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 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 moreHopeful Farming at Hop Frog Farm
While we have tried new things on our farm each year, it is still easy to fall into a pattern of “the same old way you’ve always done it.” Watching a kazillion farming videos on the internet until 3am can be a fun way to spend a Tuesday night, but we’ve found it much more productive to get hands-on experience under the guidance of professional farmers.
Read moreAutumn and Fall
Agriculture, like all things cultural, is an iterative process. Doing things the exact same way from one year to the next will usually produce varying results since the context of the activity and it’s circumstances are always changing. Some years are wet, others are dry; some years you’re young, others... increasingly less so.
Read moreA Farmer By Any Other Name
What does it mean to be a farmer? According to Merriam-Webster, it’s “a person who cultivates land or crops or raises animals” with a farm being “a tract of land devoted to agricultural purposes.” By those definitions, it seems reasonable to call ourselves farmers. Yet I hesitate to do so.
Read moreGrass and Chores
When I was a little kid, I wanted to mow the lawn. It seemed the adult thing to, so naturally I aspired to it. Being too young at first, I was assigned the task of sweeping the grass from the sidewalk. It felt helpful to do, though it seemed to take forever…
Read moreRight Place, Right Time?
This year we are making our for first foray out of the garden — one quarter acre of vegetables out in the field, with potentially another quarter acre of feed crops over the summer. A big component of this is the corn research project, so I’ve been gobbling up all the information I can find about dry farming. And, well, I’m kinda starving.
Read moreStuck in the Muck
2021 is shaping up to be a great year for new things. In addition to new birds, greenhouses, and our first proper working dog, we’ve also been gearing up for our first foray into field and feed crops.
Read moreThe Valleys and the Mountaintops
In the final month of the impossibly long 2020, you don’t need me to tell you how messy life can be. Here at Star & Sparrow, we’ve had our share of lows, complemented by a parade of highs.
Read moreNew Friends and Never-Ending Stories
One of the challenging things about our new life in the Boistfort Valley is that we did not know anyone here when we arrived. My grandfather once said “without friends and family, you just can’t make it”.
Read moreOne Year In and Still Standing
I feel we’d be remiss not acknowledging our one-year anniversary here in the Boistfort Valley. It’s an important milestone, and we’ve done a lot in a short time. While we’ve been reflecting on our progress in real time (or close to it— some blog posts take longer to appear than others), now seems like an appropriate moment to review the full map of our journey.
Read moreHey! It’s Hay Season!
…Since we are only just beginning to learn our land, we don’t know yet what’s going to work. Each place is different - almost every farmer I’ve spoken to has said that you have to farm according to your place and what works there and for you. In our case that starts with being hay farmers…
Read moreHome Sweet Home
While Bryon and I are full-force DIY when it comes to the outdoor components of Star & Sparrow, we know some jobs are best left to professionals. Case in point: redoing the kitchen, bathroom, and flooring. We’re good at little projects here and there, but for something with lots of moving parts, it’s smarter and faster to outsource that work.
Read moreWhat Is Profit?
1. noun: a financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent
2. verb : (that’s what’s happening!): obtain a financial advantage or benefit
Just Breathe
We knew our farming venture would be pricey, especially with a property that lacks agricultural infrastructure. We also knew our paychecks would not come close to what they were in the Bay Area. But those conversations and planning feel like a distant shore now that we are rowing closer to reality.
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