If We Can Flip, We Can Flop

We're in flop mode-our January form.  After doing flips all spring, summer and fall to react to Mother Nature and grow for market, we are belly up.  It's a cycle which we have come to know intimately.  During the months that life is hot and active,

January 2023-Continuity

We all just weathered such a wild storm: a storm that apparently comes once a generation.  Are you thawed out?  Are the nerves in your fingertips still firing?   After the Christmas morning energy slowed to a lull with the kids pouring into their play, Rich ventured out to the hoop.

Dahoo Dores

Happy Holidays :)  Merry Christmas to those of you who grew up with an evergreen in the living room and your own "most special" Christmas traditions for which you waited all year to revisit.   This time of the year is so utterly sacred: reserved for a deep dive into

Is this the Last Time?

We left the farm last month and hit the refresh button.  My system upgraded and when I powered back up, I found myself recognizing the fleeting experiences we are living out.  May learned how to swim and I realized that I wouldn't be suiting her up in any

Why You Should Talk to Strangers

Maybe I should be including a warning here..."Warning: don't leave this journal entry open on your browser for young kids to see. Mutinous idea at play".  But I suppose that'd be highly hypocritical if the super sponges under my care are taken into

Surfacing in Siesta Key

Just last weekend the four of us farm rats found our way to the whitest sands of sunny Siesta Key.  I mean it when I say the whitest...I remember when my family and I visited this very beach; the layer of white, powdery sand accumulated after full days of

All the characters

May desires chapter books these days.  We read out loud on her bed while Jack gets stir-crazy, his two-and-a-half year attention span just can't hang until the end of the chapter, no matter the animation in my voice. Last month we finished Fantastic Mr. Fox...a story that

Contractually Obliged

Rich and I are most comfortable operating the farm independently of other organizations and individuals.  We really bask in the freedom and comfort of having our own agenda and no commitments other than to get our goods to market. Beyond our mortgage and our tractor payment, we are not '

"What Do You do for a Job?"

While Jack and I were swimming in carpet and Magnatiles the other day, he asked me that question.  He is nearing three and I suppose already his brain is firing with such curiousities.  That itself is a curiosity to me.  JOB?!  I know that he is very well immersed in

The Lion Heart of Small Business

Small business owners who stay in business are lions by nature.  This past week in particular I have felt very inspired by the bustling community that I'm proud to say we are tangled up in.  Most times, Rich and I prefer NOT to be bound up with other

November-Transcendance

I've been transported to some space that is not of this earth.  This has happened a few times in life, namely when I married Rich in the thick of strawberry season nearly ten years ago; there was also the experience I had when time stopped and Marion Rose

Another offer on our land

I'm not sure how typical it is to get at least one drive-by offer on your land a year.  Since we moved here in 2018, we have had a truck or two a season roll down the gravel drive to ask to farm our land or buy it.

Distance Makes the Heart Grow

Today was the last day of the Oakwood Farmers Market season.  Vendors and artisans brought their best to their tables and a lively energy permeated the parking lot tucked in the tree-lined streets of Oakwood.  It was a proper autumn day, kids with caps on their heads rolled by shivering

Flipping the Farm

Ian came when no one welcomed him and beckoned in an unexpected cold front for us midwesterners, turning a predicted warm October rather chilly.  That's hardly anything to complain about when flipping through photos of the havoc he wreaked in Fort Myers :(. Even so, he changed the game

October: Energy Exchange

I am allowing our geriatric lap top's battery to drain while I struggle to manifest my idea into words today: my brain fog is evidence of a diminished supply of energy myself.  But in this case, it's largely from the crescendo of a fall week: school

A New Stage in Our Life Cycle

As I've been gathering edible flowers for our wholesale partners from one week to the next, I'm in the good company of honey bees.  Honey bees typically travel no further than 3 miles from their hive.  So these could be domesticated bees from the hives down

"Leaving the Farm, You're Gonna Lose Something"

What is on your to-do list when you are about to leave your nest for a spell?  Perhaps you'll clean out the fridge, empty the house of trash, water the houseplants (Go with God), maybe put your mail on hold?  I personally love when I remember to slip

How'd We Get Away with That?

When cool mornings begin to return, alleviating the land of the late summer heat the afternoons bring, I begin to take stock of our season.  It's far from over, but it's time we account for what we have, so that we can plan for our slower

A Note on the Pecking Order

A flock of chickens exists as its own atavistic colony.  As if a chair in the orchestra, each personality plays a part in the construct.  I remember watching our group of winter born chicks, all plunked down in our brooder with no adult birds to initiate them into a social

September: It's not a dream

I came out of a nice deep sleep the other morning at about my same time...to a faint teasing from the sun...enough sunshine to bring the flower garden which grows outside of our Eastern window out of its restful state...triggering another bright day of photosynthesis.  I could

The Next Dimension

I saw this next chapter coming, but couldn't anticipate how our world would change.  We stepped through a doorway into another dimension last week, sending May off to full-day kindergarten.  It's been five years since we turned a page and found ourselves parents.  The intensity of

Can You Tell me How to Get to Sesame Street?

Last Monday, May and I headed over to her Elementary school where the Kindergarten class list was posted on the front door.  May had been hoping to land 'the teacher in the blue dress' for her classroom teacher.  What are the chances that I would spot little Marion

Some Just Need a Little More Time

Farming small has its advantages.  In 2019 we brought on a very small flock of sheep...just what we could afford.  Bahby the ram and 3 young ewes graced our pasture in the hope that we would grow the flock enough so that they could maintain our pastures and we

August- Studying Ergonomy

Out of all the tools on the farm, these two bodies of ours are most heavily used...more than the tractor, our hoes, harvest shears...I guess it goes without saying but they are the knives in our set that are most favored: worn handles, edges widdled and withering from

Blame it on the Heat Exhaustion

On one of these 90's-degree days we've been having, I finished weeding a bed in the field midday and felt the itch to write.  Welp...blame it on the heat exhaustion but I wrote about farming in heat waves again...but more in a survival guide