This gal swears she’s a great radio voice.
Last Wednesday Arlo and I traded the juicy tomatoes and the excruciating heat of the farm for some blessed A/C and delightful conversation at the WRIR studios in Richmond. (Don’t get us wrong: we love the farm! But the cool of the studio was something else.) We joined our good friend Eli of Eli’s Greens and Sunny Gardner of Lightly on the Ground for a great chat about farm life and local food systems.
Have a listen!
Our apologies for the light posting ’round these parts — and to anyone who’s had a hard time reaching us — over the last week or so. Half this farm family was out of town for several days. The other half, along with our wonderful crew, had their hands quite full under early July’s blazing sun: picking, washing, sorting, picking, loading, mowing, picking, irrigating, staking, picking, weeding, seeding … and picking. All hands are back on deck, so check in here at the farm blog often for news and recipes and a couple new features as well!
And now, the last week (or maybe two) in pictures!
Here at Frog Bottom last Friday:
Miles and Katie and Shannon and Ali hunched over the cucumber rows, plucking the mature ones from the undersides of the vines and filling their buckets for the weekend farmers market and CSA pick-up. It was a sticky sticky day, like all the days have been of late.
I ate my first cucumber salad of the season: two or three cucumbers halved lengthwise and sliced, minced scallions, minced parsley, olive oil, lime juice, feta cheese, salt and pepper. Easy, fast, and unbelievably delicious. We eat some iteration of this salad as often as possible during the summer!
And Arlo tried his first cucumber. Tasty enough, he decided, but also really fun to squish between your toes.
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Last July we wrote a post called “How to be cool as a cucumber” — definitely worth another look during these sweltering first days of summer. Hie thee! Learn a bit about the cucumber’s origins, learn about the different varieties we grow, and get some recipe ideas, including our go-to cucumber salad recipe, easy fridge pickles, and even a cucumber cocktail!
(Here’s Shannon showing off an Asian cucumber. It’s a bit funny looking, to be sure, but it’s our favorite. Read all about it!)
And like THAT!, our winter’s rest is over and the farm has come alive again. Here’s a little bit of what’s been filling our days in recent weeks. We have lots of things in store for the blog this season, so come visit often!
There are no tomatoes hiding under that snow, and even our cold-hardy crops like kale and collards have succumbed to the fiercest of winter’s frosts and geese. But — after a gloriously warm and lazy trip to the Gulf Coast — we’re keeping pretty busy around here nonetheless!
For us, winter means seed orders and crop plans. It’s a really creative time in our year: what crops are our stand-bys, reliable in production and taste? What didn’t grow well? What have we always wanted to try? What varieties do our farming friends recommend? Should we grow more melons this year? Fewer turnip greens? A new kind of tomato?
Winter means repairs and maintenance. Our hoop house collapsed in that first big snow in December, and we’ll need to repair it before the season begins, since that’s where we put our vegetable seedlings to harden off before transplanting them into the fields. We started construction on a small tool and repair shed last year, but found ourselves sidetracked by our busy CSA schedule and unexpected irrigation difficulties. We’re hoping to get that built early in the season this year, before things get too busy. We wrote a bit about those irrigation issues last year; that’s another big job to finish before the vegetables start growing.
Winter means doing our books, making sure we understand well how the business did last year, and using those lessons to make smart decisions about what directions to go this year.
Winter means finding the new season’s work crew. Reading applications always fills us with excitement and hope. Who will we spend our days with this year? How will the farm change with their energy? And ain’t it grand, that there are folks out there who want to do what we do, grow delicious food and get to know the people who eat it?
Winter means lots of planning and preparation for market and for our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription program. Spots are filling up; have you sent in your registration form yet?
Winter also means lots of hot chocolate, lots of snuggles with Arlo, and lots of time by the wood stove.
We hope these last months have been good to you all, and we can’t wait to see you again.
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