April 25th Market

Not really so much stuff---I was able to do market by myself while Stuart got ready for the farm tour.  The only bad thing about market by myself---not being able to shop at market!  Looks like this coming Sat. we're going to have lots more produce, including the exciting addition of strawberries.  Not many, but enough to get people excited.  Arugula, cress, three kinds of radishes, and lettuce heads can also be found at our booth this coming Sat.  We'll also be adding the first of the agrostemma as a cut flower.  

Piedmont Farm Tour

This year we're excited to be a part of the 14th annual Piedmont Farm Tour.  We doubt we'll get too many visitors because people seem drawn to animals and proximity.  It turns out this farm tour is the largest sustainable farm tour in the US.  And the shirt logo this year?  Carrots?  How appropriate we begin this year as they are one of our favorite things to both grow and eat.  We'll be weeding weeding weeding, mowing, and weedeating this week to get things looking good.   The bad thing about the tour is that it's going to be exhausting.....Sat. and Sun. from 1-6pm.  Our sacred rest time.  I suppose sacrifices are necessary sometimes.  Hopefully more field flowers will be blooming this weekend; things are a bit sparse now due to the cold and wet winter and early spring.  Right now there are just a very few batchelor buttons blooming and some poppies.    

April 18th market goodies

We also had buckets of red and orange ranunculus, but I couldn't get a good picture of them.  Perhaps strawberries next week?   

Tree peony, shitakes, and composting toilets

Great things are happening on the farm.  The tree peony is blooming and the fragrance is something I could lose myself in, gladly.  I thought it would look more like a single, but it's ruffled just like the regular peony.  Last year it budded up but never bloomed, so this is a real treat.  I want to be with it all the time.  Weirdo, you say?  Maybe you're the weirdo.  Our shitake logs are loaded with mushrooms....we were able to sell some to Panciuto this week and also have enough for the first thirty minutes of market.  and enough for breakfast omelets in the morning.  Last but not least of the great things---a composting toilet is being built on the farm!!!  Our friend Gerard has willingly been contracted out to build us this mighty throne.  We'll have more facts about toilets soon; we know you're excited about these facts, so we'll revisit it soon, think patience.  

 

First wedding arrangements......

The things I do for flowers.....that is me, on a ladder in the pond, 6:45 on a Friday afternoon, cutting one of my favorite things, maple seeds.  They're like little silent graceful helicopters.  They get a little lost in the arrangements, but they make them special, right?  I chanced upon a jewelsmith's blog a while ago and she had made some earrings in the shape of the maple seed and I think I may always regret not getting them.  Maybe I can still track them down somewhere......

Pad Thai with bacon, spring onion, radishes, and....beet greens?

Okay, so I know it probably sounds gross, but actually----amazingly delicious.  I rarely attempt beet greens because too many times they have turned out a miserable attempt at cooking a green with not so good of a reputation.  But lo and behold, tonight's attempt took them out of their lower tiered ranking.  We were planning on using spinach, but we got home and had forgotten to cut any, so beet greens it was. 
These are heirloom beets, touchstone gold and chiogga.  We had them quick pickled on the side for an added treat.  Stuart wouldn't let me buy any beets at market so I was forced to turn to our diminutive version.  The radishes were also a treat.  I've only cooked them once before but they were better tonight.  And of course Fickle Creek bacon ups the status of any meal at our house, as do my chopsticks from the Portland Japanese garden gift store.  

Opening Market goods

It was a great opening market yesterday, with most of our vendors showing up to sell their goods.  Lots of customers, beautiful sunshine with hardly a cloud in the sky---a great kickoff to the official 2009 season.  I wish we would have had more tulips color up in the field.  They were very popular yesterday (perhaps because I added an extra stem per bunch?)  and at three ft. tall, they added some glamour to our flower selection.  We'll probably have twenty buckets of them next week, just in time for Easter.  Please let the sun shine next Saturday!!!!

Country folk step out....to country store

So the joke among farmers goes as follows:  Do you want to know how to make a million dollars farming?  Start off with two.  And after getting the majority of our business taxes done this past weekend, this joke is seeming more true than not.  But we are off to a great season so far, and main season starts this Sat.  Who cares if it's been raining all spring and our early summer beds that we'll need to plant in four weeks are still in cover crop???  Who cares that some weird maggot is eating our squash seeds and that mice won't leave our basil alone??  We're farmers!  Deal with it!  So we decided to leave the farm this week for a shopping trip to spend some well-earned cash money on, that's right, farm supplies.  
The whole store smells like a chemical factory, but it is a great place to go for supplies---and we still had a gift card leftover from our wedding (thanks uncle Stuart and aunt Jackie!).  Luckily we didn't need to pick up this scary sign, evidence alone that chemicals maybe aren't so great to be using on your fields.  Stuart paused for a long moment to look at camouflage baby clothes....after a quick picture I had to speak of some machetes I had seen tucked away in a corner to get him to move along.  And oh the cooking section at this place.  Unbelievable.  Tons and tons of cast iron cookware.  They even have a seventy gallon stewing pot for who knows what; you'd need three horses just to tow it.  We spent a lot of money, mostly on t-stakes for our new fence we need to put up around our early summer plot, but no fence, no food.  so it goes.  

The return of the veggies

well, after a long dry spell with produce, looks like we'll have a decent amount for opening market on Sat.  No longer can we sleep until 8 on Sat. mornings, have a leisurely cup of coffee, and read a few pages in the latest novel we're on.  In fact, probably no more novels until this fall, no more listening to the birds sing, no more dancing around while I cut flowers, Stuart won't be tumbling and doing aerial cartwheels going through the berry rows.  We're totally serious from here on out.  This Sat. we're going to have carrots, spinach, cress, radishes, green garlic, and possibly arugula.  And armfuls and more of tulips, anemones, ranunculus, delphinium, and daffodils.  If we're lucky a bouquet or two of poppies.   

Leftovers

We now have fifteen bluebird houses ready to go, thanks to all the great helpers at our bluebird house building party/Stuart's b-day party.  Now we just need to put them up around the farm and hope there are still some bluebirds looking to nest.   My brother Elijah made me these cranes for my birthday, twelve of them all with different origami paper.  I never had the patience for origami.  I even had trouble making stupid paper airplanes.   Love these cranes though, and they were great party decor, along with the flowers we had leftover from market the week before.  And the vase life we're getting from ranunculus and tulips?  Shizaam.