Small scale farming is full of challenges. Living in western Washington, weather is a huge one. With dark days, barrels of rain, and a fair amount of cold sprinkled with some snow and ice, one can’t produce year round without a vast amount of effort.
Read moreFall Has Forsaken Me
In a land and time far away, fall was my favorite season. Cooler weather, cozy clothes, the approaching holidays. Bryon and I opted to marry in October ten years ago, where burnt orange, home-grown pumpkins, and succulents in terra cotta featured prominently. We did most of the work ourselves in our backyard, and it was perfectly imperfect.
Then here we are today…
Read moreLooking for a New Upward Spiral
Today the kitchen needed to be cleaned, and I was procrastinating. Old friends posting on social media about their kids returning to class turned my thoughts to my time in elementary school and my fourth grade teacher. She was one of the best.
Read moreChicken Man
Back in the 90’s, I saw the Indigo Girls live several times. I knew and loved almost all of their songs, a glaring exception being one that they insisted on jamming out to for an extended version at every concert. I’m not sure exactly what it was about “Chicken Man” that rubbed me the wrong way. But fast forward a couple decades…
Read moreWin Some, Lose Some
A recent and new win for us was that we successfully hatched our first French Toulouse goose in an incubator this year. We called her Couscous the Goosegoose. She had a crazy sideways smile (scissor beak) and a long left arm (angel wing) and was sweet as Farley’s Key Lime pie (always a win!)
Read moreThe Quest for the Best Tomato
Maybe it started with visits to Vicksburg, where my Nana and I would gobble up tomatoes on Saltine’s and where I would drink her spaghetti sauce from a small mug, too impatient to wait for noodles. Flash forward a couple decades to my cramming far too many tomato plants into one raised bed...
Read moreTV Shows Sometimes Make Me Cry
We just finished watching an episode of Clarkson’s Farm from season 2. At one point, Bryon turned to me and asked if I was still congested from my taking-its-sweet-time-to-disappear cold. Yes, I am, but also, yes I did tear up over one particularly touching scene of a group of local farmers discussing how they can barely afford to farm.
Read moreMath — It’s What’s for Dinner
People who have the misfortune of spending a lot of time with me know that I have a slight tendency to talk about chickens. One person even went so far as to call me an expert. Flattering, yes, but I don’t expect there are enough years left for me on this rock to truly attain expert status.
Read moreThinking in Bets
We recently received a generous donation of red alder trees for planting on our property. A Washington-based non-profit provided us with trees as part of their mission to help land owners increase carbon sequestration on their land while providing natural habitat with native plants.
Read moreAnother Year on the Farm
We moved to the Boistfort Valley in 2019, but 2022 marked our third full year on the farm, and perhaps our busiest to date.
Read moreWho is That?
A funny thing happened to me when I came home from running errands in town last week — I got old. I fed the chickens, put my various store-bought items away, and changed into a cozy flannel and some slippers. After exchanging status updates with Farley as she cooked our dinner, I decided it was a good time to sit down and start reading a new (used) book I bought on our recent vacation.
Read moreThere Is a Season
This year fall held on as long as it could with warmish days and many plants eeking out every last possible fruit. I was able to pick tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant into late October, a first since we moved here. But now the rains have marched in and so has the cold, and as the calendar flipped to November, I realized we haven’t written in a while. We’ve had a lot going on, including changes here on the farm.
Read moreEating the Dream
So often farming is a crapshoot, a prayer, a plea for mercy. But sometimes the plan goes exactly as hoped. From the first time Bryon and I discussed the possibility of starting a small farm, I conjured up visions of dinners where we produced almost everything on the table.
Read moreFive Myths You Believe About Farming (number 6 will shock you!)
For a good solid decade, I was seduced by the romanticism of agrarian life, convinced that if I left the big town and tucked into some good hard hay stacking, I’d get fit, find fulfillment, and play my part in saving civilization from itself by helping it to rediscover the joy of real food wrought from the land by the hands of someone the eater knows personally.
Read moreStoring Summer’s Goodness
If you had observed me in the garden and row crop section over the last month or so, you might have dubbed me a stalker. I’ve been roaming the rows, peaking through leaves, examining fruit for growth and change in color, pruning lower branches and snipping excess flowers. Now my obsession has started to pay off, as we are finally(!) reaping the fruits of our labor.
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