The steel and plastic for a 108’x30′ double-walled hoophouse, just delivered to the field. Up before snow falls? That’s the plan, but it’s only 50:50, depending on the weather.
Mike (tfb)
Beef meets kale
Yes, yet another thing to do with KALE! In a small fit of inspiration, I tore up a few fistfuls of baby Red Russian, and tossed ’em into the pot with carrots, onions, grass-fed beef shank, salt, pepper, garlic and water, slow-cooked for quite a while, six hours or more, adding brown rice towards the end. Voila, Beef and Kale Stew. The kale contributes just a hint of seaweed taste, but maybe that’s just me. Anyhow, excellent. Will do again.
Back to the market!
First day of the season at the outdoor farmers’ market. It’s not a particularly early start, the market goes outside on the first Saturday of May. In any case, here we are once again, this time around with lettuce mix and a bit of arugula from the unheated greenhouse, and baby kale from overwintered plants in the field. Nice day!
Fresh as it gets!
Continuing snowy white and frigid outside, and if it weren’t for the handy neighborhood supermarket, the last thing you’d be thinking about around here right now is fresh orange juice. The reality is, there’s plenty of it, legally speaking, at least: aseptic storage and flavor packs aside, fresh not frozen, not from concentrate, pulpy or pulp free OJ is in abundance, now as ever, and often on special, too!
Catalogs!
This year’s seed catalogs! Haven’t kept on the mailing lists for the dozen or more I used to get. I do always look around online, but for the hard copy, and the main seed ordering, it’s reduced to two, one main seed supplier and a backup. The more you know, the less you need? I like the sound of that! :)
50 Things I’ve Learned from Tiny Farming: #38 Use a pencil
See the growing list of 50 Things I’ve Learned from Tiny Farming:
#38 – Use a pencil: You can find no finer quick-planning and sketching technology than the PENCIL, used with a crisp sheet of paper, a supporting clipboard, and a quality white eraser. There is a curious kind of commitment only a pencil can bring to the start of something. The impermanence, the erasability, the chance to begin now but make sweeping changes later, is the cool thing. Pencils are perfect for roughing out garden maps, preliminarily filling in tricky forms, and sketching all sorts of construction and fabrication projects, mobile chicken coops to better farm stand shelving (even crudely done, a picture is worth…a lot). Forget digital—lappies, tablets, smartphones, batteries, cables, software, formats and files—there’s nothing like good old straightforward no-frills paper and pencil (traditional or mechanical) for freeing you up to think!