanence now becoming a concrete reality versus an amorphous mirage always in the distant future.  A home.....a place for the rest of this lifetime.....