Starting to See Delicious Results

Amanda with some beautiful radishes

The summer weather pattern has finally set in - warm, sunny days with breezy afternoons (and sometimes the promise of a little thunder shower), early bright mornings and balmy evenings. The plants are loving it and we're starting to see the miracles happen every day right before our eyes.

Philip found the first baby squash.

This is a precious time in our very short growing season, and we're grateful to have the help of our wonderful volunteer WWOOFers. We were so lucky to have Claire and Chris visit us for 3 weeks while they were on holiday from their home in the UK - they were simply a joy. We wish them the very best and will make good on our promise to send them some of the produce they made possible by spending so many hours in the dirt weeding. Thank you, Claire and Chris, for your unending positivity and energy! You catapulted many projects forward in your short time at the farm! Plus, chocolate beetroot cake!

The Hugelkultur is planted and hosting squash, cucumbers, and many tomatoes that would otherwise have been doomed to the compost pile, along with volunteer squash and potatoes. The chickens will be laying before long, and they are enjoying their time in the chicken corral and Chez Poulet, the temporary predator-proof hutch, but it's almost time to build them a proper house. Lots to do as always. Today's activities are pretty typical, really, of a Modoc summer: up early to harvest, then to the Farmers' Market, a quick stop at the 4th of July parade in Lake City (and we snuck into the end of the parade, even though we didn't have the official parade Farm Truck), then home again for naps, a dip in the creek, and a quiet, lazy afternoon. Soon it will be cool enough to hit the weeds in the onion beds and to start the irrigation going. After a bit more work on the farm, it will be dinner made with love from local ingredients and maybe a stroll up the hill to look for fireworks, then to bed for an early start again tomorrow, filled with more friends, adventures, and lessons from nature.

We don't really need to say it, but we're really lucky to be here on the farm.

(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

Farmin' Hard

The weeks since the last post have flown by. Our wonderful WWOOFers have arrived - Rose, Philip, Amanda and Kaitlin, our drip irrigation system is in and functioning (though the pump threatens to quit working every single day), and life at the farm has settled into a steady rhythm of early mornings, hard work, mid day naps, and in the evening there may be music, meals, visits from friends, or more farming. The bright sun and warm temperatures are accompanied by mosquitoes, who attack some of us more than others, and there are hardly any goldfinches any more at the bird feeder. The Sand Hill Cranes have moves along as have the Canada Geese, and a white egret was spotted at the pond in th last few days. The roses in front of the Hornet's Nest are starting to bloom, as have the irises planted by Montez Bucher in the 60's (we think). The first batch of chickens have their feathers and look like official chickens. They spend each night outside - they are sweet and love people. The little peepletons - Reddy, Spot, Arrow, Rocket, Blackie, Buffy, Buffy, Buffy, and Buffy - are getting their tiny feathers and gradually getting used to the 20 seconds of affectionate human touch which is administered to them twice each day.

Our little acre of paradise is coming along nicely - the rocks and weeds who have had complete dominion are being moved out and aside for squash and cabbage and eggplant. The first block of corn goes in today, and the beans will probably get planted today too. Though we may still get a sold snap, it's looking like warm days with just a suggestion of thunderstorms in the afternoon as far as the forecast goes. There's still an awful lot to do to prepare for the season, but it's a wonderful time to be busy on the farm.

Bright Days

The days of rain and clouds have given way to sunny bright spring days, perfect for planting and even more importantly, for growing! The creek water has made it up to the field, the onions have been planted, the tomatoes are stretching out their necks (they really want to be in the ground!). New chickens, and the chickens who will now probably be called "the old chickens" even though they are only a month or so old, lend an air of serenity and humor to the farm. This is a delicate time in Surprise Valley for gardeners and farmers. The daytime temperatures are in the 70's and at night it barely freezes, but conventional wisdom says it's going to turn cold again before it turns warm for good. When do we risk our tender seedlings to the elements? Maybe not quite yet. The first WWOOFers will be arriving in less than a week, and if the weather holds out, we'll be planting like crazy. In the meantime, the Hornet's Nest is experiencing its last moments of quiet before months of activity and good times begin.

There's so much to be done on the farm - planting, laying the irrigation, making WWOOFer Hollow cozy and comfy, designing the herb and flower gardens, digging, weeding, gazing at the sky, teaching and learning, meeting our new friends and customers, having parties. For now we're provisioning up and hoping for the best with every expectation that our summer will be full of love, joy, peace, and veggies.

Older Chickens, meet your new friends! Hope they are as nice as you!