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 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 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 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 moreThe Cycle of Life
Farm life is cyclical, filled with ups and downs. Some are planned, others take us by surprise. And some weeks are more of a roller coaster than others.
Read moreThe True Cost of Food
Certain topics are so important and wide-reaching that they make a writer feel like an ant staring up at a skyscraper. Which is why I have procrastinated on tackling the true cost of food.
Read moreFull Speed Ahead?
Living through only our third “spring” in Washington has convinced us that weather here is certifiably insane. Snow in mid April, followed by rain, more rain, some cold, and more rain throughout May. Pay no mind to my salivation and crazy eyes, I’m just chomping at the bit to nestle plants safely into the ground.
Read moreThe Gauntlet
A pair of farmer friends have a cartoon on their office wall. I first saw it only two months after we bought our property. I got the joke and thought it was funny. Two and half years later, I really get the joke, and it’s not so funny anymore.
Read moreGuest Blog Post
We first met Farley and Bryon at their moving sale, where they were selling off plants from their urban garden to embark on their dream to start a farm in the Pacific Northwest.
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 moreHow Shall I Compare Thee?
Enough time thinking leaves me feeling inadequate as a farmer. Whether it’s comparing my current progress to our last garden or those of CA and MS friends or other WA farmers with better setups than ours, it seems obvious we’re painfully behind.
Read moreFarm Creature
We spend a lot of time on animals here at Star & Sparrow and that time endears us to the many personalities and characters that live here. You might be tired of hearing about them, but there is one amazing farm character that I’ve yet to write about…
Read moreSowing the Seeds of Patience
T.S. Eliot wrote a poem almost 100 years ago that opened with the famous line, “April is the cruelest month.” I have to agree, at least since I moved to Washington.
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