August 24, 2010
Kristin
Tina Taylor’s summer pics are back! I picked out some of the best ones of Lucy and scenery (since Matt already covered all of the produce bases with his last photo post). There is also one picture of the new chickens.
Tina came on quite a busy day. It was the same day as Lucy’s dedication at church, it was blazingly hot and Caleb’s family was in town visiting. Some of these things are reflected in the pictures (perhaps most notably, Lucy’s exhaustion). Check out the Summer 2010 album here.
August 22, 2010
Matt
In late July and early August, Whitney and I spent a fair bit of time and away from the farm traveling. Consequently, I had grown out of touch with the garden. This past weekend I was able to invest a sizable amount of time reconnecting with it. Our Needs Eatin’ week was so successful in large part because the garden has been producing. After weeks of suspense, our tomato and pepper plants have taken off. The green beans have been steady, and cucumbers are doing well, staving off the bugs that have devastated related plants. Those of us who can consume soy recently enjoyed a small harvest of edamame. (more…)
August 10, 2010
Kristin
From 7 months of grocery shopping and being at the prime of farm produce season, we have a bounty of food that “needs eatin’” (as my grandmother would say). We decided that this week’s challenge would be to NOT grocery shop all week, and to only use what we had in our cupboards and what came out of our garden, from our CSA, or from a farmer’s market. To facilitate this process, this evening we set out all of the edible food we have in our house and divvied it up auction style. (more…)
July 22, 2010
Kristin
Today I picked up a magazine I get in the mail that had the headline “Green travel: Food lovers down on the farm”. As you can imagine, based on the title, my interest was piqued. I turn to the contents page and BAM – a large picture featuring none other than Joel Salatin himself. My little intellectual heart sank.
If you’ve followed any sort of food issues recently, you are familiar with his name. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan – quite possibly the seminal book beginning the recent cultural critique of industrial farming – heavily features him and his farm, Polyface in Swoope, Virginia. Since the publishing of Dilemma he has also featured prominently in several food and farming themed documentaries, including Food, Inc and Fresh. But that’s not all. Magazine articles, international newspapers, speaking engagements, books, blogs, radio interviews – he’s ubiquitous. Here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia he’s practically a celebrity. In fact, in 2009 he was Charlottesville’s Person of the Year. Personally, we’re a little sick of him. (more…)
July 17, 2010
Caleb
One thing we wanted to do this year is “sustainable farming,” according to the opening thomasFarmProject.com blurb. We’ve certainly done some gardening, and we’ve got some chickens; but we’d be hard pressed to call that farming. To be real farmers I think we’d have to (1) earn money from our labors and (2) increase our scale. (more…)
