Where to find us/ Important dates:
Sunday, October 11th: “Birds of a Feather”, Mini Market and Music at Loving Farm featuring Nat Lefkoff in collaboration with Presa Ceramics. Come get some food, drink, art and a face painting and stick around for the music! It is going to be a great day.
Saturday, October 17th: Hainted Harvest 3:00-7:00 with storytelling by Derby City Midnight at dusk: Turtleback Ridge Brewery
November 1st: Next subscriber giveaway drawing! We love doing these because we ALWAYS share a moment of excitement for the winner. How is it almost November already?
December 5, 13, and 16th will be our winter wreath making dates. If you want to reserve any of those spots now, let us know and we can do a soft hold for you! We are going to keep our classes small for those, 4-6 people per day. You know there will be snacks.
Hello Flower Lovers!
There has been time to do things this week. Every day is still full and wonderful but we have had space for some things that have been on the back burner for a while. Our neighbors loaned us their power washer so the deck is finally getting some cleaning. The flower bed for the tulip bulbs is ready and the bulbs are still looking good under the house until the weather cools a bit more to put them in. We put a few pea and collard seeds in the ground and have spent some time practicing some flower designs for our October wedding that we are so excited about! In addition to it all, we have had time for some socializing, having a weeding day around the corner at our neighbor’s house and even a campout with some friends across town where we got to enjoy a spectacular night up on the ridge they care for.
The next big event we are getting ready for here at the farm is our October 11 mini market and music that we are co-organizing with our dear friends from Presa Ceramics, a place that put me up for a week during one of my weeks of radiation last summer. Colleen’s handmade art is out of this world beautiful and her wife Blake made me nourishing food with her amazing culinary skills. Together, they are amazing at hosting and making folks feel welcome and loved, so we are so excited to host everyone here along side of them on Sunday. I am particularly excited about seeing Nat Lefkoff perform here at the farm. His voice is pretty mesmerizing on YouTube. Cant wait to hear him live.
Writers group is coming up on Tuesday which I might be going to again this month and the topic is to write something in Wendell Berry’s honor. In theory this should be so easy because we are reading The Unsettling of America for our next book club discussion, the only book I have read (ok, I listened to it, but I am reading a hard copy now) by Berry, which had such an impact on me. I feel like the assignment is blocking my approach to having something to write about it. Additionally, I feel like I could give a commentary on every page of it, drawing the similarities to life today, almost 50 years later, frustrated by humanity’s negligence to listen the earth and amidst this insane race to develop and utilize all corners of nature in the name of advancement. It feels so aggressive and offensive.
Yes, I am sad to see the continued abuses of the environment. My heart breaks thinking about how each “win” against a data center being erected somewhere only really means it will be wreaking havoc on another community less prepared to fight against the machine. Every rollback of a protection for our land invokes a sense of helplessness and despair, thinking of the erosion of our waterways and air that we need to breathe. But then, I am reminded that I am not alone and that gives me hope.
I live each day in paradise with our purring cats and bug loving ducks. My wife and I banter back and forth about what flowers we can plant and make cut lists for the week’s harvest: native aster, sedum, all of the “ready” zinnias and “good” marigolds. Perriee will take me to see a beautiful insect that crossed our pathway or show me a new bloom down in the field that we have never seen growing there before. The changing of the seasons, demonstrated by the trees shedding their autumn leaves assures me that I am still alive and have managed to survive and thrive another cycle. Our friends, spread far and wide are out there loving the same things: their loved ones, the parts of the earth that they reside upon, and all of the abundance that we are rewarded by her, time and time again.
Pushing 50 years old, myself, I am pretty sure my feelings of love towards the earth and nature will carry on. I have felt the connection since my time as a young child at the little house on the mountain in Virginia with my mom and aunt, relishing in the simpleness of the old farmhouse with the bucket toilet, the wild blackberries and the resident horse that would appear, seemingly out of nowhere. Homegrown food and flowers were the themes growing up near my grandparents’ house in Cleveland, never knowing a zucchini was not supposed to be as big as a baseball bat until I was an adult, relishing in the stewed garden tomatoes and squash my grandma would prepare.
My love persisted through college, getting in touch with the pieces of my native heritage, skipping house parties to go to a sweat ceremony each Saturday through freshman year, loving the cold nights by the fire after a hot meditation in the lodge. I planted my first garden in college and worked at a classmate’s horse-farm for a summer and mucking stalls for next to nothing, just for the love of it all. It was also around that time that I was gifted my first zinnia seeds by my Italian teacher who linked me up with Augusta, the 90-year-old woman who taught me how to care for her flower garden at her assisted living facility. Her rosemary bushes were almost as tall as me and I would run my hands up them to release the aroma every chance I could.
Soon after Perriee and I started living together, we threw caution to the wind after I quit my first “good job” and sold our cars for 150cc scooters, where I worked at Sunrock Farm in Wilder for a season and got to be “Farmer Marietta” and teach school kids about where real food comes from, letting them collect eggs, hold baby chicks, and milk a goat. I had my share of mucking there too, mostly for goats, consequently one of my favorite forms of work. And here I am, still in love with it all, still making it work. Still surviving right along side of you all. Thanks for doing my homework with me!
Pride and Flock Update:
Oscar wanted to tell you…. “9oooooooooo”. I think that means that he wanted to tell you he got his indoor cat dose of flea and ear mite medicine along with the other 4 cats this week. MUCH easier said than done, as Gray and Max are completely anti-science and would rather die than get the medicine, but we dosed them all, back to back (good pun) this month. Next month, it will be back to treating the outdoor kitties only. We only get three doses a month so we skipped August to get them all one treatment in September.
There is a group of 5 rouens who are looking for a home out of Massachusetts (4 girls and a boy, the PERFECT starter flock). They are being rehomed through the same rescue, Majestic Waterfowl Sanctuary that helped us get our three muskateers and I did inquire about taking two of them. We are just a little too far out of the way, understandably, but if you know anyone up north looking, get in touch with them through social media. Mia is a rouen, so it is like 5 MORE MIAS! They also have a trio of drakes that need a home too, also a perfect starter flock if you just want some cute birds and bug patrol. Bachelor flocks are a thing, and boys don’t have the egg issues! Check out this account for some inspo.
George wrote this: ./;,l/////////////////////////////, (translation: “I love my medicine and rabies vaccine so I can go outside and protect the perimeter and eat all of the gross things and still be healthy”).
