Where to find us/ Important dates:
November 1st: Next subscriber giveaway drawing!
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! Call or email to reserve. We are going to keep our classes small for those, 4-6 people per day. You know there will be snacks. Once confirmed, you can Venmo us ahead of the date or bring cash the day-of. Spots are already filling up!
Hello Flower Lovers!
We cut a slew of zinnias, marigolds, celosia, basil, mint and of course, a bucket or two of aster in preparation for frost and wouldn’t you know it, we are still ok? Regardless, most of it will be dried to use in the coming months in our winter wreath making classes we are hosting in December and for other designs in throughout the winter. For those who don’t celebrate, Frostmas is the holiday that growers observe when the first freeze zaps all of the tender annuals and it appears that we have a few more days left before ours comes! Just to be safe, we covered everything Saturday night that we wanted to keep a little longer, namely the dahlias in the field and the marigolds in the greenhouse.
The Hainted Halloween and Field Day at the brewery on Saturday was great! We got to see our friends Ele and Gibson twice in less than a week in addition to so many other local friends that we love so much. To use up some of our basil, we made these really fun brooms using cool sticks that we foraged or were gifted. They turned out great. A couple of them will be available at The Kentucky Flower Market this week in time for Halloween.
I finally got to help process chickens with our neighbors earlier in the week. Perriee has done it a few times, so it was amazing to get to finally experience it with her. I was on the cleaning crew, after they came out of the plucker and got to work in tandem with one of our homesteading friends who kept me on task and inspected my work as we went through it. We love being able to process food with our neighbors, as they are amazing teachers and take excellent care of the animals throughout their entire lives. We have a freezer full of happy chicken to get us through the next several months.
Wednesday we got to go to Breathitt County Extension office for a quick class about greenhouse fertilization through our Controlled Environment class we are taking through the University of Kentucky. The extension agent took us to a local farm after lunch to see their aquaponic lettuce set up which of course gave us a bunch of ideas on how to grow some leafy veg in our greenhouse! They had a few different systems, some of which required pumps and electricity, but our favorite was the tote method, completely contained without the use of any power. I am not a huge fan of growing food in plastic, but would probably make an exception to have some easy lettuce at the end of the season. We might try making burlap nets with some sheep wool substrate as opposed to the plastic nets and rockwool and see how it goes! Regardless, the couple had an amazing farming operation. We were so impressed with it all.
Speaking of Kentucky farmers, huge shout out to our state agriculture support that we get. As small farmers, we have felt so supported and see how much each extension office in the state is so full of resources and assistance to everyone. We have never farmed in any other state so have nothing else to compare it to, but just this week alone have interacted with extension agents from four counties in the state, one being at the field day over the weekend in Robertson county.
Indigenous People’s Day was last week so it is a good reminder to acknowledge the land that we care for as having first belonged to the Cherokee, Shawnee, Hopewell, Adena and Osage people. Our friend Blake captured a beautiful picture of our land acknowledgment pole last Sunday that you should definitely check out. Reading the Unsettling of America, we came across a quote that Berry included by Carl Sauer, “The course of colonial empire began with disregard of native rights and persons”. That was so timely in light of the holiday. We honor that history in an attempt to learn and be better to one another and to the earth.
Pride and flock update: The ducks are getting along pretty good right now, but our plan is to construct a nighttime coop for two ducks to sleep in, separated by hardware cloth in the middle for that time of the year that Howard needs to be separated. If we can get that complete, we can consider adopting some more feathered friends for our flock.
All of the cats slept in the bedroom Saturday night- even George! He stayed all night in the chair and I had the other four on my side of the bed, Max and Oscar by my head and Gray and Tux where my legs should have been. I have a feeling that George is going to be inside more than ever this winter and I am not sad about it! He has historically waited for the weather to be horrible before being in at night and he already has chosen the comfy life at 34 degrees.
