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With National Farmers’ Market Week just around the corner, it seems like a good time to highlight some ways the Farm Bill can better support vibrant local food systems. And what you can do to get involved! First, a quick Farm Bill primer: The Farm Bill shapes virtually every aspect of the U.S. food and […]

Farm Bill Advocacy 101

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This season has been a wild one. Between the two-farm juggling act, rising costs of inputs, and my new off-farm job, Landon and I often felt a bit overwhelmed. In those moments, we felt especially grateful for our Garden Stake CSA–for all the customers who had committed to supporting us amidst the mistakes, the upheaval, and the belated email responses. Thank you for being our safety net during this critical time. We are […]

Our Safety Net

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Turket
On the even years, we invite both my family and Landon’s to a giant farm Thanksgiving. We move all the furniture out of the living room (with the exception of the record player) and stuff the space with people, big and small. It’s a celebration of the harvest and the […]

Plans deferred

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Breath is coming a little easier on the farm these days. With just two markets left this season, we can divide all the plantings in half–one for now, one for later. Next year’s compost is resting in windrows, and our food safety pre-audit with the PA Dept. of Ag went […]

A new day

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So much of small-scale farming involves finding new uses for old things: the broken tent that becomes a canopy for the harvest truck, the abandoned disc harrow scavenged for bed-forming pieces, and the old garage door now used to keep the chickens dry. Even farming itself sometimes feels like an […]

Farm metamorphosis

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I am often amazed by what can be accomplished with a thin sheet of woven fabric. With frosty temperatures in the forecast last week, we took a few moments to cover some cold-sensitive veggies with row cover, including our very last planting of string beans. The beans in the foreground were […]

The magic of row cover

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Last week, we went to visit the farm of some friends who also have a young child. Frankie and her co-conspirator immediately got into some excellent mischief, digging around in a pile of finished compost and racing through a 3-foot stand of bolted arugula. Watching them play, I was reminded how full of adventure and […]

Mother’s Day Musings

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Our 9th season kicks off this Sunday at Headhouse Market! While looking back at Season 8 newsletters, I learned that last year’s first “At the Market” email started on this optimistic note: “Can you believe it? Maybe it’s just the warm weather talking, but Landon and I have a good […]

Holy smokes, Season 9!

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Ask any grower in southeast PA about 2018 and the answer is sure to be the same: this season was a challenge. From the late-March snowstorms to Summer’s record-breaking rains, the weather put up one stumbling block after the next. We struggled to maintain healthy crops and high spirits as our […]

#wintergoals

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This project stayed on the back burner for most of the summer, but the fig tunnel is finally nearing completion. Its success is entirely thanks to Landon, who has worked doggedly to get this thing built before our grant deadline in December. With the end walls up and the frame […]

Sweet Collaboration

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Fingers crossed that the lettuce, broccoli raab, napa cabbage, radishes, turnips, and arugula hiding under these covers get to size by Thanksgiving. As the daylight wanes, the “days to maturity” for each crop stretches into infinity, but we still have another two weeks of growth before things shutdown all together. […]

You’re so immature

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Dang! I’m getting this list to you late for the second week in a row. I wish I had another good excuse like “It was my birthday!”, but really I’m just having trouble keeping my head in the game. Between the devastating rains and the cold weather, there’s not too […]

Still Fightin’

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Since things are a little slow in the fields, I decided to use this space to share another note from the kitchen. First, a little backstory: ever since Frankie was born, I stopped participating in the Saturday harvest and started cooking lunch for our harvest crew. This season, we have […]

Kitchen Therapy

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The heirlooms and slicing tomatoes may be on their last legs, but our Granadero plants are still (miraculously!) cranking out paste tomatoes. Sure, they’re not going to be my go-to for a BLT or a caprese salad, but their flavor really pops after a little time in the oven. I […]

Paste for the win!

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Landon and I had big plans for Halloween this year. We were going to start a pumpkin patch in the former cow pasture and grow enough pumpkins to host an epic carving party. After the festivities, we were going to line the road with all the pumpkin art, illuminated with candles for […]

Pack up your carving knives

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Soil is a mysterious organism. All the lettuce pictured above was planted at the same time. All of the transplants received identical care, and the beds were prepared using identical equipment and fertilizer. And yet, the lettuce on the left is stunted and discolored, while the lettuce on the right […]

Unsolved Mysteries

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With the ground finally dry enough to till, Landon and I are mobilizing to get lots of things planted: kale transplants that have been patiently waiting on the hardening off bench, carrot seeds eager to replace their rotted predecessors, and all those fast-growing radishes and salad greens that can get […]

This week’s MVP: pac choi!

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As inches 8, 9, and 10 for the month of August accumulated outside, Landon and I spent the morning in the greenhouse. We seeded anything we could think of that will get to full-size before the days get too short and the nights get too cold. This plan assumes that […]

When in doubt, plant some seeds

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With all this wet weather, we haven’t had many opportunities to get into the fields to do some proper weeding. It’s hard to kill weeds when their roots are constantly being replanted and replenished by life-giving rains, and the wet soil makes our weeding tools less effective. Some weeds are […]

Unintentional Intercropping

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Testing watermelons for doneness is an art that we have yet to master. For us, it involves cracking open a lot of melons in the field to make sure we’re reading the cues correctly. It also involves tasting a lot of melons and letting lots of juice drip down our […]

Employee Benefits

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