That’s right! Around here it is all cool misty mornings (the fear of frost still not quite past) and warm sunny days (with plenty of spring-rain-just-when-we’re-ready-to-transplant-all-that-kale) and nights full of frogsong; a riot of redbuds and wisteria and dogwood and viburnum in the woods and a greenhouse filling just as rapidly with tomato, parsley, basil, oregano, sage, kale, broccoli, leek, scallion, eggplant, sweet pepper, beet, and chard seedlings; new building projects; and one young rooster trying to make sense of it all.

We are all in spring scramble mode, trying to get everything in place before our new piglets arrive next week, before our new laying hens arrive later in the month, and especially before our market season begins this week and our CSA season begins in late May!

If you are in our CSA, chat with us at market, or follow us on Facebook, you know that we raised pigs for the first time this year.  We’ve been growing vegetables for six years now, after first working for other farmers for several years, and vegetables are what we know best.  But over the last couple years we’ve started to give a lot of thought to what makes a farm truly sustainable: How do we take gentle and considerate care of our land, our soil, the pollinators, our water supply, and our own health so that none will be depleted? How can we be sure our business survives? How do we get done what needs to get done on the farm every day and continue to thrive as a family?

These are questions we ask ourselves over and over again, and they were at the very fore when we decided to raise pigs (and also our large flock of pastured laying hens) this year. Historically, most farms had both crops and livestock – not only for the full diet that could provide for farming families but because, carefully managed, this is a system that can improve soil fertility while weakening weed and insect pest pressure and minimizing waste. We feel we have a lot to learn from traditional approaches to farming.

We bought a litter of ten piglets back in June from a local homesteader.  All summer long and into the fall they’ve ranged on about two acres of pasture and woods, with plenty of space to forage and lots of shade.

Having these pigs has been a real joy for us.  They are easy and interesting, and they love to eat spoiled melons and other leftover or unsalable produce.  Some of their land is quite bottomy – slow to dry out and difficult to plant in vegetables, but perfect for these mud lovers.  Their pasture also includes a small field we farmed for two seasons and they’ve rooted that up completely.  We’re keeping our fingers crossed and hoping to see a lot less yellow nutsedge – by far our worst weed problem here – next year.  The pigs also eat a grain ration made of conventional corn, oats, and soybeans, to which we we add an organic kelp-based mineral supplement made by Fertrell as well as extra calcium.

The pigs have thrived in their four months here on the farm – they are big, shiny, and active. As long as sales go well we’ll continue to raise pigs next season and beyond.

We’ll be sending four pigs to Matkins Meats in North Carolina next week and the rest in late November. We hope that those of you who eat pork will strongly consider buying yours from us.

We’re taking pre-orders through this weekend and you can pay on delivery at your regular CSA location or market; this is your best bet if you want specific cuts.  We’ll also have cuts available for sale at market.  See our price list here.

It’s been way too long since we posted here. We hope to get some good stuff up quite soon. In the meantime, have a peek – or a long leisurely look, really! – at late summer and early autumn here at Frog Bottom. Click on any photo to see it bigger, if you like.

Coming soon: Soup! A cookbook giveaway! Our plans for 2012! Thanks for your patience.

Heather picks okra while some of the new chickens have a look.

Our fields and fridge are full of vegetables – and eggs! – and we’re feeling mighty inspired these days!  Just a taste of what we’ve been reading and cooking:

Did you know this coming Saturday, August 13, is the first annual National Can-It-Forward Day? The folks at Canning Across America, along with Jarden Home Brands (they’re the ones who make Ball jars and other canning products), are encouraging everyone to gather with family and friends at home canning parties to learn the basics of canning.  One of the coolest resources they’re offering is a day-long live stream of several how-to canning demos (mixed berry jam, kosher dills, tomatoes in their own juice, more!) happening at Seattle’s Pike Place Market.  See the live stream schedule and find the link here.

The August 2011 Bon Appétit had a fun article about an LA canning party. The recipes for dilly beans, pickled beets with star anise, tomato jam, and zucchini dill pickles are all on our list to try this summer!

And this recipe for onion jam has been tempting us for weeks.  Just onions, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, and butter!  I could do that today!  We think it would be especially delicious on pizza, topped with just about anything else that’s in season right now.

(We should point out the turn-the-jar-upside-down method of sealing is no longer recommended; we’ll probably just make one jar for the fridge and another for the freezer, but here are two good resources for safe canning guidelines.)

We’ve made this heavenly tomato & cheddar pie twice in as many weeks. It does require a little planning: the biscuit dough for the crust needs to chill for an hour, and the tomatoes need to drain for 30 minutes.  But otherwise it comes together quite easily.  And the crust is quite forgiving.  The second time we made it we didn’t use quite enough flour, and the dough seemed a sticky and hopeless mess as we eased it into the pie pan.  But it baked up beautifully, and didn’t get soggy even after a day in the fridge.   And seriously: tomatoes, mayonnaise, cheese, biscuit crust? Do we need to say more?  Make it! Any of the tomatoes you’ve been getting in your shares or at market will work great.

We haven’t tried it yet, but CSA members Yajaira and Domenick independently told us we also had to make this heirloom tomato pie.

And while we’re on the subject of tomatoes: how delicious does Tyler Florence’s Roasted Tomato Soup look?  Thanks to CSA member Tracy for this one.

We’re longtime fans of Mark Bittman.  We pull his How to Cook Everything down from the kitchen bookshelf at least weekly, often more.  The How to Cook Everything app is pretty great too!  For close to fifteen years he wrote a cooking column for the New York Times called The Minimalist.  We’ll admit to feeling a twinge of disappointment this winter when he decided to write less about cooking and more about food politics.  Certainly the systems of food production and distribution in this country are damaged, and we appreciate compelling writing from folks who can help us think about how we might begin to fix things.  But there are many people writing eloquently about these issues; fewer writers have Bittman’s skill for making home cooking seem simple, fun, and approachable.  So we were really delighted by one recent op-ed: “Make Food Choices Simple: Cook.”  In it, he argues we should cook more and eat out less – because it’s cheaper, because we have more control where the food comes from, and because it tastes better.  He writes:

When I cook, though, everything seems to go right. I shop an average of every two weeks in a supermarket, and make a couple of trips a week to smaller stores. I’m aware that my choices are mostly imperfect, but I rarely conclude that I should make a burger and fries for dinner or provide a pound per person of prison-raised pork served with fruit from 10,000 miles away, followed by a cake full of sugar and artificial ingredients. Yet, for the most part, that describes restaurant food.

Also fantastic?  ”101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less,” a Minimalist column from 2007.  Loaded with awesome ideas for no-fuss summer cooking.

Oh! We’ve posted our favorite ratatouille recipe before, but it bears reminding — early August is definitely ratatouille time in Central Virginia!

That does it for this week!  We’ll be back this weekend with more tasty links.  And we hope to post later this week about two delicious vegetables that we know can be intimidating: okra and eggplant.

We’ll wrap things up with some more recent images from the farm. (Click on any to see ‘em big!)

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Weekend Links is a (soon-to-be!) regular feature here on the farm blog: a weekly(ish) list of articles, recipes, and other resources that have been inspiring and amusing us of late. A tasty smorgasbord for brain and belly!

Just photos today. Back soon with some recipes and links!

Sometimes of a Monday morning, the sun is fierce and the list is long and the back is weary.  But we look around then, too, and we see this good good life, and we get back to work.

All these photos are from this morning.  I once swore I’d never have a smartphone, that it didn’t fit in with the ways we’re trying to slow down and pay attention — but boy am I happy to discover it’s just another tool.  It’s the way I use it that matters.  I love tucking it, with its tiny camera, into my pocket and setting off for a walk on the farm with the little guy.

For those who are curious: the pigs have been in a small yard their first week here, so we can finish the fencing around their whole two acres and so they can get a sense of where their home is before exploring all the nooks and crannies of their corner of the farm.  We were a bit worried they’d find the big space a little frightening.  But they’re settling in sweetly, and the fence is almost done, so we’re excited to give them full run of their acres, sometime tonight or tomorrow!