Green means go

Life is abundant and new and green at A Place on Earth.  It is Spring, and green means go.  Time hurries forward much faster than before.  Campbell, 4 months old, sings and smiles sweetly, like his loving big brother Clark, now 2 ½ years old.  Amidst diaper changes, trips to the potty, feedings, book readings, greenhouses, chicken coops, tractor work, seeding, cultivating, watering, digging and so on, the weeks and months pass by, fully engrossed, mostly delighted.

We are rooted into this place now, watching trees grow, observing familiar phenomena cycle back around.  While “watching” and “observing” sound as if we are sitting on the porch, taking it all in, the truth is a bit more hectic.  This year presents an even greater challenge to maintain focus through the blur of activity, to pounce on small windows of opportunity, to live and not simply be swallowed by life.  We deeply need moments of quiet, time to reflect, a way to make sense of things inside the incessant swirl of responsibilities.  I need to be writing these newsletters as much as anyone needs to read any of it.  Life is too brief and precious to constantly be buried under busyness.

The Omnivore’s options

We are pleased to announce our partnership with two other farms in Turners Station.  Now in addition to our own offering of chicken, we are able provide other local meats to complement your vegetable shares.  Sweet Sixteen Farm is located just a couple miles from us, and they raise pigs and goats free range and rabbits in moveable hutches on pasture.  Their website,  www.sweetsixteenfarm.com, has a list of available cuts and pricing.  With a couple weeks advance notice, we can deliver any of these products to be picked up with your produce.  Our next door neighbors, John Grant and Bonnie Cecil at Dancing Star Farm (they also grow potatoes for us), raise sheep and sell them whole for $4/lb plus a $70 processing fee.  Let us know what you would like and when, and you can pay us upon delivery.

More from Phyllis’ kitchen

Phyllis Fitzgerald, our resident cook and home economy expert, is doing a class in Louisville called, “How to Use Your CSA Share” on Wednesday, May 29, from 6:30-9:00 at Cooking at the Cottage.  The cooking will be done by Lelia Gentle from DreamCatcher Farm, and a meal is included.  Phyllis will still be providing her written guidance through the year, but this is an opportunity to join her in the kitchen and learn firsthand.  For more information, visit www.cookingatthecottage.com.

And keep in mind as the veggies start flowing that her website, www.phyllisfitzgerald.com, is brimming with food wisdom specifically catered to CSA eaters.  She also hosts a weekly radio show with Sarah Fritschner on crescenthillradio.com called, “La Vida Local.”

High tunnel still in progress

The Winter months, with the birth of Campbell and four subsequent hospital stays, were not the most productive on the farm.  The bare necessities were attended to: firewood was cut, hauled, stacked, and fed to the woodstove, and the chickens were fed, watered, and their eggs gathered.  With freer minutes, I dug a drainage ditch on the lower side of the driveway, so that it is now navigable after a rain.  The high tunnel, with its warmer climate, took to growing a lush carpet of grass.  Heavy Spring rains clearly indicated that the tunnel needed its own drainage ditches.  In the last weeks we have dug a 150 foot long, two-foot deep trench to the tunnel for a water line.  Lots of digging, lots of slow, primitive work.  But the soil down in this bottomland is beautiful, and we are filled with visions of future, robust harvests.  As we remarked while pounding, prying, and grinding at rocks in our way, this is surely the opposite of fast food.

Early start to the season

It appears as if our first harvest will be ready a week earlier than scheduled.  I will send out another email confirming this, but make a note that Wednesday, May 15, and Saturday, May 18, will be the first deliveries—that’s just two weeks from now!  Spinach, lettuce, kale, radishes, green garlic.  Getting hungry?

Thanks

This farm is a collaborative effort and never more so than this year.  Thanks for a wonderful crew of working shares, for grandparents’ childcare and meals, for generous neighbors and dependable friends, for encouraging words and creative talents.  Thanks for your patience and understanding of the numerous needs tugging at our pant legs.  We are blessed to belong to such a supportive community, and hope we can be as good to you as you are to us.  Thanks for joining us on this fruitful journey.  May the rewards be bounteous!