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Landon and Frankie spent some time this past week in what Frankie lovingly calls “the blueberry cage”. (She’s not wrong–the blueberry bushes are surrounded on all sides by bird netting.) The two farmers picked blueberries side-by-side, with Landon picking for some house guests and Frankie picking mostly for herself (à […]

The Blueberry Cage

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Heat like this on the farm can be a real slog–constant wardrobe changes, desperate searches for that missing water bottle, and popsicle lunches. We spend a disproportionate part of our day dragging hoses from field to field to keep the irrigation rotated. The other part is spent trying not to […]

It’s Raining Sweat

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When we first started out 8 years ago, garlic scapes were all the rage. Customers, anxious to try their newest scape pesto recipe, would buy heaps and heaps as soon as they hit the market table. But as the novelty of the zany garlic flower wore off, scape season became […]

Let’s make scapes cool again!

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One of farming’s biggest perks is the amount of time we get to spend outdoors just marveling at all the spectacular things that occupy this planet. We’re approaching my favorite time of year for natural wonder–peak firefly season–which overlaps with my second favorite natural event–barn swallow breeding. Barn swallow nests […]

Greetings from Argentina!

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When we started this journey 8 years ago, we were committed to growing veggies without the use of plastic mulch. We didn’t like the idea of the expense, the aesthetics, and most importantly, the waste. Fast forward several very weedy seasons, and our stance on plastic mulch has softened. Over […]

Adventures in Plasticulture

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For the first time in our career as chicken tenders, we bought our chickens as pullets (4-month-old hens) instead of raising them from chicks. We sold last year’s layers in January and lived blissfully chicken-free for three whole months. No shoveling snow out of the chicken run, no chicken babysitters […]

Mean Girls vs. Freshmen

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This Tuesday, we’ll be kicking off our 7th season at the corner of Frankford Ave. and Bridge St. at Frankford Transportation Center. The market runs from June 5th until the end of October from 2pm-6pm. Super convenient by public transit, the market is just a 20-minute jaunt from Center City […]

See you at Frankford!

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With the ground too wet to work, the transplants are piling up on the hardening off bench and the weeds are making themselves right at home. It’s been a frustrating week for farming, but all these rain clouds have a silver lining: the soggy fields have given us a chance […]

Wet Weather Work

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We often think of onions as being these rugged, hardy things–a paragon of self-sufficiency that can nourish us all winter. In reality, growing onions organically is kind of a pain. The plants don’t grow big enough to block out weeds, so they require a lot of hand-weeding throughout their time […]

Onions Are Wimps

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Our 8th season kicks off this Sunday at Headhouse Market! Can you believe it? Maybe it’s just the warm weather talking, but Landon and I have a good feeling about this one. After last year’s soggy summer, we decided to make some changes around here to mitigate the potential damage […]

Trenches, Mounds, and Figs

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When people ask how this season has been, I usually respond with the noncommittal, “We’ve had better”. The more accurate response of “Worst yet” just sounds too dire. True, one whole field was under water for most of June and July, and we ripped out a good chunk of tomatoes […]

Better Luck Next Year!

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With the season winding down, Landon and I are turning our attention to some of the items on our comically long “Winter List”. There’s a lot of work to do around here in the off-season, from ordering seeds to repairing the tractors to building a permanent deer fence. It’s enough […]

Hobby Time

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It will come as no surprise that Landon and I have been pretty shaken up by all the devastation going on around us over the past few months. The magnitude of need is overwhelming, so we decided to combat those feelings of helplessness by doing something small. This week, we’re […]

Farmers for Farmers

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Even as the harvest dwindles and crops succumb to their annual cycle, fall on the farm always has an optimistic feel to it. It’s an “out with the old, in with the new” time of year, as we tear down the remnants of this season in order to lay the […]

We’re All Pollyanna

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We get pretty excited around here when it starts to feel like fall. The weeds slow down, the days are shorter, and everyone looks great in a sweater. But us farmers aren’t the only thing that gets sweeter as the temperatures dip. Once we start getting some hard frosts in […]

Getting Sweeter with Age

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In order to ensure a continuous harvest, we try to practice succession planting: a method in which several smaller plantings are made at timed intervals, rather than all at once. The plants mature at staggered dates, establishing a continuous harvest over an extended period. The cauliflower, for instance, was planted […]

Calling All Cauliflower

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For the first time all season, our veggies needed water beyond what falls from the sky. In a regular season, we irrigate via drip tape–a thin plastic “hose” that runs the length of the bed and drips water at regular intervals. Drip tape is an efficient way to get water […]

Flat-Footed Irrigation

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We’d been resistant to growing romanesco cauliflower for many seasons. Among growers, it has a reputation for being a primadonna in the fields–fickle about soil, climate, and transplant date. Turns out, it’s reputation is well-earned. Our entire second planting (with the exception of one plant) died under the row cover. […]

Growing Primadonnas

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                  After our stalwart carrot variety under-performed last season, Landon and I decided to move away from the red-cored Chantenay and test some new options. The short, stubby carrots were too hard to bunch and looked less pretty on the market table […]

Carrot Trials

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In the weeks leading up to this newsletter, I knew exactly what I wanted to feature–our new O’Henry sweet potatoes. O’Henry taters are a white-skinned, white-fleshed variety with a dry, starchy interior great for roasting. They’re part of our 2017 push to grow more unusual varieties, and we planted about […]

Mystery Tater

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