Summer Wains

32 New tomatoes tasted cleaned and saved! You will have

to wait till next year to find out what they are.
Foraging in the fall is one of my favorite things, here I am in the tallest stand

of Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum L.) I have ever seen. Gathered some

leaves to experiment with some native plant teas I am working on.
The Tomato Tsunami is rolling on, if you missed the article in the

Philadelphia Inquirer check it out.

Pictures for Martha

I do not have much to write, but I wanted to share some photos of Amy and I on the farm.

Thanks David

We are going on tour

Thats right we are going on tour, not with the Grateful Dead or Motorhead, but with plants.So if you need some of the the coolest tomato, pepper, eggplant, swiss chard, or herbs. Well over 100 varieties. Come out to one of these great events and check us out!

Our plants look great this year, it is our first year using Organic Mechanics soil. It is so great to have a local source for such a great product.

Happy Cat Farm

Follow us on tour!

April, 24 Earth Day Festival Mechanicsburg, Pa.

April, 25 Malvern Blooms

Malvern, Pa.

May, 1 Donaldson Nursery

Hackettstown, NJ

May, 2 Chestnut Hill Garden Fair Chestnut Hill, Pa.

May, 7&8 Landis Valley Museum Herb & Garden Fair

Lancaster, Pa.

May,15 Spring Garden fund

Phila. Pa

May, 22nd B & H Organics Open House Morgantown, Pa.

Where can you find us every week!

Kennett Square Farmers Market Fridays 2-6

Winterthur Farmers Market Saturdays 10-2

Headhouse Market Sundays 10-2

Media Farmers Market Thursdays from May 13 to June 10,^, 3-7 pm.

Cause and effect

Our first seeds in open ground emerging
Seeds and Chaff.

“Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed”

Emerson

People are talking, lots of people and not just the foodie preachers and the choir. People like my mom and co-workers and people I meet out that usually just talk about things like Jersey Shore Show and really like it, not just people who watch it for its train wreck astonishments.

Jaime Oliver’s new Food Revolution, Food Inc. and The Future of Food.

Honestly I never cared for Oliver and his young jumping around Naked Chief days, but go old ma, she liked him and sometimes you just have to listen to your mom. For my birthday one year she gave me his ‘Jamie at Home’ I was hooked; he also did a show in England called 15. 15 was based around a restaurant of the same name, that took in 15 troubled kids and gave them mad skills and a real appreciation for food and where it comes from and how much work goes into it. Jaime then went on national English TV with his friend Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (my hero and host of The River Cottage) they went into chicken batteries (factories that chickens are raised in, oh yeah the English learned how to grow chickens by mass production from us.) People all over Europe where shocked and the shock wave even hit our shores. But by the time it got to us it was just a slow methodical ripple, like you would find in an Iraq oil field.

So Mr. Oliver came to the states to teach fat pizza eating yanks to eat real food. The show is really great and makes me so sad for the state of our food systems in this country. Getting chicken nugget addicted children in West Virginia to eat salads, may not be musket fire at Concord, but the trigger has been pulled and oddly enough a Brit has started a new revolution in America.

Wow I really wanted to write about seeds. (Hence the Emerson quote)

I touch seeds everyday, I clean them, I plant them, I eat them, I sell them, so I get the connection between putting seeds in the ground and the food that I put into my body, but watching those kids made me sick, I bet if I showed them seeds they would want pizza and chicken nugget seeds. Very few people get this connection, and that is why I was so happy with the response our seeds have gotten from the greater Philadelphia region.

Philly is a really a cool town and a great place to eat and now buy locally produced sustainable seeds.

So check out Milk and Honey Market out at 44^th and Baltimore, a great store for lots of locally grow produce and cheese. I really wise I lived around the corner. The owners are cool the staff is hip and the space is beautiful.

Fair Food Farm Stand at the Reading Terminal, after Central Market in Lancaster City it is the second best market in this country. Fair Food anchors the 12^th street side of the market; go get seeds a hotdog with a knish on it and a shoeshine.

Speaking of Lancaster’s Central Market Green Circle Organics just got our seeds for all my old peeps in the LC.

Also in the Northern Liberties Almanac Market also carries our seeds and sells such a great selection products it makes me want to move to the city.

The last shout out for the region has to go to Terry and Hannah at Kimberton Whole foods they have our seeds in multiple stores.

Lastly I have the best staff in the world. Holly and Elise cranked it out in my Kennett sweatshop. Holly is fresh off of her one women worldwide trip of peace and justice, she make me laugh, she makes me want to be a better person and she works really hard.

Elise just got back from sledging rubble in Haiti, and like the next day was wackin out the seed orders, she is awesome and inspiring.

Later

P.S. Veg Transplants are coming and this year we have over 100 varieties.

A long Time Coming!

Well if tomato fungus and snow where my 2 main crops this year I would be whipping a new Benz, but we did have a great year without tomatoes and with all the snow. Our potato crop and greens where killing it this season. But it is 58 degrees outside today and we have 20,000 veg transplants in the greenhouse getting ready to roll, so here is a nice tomato jam for the plants and all the hippies out there.

Our house in about 28" of new snow.
A plow truck here at Winterthur!
One of 2 lectures at this years Farming for the future conference at PASA this year. It was on saving seeds but I worked Yoda into it.

I will post the entire video of the lecture someday.

We also had a great article in the March Grid Magazine and our

farm grown seeds are selling like mad, more on that in the next post.

Later

Made me smile!

Photo by Mike Siegel, The Seattle Times. Jake Harris, left, with his Cascadian Edible Landscapes partner Michael Seliga, grows chives, basil, zucchini and other vegetables in a parking strip outside his home in the University District

The Seattle City Council is working to increase availability of affordable, locally grown food. One approach: allowing folks to grow vegetable gardens in parking strips — the no man’s land between sidewalk and curb

By Maureen O’Hagan
Seattle Times
July 25, 2009

We’ve all heard the foodie mantra: Eat Local.

It’s going gangbusters in grocery stores that increasingly tout local produce. Now, area government has gotten involved, too.

No, the City Council isn’t pushing expensive arugula. Instead, it’s trying to increase the availability of locally grown food, especially for those least able to afford it.

“I think there’s a real transformation happening,” said Branden Born, assistant professor of urban design and planning at the University of Washington.

Some of this shift involves research projects and nonbinding resolutions, which are essentially invisible to ordinary citizens. But for tangible evidence — actual growing evidence — you need look no further than the lowly curb in front of your home.

It used to be that planting anything but grass in the strip between the sidewalk and the curb required a permit, even if it was just a spray of flowers or a few carrots. For hardscaping, like steppingstones or raised beds, fees averaging $225 were attached, too. Would-be gardeners routinely called the city to complain.

This year, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) changed its rules. Now, no permit is required for parking-strip vegetable gardens. While hardscaping still requires a permit, it’s easy to get and free of charge, said Rick Sheridan, spokesman for SDOT.

Last year, the city issued 22 permits for parking-strip gardens. This year, they’ve issued 52, and that’s for hardscaping alone. There’s no telling how many people have taken advantage of the new no-permit rules for simple vegetation.

“We get the sense that people are really embracing it,” Sheridan said.

‘Eat your yard’

Gardener Jake Harris, for one, couldn’t wait, and immediately planted a veritable cornucopia in front of his University District home. In addition, Harris’ company, Cascadian Edible Landscapes, has installed raised beds for a half-dozen other Seattleites eager to capture the unobstructed sunlight that parking strips offer.

Harris says his mantra is “eat your yard.” And the demand in Seattle, he said, is “pretty huge.”

“We’re looking for every way possible for people who want to plant food to be able to do so,” said Rob Gala, an aide to City Council President Richard Conlin, who is leading the charge. “And the closer it is to their house, the better.”

Parking strips, however visible, are just a small part of larger changes, Born said. He sees hope in the research projects, grants and policy decisions that are aimed at broadening the local food movement.