(Nearly) the end of another fruitful week and today is our first day out of the field. A new generation of no see'ems has hatched, making outside work unappealing and frustration-filled. But our time isn't wasted. Instead we're working at making the 'living areas' a bit more liveable. The Hornets Nest will soon have a new, varnished wood floor to replace the cardboard we walked on and Wwoofer Hollow is pruned, trimmed and tidied ready for a new influx of wwoofers in a week or so. The sun came out this week after a Summer solstice deluge last Saturday night/Sunday morning. An inch of rain plus hailstones and high winds eventually gave way to clear skies and sunshine on Sunday evening.....oh, and a frost. 8.30pm on Sunday evening (the first day of summer!) found us unravelling lengths of row cover over the tomatoes, peppers, squash and whatever else was deemed too frail to survive the plummeting temperatures. And it was lucky we did as 5am on Monday morning saw a low of 30 degrees. brrrr.
But thereafter, it's been nothing but hot sunshine and blue skies and the field has flourished as a result. The beans have started to seek out their beanpoles, tiny melons have appeared, cabbages and cauliflowers have shot up and even a flower or two has poked its head above the ground in the spiral. We planted more herbs, corn, tomatoes, bok choi and of course the Hugelkultur. The Hugelkultur used to be two empty trenches filled with a bit of raggedy compost and is now two (admittedly wonky) mounds of earth underneath which is a carefully planned network of sticks, sage brush, plant matter and dirt. On top of the mounds are trenches in which we've planted long lines of tomatoes and squash, all doing their best to survive. Fingers crossed. Thank you Elsie for your help and Garrett for your tractor - without it we'd still be shovelling now.
What else.....we finished the Lake City Pumpkin patch and the chickens Wayne and peeps have settled into their new lodgings across the road. Locavore Farms and its inhabitants continue to thrive.

Summer Sneaking up

The first Farmer's Market was yesterday, and despite the rainy weather we've been having, it was a beautiful and relaxed morning to see old friends and meet new ones.

The farm crew in sleepy Cedarville.

An early morning walk through the wet grass to the farm reveals rows of cabbage and broccoli that will be ready to pick in just a few weeks, lush potato plants working away at making little spuds of all kinds, and of course, weeds. New watering systems, the herb and flower gardens, and the future Lake City Harvest Festival pumpkin patch are making themselves at home here.

A beautiful cabbage.

Our newest WWOOFers, Claire and Chris, are fitting in beautifully, and somehow their focus and determination have inspired everyone to be just a little more creative. Good things are happening on the farm. Next Sunday we'll be sponsoring a potluck celebration of community and abundance on the first day of summer, and not too long after that, we'll open the U-Pick for the season - some time between the 4th of July and the middle of the month. We'll see how everything is growing. For now, we are starting to get delicious greens and radishes for the people who live here, and the cloudy mornings will soon give way to bright sunny days in the garden. There's so much work to be done and so much to be learned and discovered.

Grown With Love.

Hellos and Goodbyes

The farm looks more farmy every day, and we're saying hello to new squash seedlings, corn starts, and tomatoes each morning. The magic is beginning! Our new WWOOFers, Claire and Chris, have arrived and made themselves at home and invaluable. What an amazing thing it is to have such interesting, kind, capable people coming to stay with us and help us create the farm.

This week we also bid a fond farewell to Kaitlin, our improvisational hip hop opera-singing expert chef WWOOFer. Oh Kaitlin, we are lucky to have had you visit! Thank you for your creativity and positive energy!
I’ve seen beautiful in many places. How surprised was I by this valley; it smuggled me away for two lucky weeks. And aren’t you lucky to inhabit that corner of paradise? I think I might happily enslave myself to the dirt, it be porous enough to absorb my meditations, if my legs were not so anxious, for whatever foolish reason, to ramble more dishonest terrain. Now my knees ache from the unforgiving asphalt. Locavore Farms is a gift; I played in the dirt and I toiled too, in that soil. I left begrudgingly. At the mercy of an artlessly crafted metaphor, I do truthfully say that my personal convictions are also sowed thanks to that cozy, happy, kind little experience. May I spare you further wilted tropes by simply saying thank you to Laurie Wayne and other hospitable Bidwellians. You did bid me well and I hope my legs ramble your direction again.

A Note from WWOOFer Rose

Well, I’m sitting in the muggy Medford Greyhound Station next to a sweaty bearded man who keeps coughing on me, and all I can think about is how much I would give to be back in WWOOFer Hollow right now.




Locavore Farms is Paradise on a stick. Dipped in chocolate. With chopped peanuts on top. And some of Kaitlin’s orgasmically good cinnamon ice cream on the side. But all I have right now are the last of the Skittles that I bought with the very last dredges of my money. (Well, I have 3 cents left. Maybe I’ll ask the sweaty man if he wants a penny for his thoughts. Or maybe not.)

What can I say in my final farewell? I am honored to bear the title “First LJP WWOOFer of 2009”, because technically Laurie picked me up an hour and a half before Amanda :) Unfortunately I am also “First LJP WWOOFer to Leave in 2009”. So it goes.

I promised Laurie I’d throw in some iambic pentameter, so here it is. They’ll rhyme too, just for fun:


Philip, your music was simply superb
You always make me laugh and go “kaplurb!”
Kaitlin, perfessional photographer,
Or, no, should I say photograWWOOFer?
Amazingly generous Amanda
Nothing rhymes with you except “a panda”
Laurie, oh Laurie, you are the best… est
Sharing your home and your food and your wine and your hammocks and your time and your cots and your sunscreen and your shirts and your computers and your movies and your proctologist gloves and your books and your knowledge.

I’m soosososososososososososo riDICulously glad I was able to come to Ft. Bidwell, meet so many awesome people, and get my first taste of “farm livin”. After 2 and a half weeks at Locavore Farms, I do believe my City Girl feet have been toughened up a bit. (Thanks for pointing that out to me, Gerry. I’ll keep working on it.)



I’m sending happy thoughts to the plantlets and the peeps!!!

Love you all,

Rose