Summertime and the living is...

Our beautiful spring lettuces were a big hit at the Smithville Farmers' Market. We've also gotten people into kale chips and Rainbow Swiss Chard! Everyone loved the garlic scapes. People seemed interested these purple tomatoes we keep talking about.

Spring was magnificent! The trees turned from naked and drab in their mottled tones of brown and gray to sprayed with magenta, orange, eletric yellow and green, ember red. The dogwoods held their white blooms against the crystal clear blue sky like little clouds captured and arrange for the observer's pleasure. There's a van Gogh painting, Almond Blossoms, that strikingly captures the contrast. How lucky I am to live in a place where I go horseback riding through pieces of art people pay to see in museums.

We are eating beautiful foods from the garden now. The colors blow my mind.

By not weeding and not thinning our Touchstone Gold and Early Top beets, we learned that in order to get good beets, you have to thin and weed your beet patch. I was so happy to harvest these Chioggias! This day, we had harvesting help from my long time best friend, Kate.

We had a family reunion. We partied, and we relaxed.

We went caving in a nearby cave with a big reservior in front of it. They used to raise trout here. Now crazy people jump off the baracades into the 56 degree water.

As the members of Purple Maize Farm are also members of the Dry Creek Water Quality Conservation group, we took a few helping helds along for a water testing outing. We found beautiful geodes and creek glass. The water was beautiful and clear with no nitrates or phosphates to speak of. We are so lucky to live along such an outstanding water body!

We also did Indian Grave Point, where the climb down isn't nearly as crazy as it looks, but it is a good thing we have friends to hold up the ceiling. If you trek through the Sea of Mud, you can get to the art room. And the world never looks as beautiful and green as it does during the first moments after you emerge from a cave.






I got to cook my favorite breakfast (biscuits and gravy) for my favorite people. We had local pork, eggs from next door, and biscuits from scratch were a group effort.

We all met Amanda for the first time. She told us this is what it feels like to be dating Hector. Just kidding. She was a champ, and it was lovely to finally meet her!

The house was plenty big for 14 people. Really.

Now it's June, and we have cucumbers tumbling out of the garden. The scallop squashes are promising an imminent explosion of activity. We are loaded with green tomatoes, and the first ripe ones are trickling in. We need to get around to digging potatoes, which we won't be planting in hay next time. Peppers are setting, and the eggplants are finally in the garden and bursting with buds.

I have no idea when I'll get around to updating again, but for right now, I'll say that I couldn't ask for better customers, a more beautiful garden, or a more wonderful life.

love

Words cannot describe how much I love this place. This morning I went for a ride with our friend, Alison. The day started with frost on the ground but warmed up to long T-shirt temperature by the time we got out. The sky is brilliant blue, and spring has the trees in red, orange, magenta, and neon green. The pastures are coming back alive, and the woods are filled with Mayapples. The dogwoods are finally blooming, and their blossoms turn upwards toward the sunlight, like little cups to catch every drop. We saw a turkey fly into the air and soar--literally soar--through the sky, riding the wind racing up the slope of the valley. We spent a morning caving and then washed the first layer of mud out of our clothes in the creek. Marie and I put legit hoops and row cover over our cabbages, kale, and lettuce, all which look beautiful and vibrant. You can practically watch the peas and garlic growing. I had some shallots that spent the entire summer, fall, and winter in a paper bag in a plastic drawer stashed in the barn. I opened the bag, and they were growing, so I threw them in the garden, and they are growing like crazy. The half of our onions planted in the bed that spent the winter under rotting hay is twice as big as the other half the planting that were put into freshly worked ground. Behold, the power of earthworms. The bees and butterflies are back. The barn was practically vibrating with the buzz of the carpenter bees during their mating frenzy a couple weeks ago. They drill holes in the poles they used to hang the tobacco from in our barn, so there are piles of sawdust all around. The spring is full of tadpoles and newts, frogs, watercress, and Mayflies, and the toads had an orgy in my parents' pond. We have found we didn't haul nearly enough manure this winter. The greenhouse is full of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatillos. The artichokes are outside and finally loving life. We hosted a work party, and our wonderful friends finished our house wiring, built us a custom art light fixture, cleared hundreds of Osage, locust, and cedar saplings from our pasture and barnyard, and finished the rock work around the greywater basin. How amazing is that? Kevin is working in a factory from 6pm to 6am, five to seven days a week right now. He doesn't seem to hate it as much as I thought. This is temporary--just to earn a little extra money to have around. We are slowly gathering customers, but not nearly as quickly as I hoped. So we're thinking of taking it easy on the CSA members and seeing how much demand the two restaurants have for us. Marie and I are serving as secretaries for the Dekalb Farmers Market association. Fancy that. See you at the market! AND I found an arrowhead in our garden yesterday. I can't think of a more beautiful place to be.

Notes & Pictures

Warning: The last four pictures include cleaning a chicken - if you're squeamish/don't want to see it, stop scrolling after the picture of the clothesline.

Notes:

• We've been working hard the last week, thanks to all the sunny warm weather – highs in the low 80s!

• Helga taught us how to kill a chicken. It wasn't pleasant, but we earned our dinner. Chicken & dumplings!

• Sophie is getting bigger & bigger – she's a real farm dog now.

• Kevin hooked up our washing machine, & made us a clothesline – yay laundry!

• We went for our first warm weather group hike. The ticks are out! But it was beautiful.

What an awesome week!

Oh hello spring!

The sun has finally come out! It's about 70 degrees out right now, & we couldn't be more excited to get out in the field & be farmers instead of moping around in the cold rain. Still, we've had a good last few weeks - most of the seedlings we've started are coming up happily, which is encouraging & exciting! The babies that aren't already out in the field are chilling in the greenhouse, just waiting for the soil to dry out enough to transplant! Tomorrow we should be able to get most of them out there. We also started some tomatoes & peppers in a hot frame we built with hay bales & windows, which seems to be working pretty well. Our friend Angie has two awesome greenhouses, & she starts plants for lots of farmers in the area, so we have even more tomatoes & peppers there. We trade work for plants, which is pretty cool – gotta love the barter system! We got a black lab/blue heeler puppy two weeks ago! She's only six weeks old, but eventually she'll be the garden protector – until she's a little older, she's just adorable little Sophie. My (Marie) family got to come up for a visit a couple of weekends ago, & they seemed to really love Tennessee & the farm. They adjusted to the composting toilet/bucket really well, which was pretty cool of them! We went for a hike, had a delicious dinner, & ended the night with a campfire - too much fun. Last Sunday we went to our friend Matty's Daffodil Festival, which was so much fun - he lives on Short Mountain with a ridiculously huge meadow of daffodils surrounding his house. Absolutely beautiful! Yesterday we went caving with Allison & some new friends, which, as always, was amazing. We live in such a cool place! It really is like living in a fairytale.