Landon

We started this season–our first as parents–with some pretty modest goals: keep our baby clothed and fed and make enough money to do it all again next year.  I’m happy to report we succeeded on both counts (click here for a picture of Frankie “eating” our sweet potatoes).  And in […]

Another Season, Another Cause for Thanks

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I know this space isn’t the most natural forum for discussing presidential politics, but Landon and I can’t seem to think about much else. Our bodies ache today not with the pains of farm work, but with the anxiety and tension of what this country will look like moving forward. […]

An Election Response

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  Landon is spending this unseasonable fall day spreading fresh mushroom compost onto our now-empty vegetable beds.  This is a new practice for us, one that was facilitated by last year’s purchase of a tractor with a bucket (see photo).  The mushroom compost is a byproduct of Pennsylvania’s robust mushroom […]

Building Better Soil

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Landon comes from a fine garlic pedigree.  The New York farm where he honed his skills grows over an acre of garlic every year.  That’s about 70,000 bulbs sold to some of New York City’s most discerning chefs and food enthusiasts.  So when we started our farm in 2011, we […]

Gotta Have Faith

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First in, last out, these tunnel tomatoes are the hardest working plants on the farm. They started yielding fruit in early July, weeks before their field brethren, and haven’t stopped since. What are the field tomatoes up to these days? Lying in a giant brush pile, waiting to get lit. […]

And the MVP Goes To…

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During the dog days of summer, it’s hard to have faith in the promise of a quieter time.  It feels like the weeding, the planting, and the cherry tomato picking will continue ad infinitum until we’re too bleary-eyed to know the difference between a sungold and a gumball. And yet, […]

Downtime Uplift

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Every season, we fine-tune our growing methods to improve the quality of a crop and to produce it more efficiently.  Some crops, like potatoes, are many, many tweaks away from perfection.  But for every struggle, there is at least one success story to keep us moving forward. Arugula is making […]

Fine-Tuning Arugula

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  Ever wonder what we do with all of our wax boxes after the market?  At $2 apiece, we try to get as much life out of each box as possible.  Boxes that aren’t too ripped or too dirty get wiped out with sanitizing cleaner and reused for future pre-orders. […]

Respect the Box

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  Fall might be knocking at the door, but summer’s not ready to give up the ghost quite yet.  We’re hoping to have tomatoes into September this season, and the okra’s showing no sign of slowing down.  But the darlings of summer will have to make room on the market […]

A Crowded Market Table

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When I was 3, my favorite movie was Bambi.  I learned to love deer at an early age and I carried that reverence well into adulthood.  Gosh, what a fool.  As much as I’d like to coexist, there’s no place  for Bambi on a vegetable farm. In the farm’s early seasons, […]

Banishing Bambi

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  Heavy rains at night followed by the warmth of a rising sun created this majestic mist early Tuesday morning.  Living with an infant, Landon and I get to experience the farm at all sorts of hours once reserved for sleep.  It makes me appreciate this place and the role […]

Those Magic Moments

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  Meet Colin! He’s been working on the farm since May and has undoubtedly planted, weeded and harvested many of the veggies we’ve brought to market. Many of you have met Aislinn at the market, but Colin works strictly on the farm.  We’ve really relied on their help this season and will continue […]

Meet Colin

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  Frankie’s not the newest kid on the block anymore!  The barn swallow babies are hatching in nests all over the farm and taking their wings for a test drive.  These little cuties zoomed out of the nest just moments after I snapped this photo.  I’m sad to report that […]

Barn Swallow Babies

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  The strawberries may be winding down, but the black raspberries and the blueberries are eager to assume their spot on the market table. We find that both fruits are less susceptible to insect and disease pressure than their berry brethren–a surefire way to befriend a farmer.  The biggest challenge […]

Berry Necessities

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  With all the weird weather and slow growth we witnessed this spring, I had just about given up on pea season.  Our pea plants were lagging well behind last year’s crop, despite an earlier planting date, and May’s surprise heat wave added an additional stressor. But if farming has […]

The Peas Prevailed

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  Landon’s been working hard to keep the farm on track during these early days of child-rearing.  As you can see, he also moonlights as a pillow.  Frankie and I keep busy with indoor work most of the time and relish the afternoons we spend in the fields amidst the […]

Frankie Sends Her Gratitude

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  The above field has been a long time in the making, and we’re eager to see how it performs this fall.  It’s the first of our fields to complete a full fallow rotation of cover crops with a brief stint in rye and vetch and over a year in […]

Red Clover, Red Clover

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This season marks our first attempt to grow strawberries in woven ground cover, as opposed to the traditional matted row method.  We’re hoping the additional warmth from the plastic and the enhanced weed control will lead to better yields and a more predictable crop.  As far as flavor goes, we’re […]

Strawberry Field(s)

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  If you sense a little incoherence in this first update of the season, my apologies in advance.  There are a lot of exciting things happening on the farm right now, but sleep is not one of them. The most exciting development, bar none, is the arrival of our newest […]

Hello, Frankie

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I went to the PASA conference (Pennsylvannia Association of Sustainable Agriculture) this past weekend. I’ve gone to the conference for several years now, and it’s always a great source of diverse agricultural know-how. This year I learned about everything from internet marketing to hops growing – it turns out I […]

Forage Radishes Are Awesome!

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