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The farm isn’t looking very photogenic on this gray, rainy day, so I didn’t bother taking any pictures in the fields. Instead, I decided to include this picture of Landon and Frankie on one of our morning walks to open the high tunnel. During the growing season, it can be […]

Family Chores

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When I was a kid, I ran over the hose with the lawnmower so many times that my parents stopped asking me to mow the lawn. When I was 16, my driver’s ed instructor insisted I take extra lessons if I wanted to pass my license exam. When I finally […]

Driver’s Ed

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Some changes we make around here mark big shifts in the way we farm: the purchase of our Celli spader and construction of our high tunnel, for instance. Most changes, however, are small and incremental, but no less important to the overall success of our operation. The switch from a […]

The Little Things

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Our fourth and final cucumber planting is currently climbing its way to the high tunnel rafters. While the field-grown cucumbers are largely left to their own devices, the tunnel cucumbers are a very orderly affair. The plants are pruned to a single stem in order to tie them up more […]

Success in Succession

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As a kid, my dad insisted on cooking things hot. “You can’t grow up in this house if you can’t handle the heat.” I developed a love for the spicy through brute force and haven’t looked back since. Most dinners I cook boast at least a little heat, especially during […]

A Pepper Primer

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If you’ve ever walked by our market display and thought, “Those veggies look dreamy!” (or something of that ilk), you have Aislinn to thank. For more than two years, Aislinn has been the bedrock of our farmers’ markets, showcasing our veggies and helping customers with equal parts style and warmth. […]

A Bittersweet Farewell

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With all the rain we’ve had this season, it feels like nature has been more enemy than ally. Landon and I have been dashing around the farm for the past few weeks, fighting against nature’s arsenal of weather, pests, and disease to save our veggies. As in any conflict, we’ve […]

Picking Our Battles

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The middle of July is always a big transition point on our farm. The tomatoes are just starting to come in, but we are busy moving our fall greens out of the greenhouse to transplant in the field. In the photo above you can see that our onion and shallot […]

Split Personality

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This morning, Landon found a turtle in the road! Instead of bringing it straight to the stream on his way home from daycare, he brought the turtle back to the farm and gave me a call: “Hey Lin, I picked up a friend on the way home, and you’ll probably […]

The Neighborhood

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The late-spring lull is always a nervous time on the farm for me. Strawberries and peas–the stars of June–have hung up their boots for the season, but summer’s stand-outs are still a few weeks away. It feels like we’re treading water, waiting for the day when our pick buckets once […]

The Late-Spring Lull

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Despite all the sweaty t-shirts and sluggish afternoons, the hot weather was a welcome change on the farm. The Big 3 of Summer–peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes–went from pale and shrimpy to seasonally-appropriate nearly overnight. It feels like the Sungolds put out a hundred new blossoms for each upward tick in […]

Hello, Dog Days!

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                          These two pictures have nothing to do with each other, but I figured it’s been a little while since I included a picture of Frankie. She’s getting so big! You know what else is getting big? Our […]

Dream Fig

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We received a lot of valuable feedback in last year’s end-of-season survey, but one takeaway stood out from the rest: you want us to be more adventurous in our variety choices. Traditionally, we’ve focused on varieties that we know grow well–disease-resistant standard bearers with good yield potential. A lot of […]

Sense of Adventure

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This year, we’re making our tomato beds due double duty as lettuce beds. The photo to the left shows the tomato transplants down the center flanked by lettuce on either side. We’ll harvest the lettuce this week before it gets crowded out by the tomato foliage. Generally, we don’t do […]

Double Duty

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It feels like we spent most of last year learning how to farm all over again. With Frankie around, we could no longer solve our problems by just working until we ran out of daylight and soothing our weary muscles with cold beer and ice cream. We had to do […]

Lucky #7

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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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