Beauty

As you may know by now, I like to focus our newsletter around one key word that summarizes our week.  This week it was hard to choose just one word.   Refresh…root…observe…plenty…preserve.  This is an extremely abundant season right now and there are many words that could express what the week has been about. 

However, in the end beauty was the word for this week.  I set myself the goal of “finding beauty every day”.   I keep a daily 5-year farm journal where I record our planting dates, harvest notes, weather patterns, lists of things our farm can improve on, and other observations that will hopefully help us improve what we are doing here.  These notes can be compared and tracked over 5 years  with this journal.  I have also started to add little notes about beauty that I discover around us every day.  Looking for beauty gives me moments of pause during our busy days, and provides a daily practice of gratitude and appreciation (often for small and simple things that could easily be overlooked).

We intentionally plant a wide array of flowers and herbs throughout our farmstead and gardens, to attract pollinators, companion plant, and encourage diversity.  We cut some of these as fresh flower bouquets and aromatic bunches of herbs to bring to the farmer’s market.  Although we have noticed that flowers and herbs don’t tend to sell very well at our small-town market, we include them at our booth each time anyway.  We completely understand that flowers and herbs are not in everyone’s budget.  However, it makes us smile when we hear comments from customers about how beautiful our booth looks and smells (and we even sold a few bunches!).   The flowers and herbs enhance the vegetables we are selling, and make people feel happy when they come into our booth. 

One of our farmstead goals is to get people excited about eating locally grown food.  We want our food to be nourishing for the body, but also a feast for the senses.  We grow many heirloom vegetables that aren’t usually found at the grocery store, chosen by us for their outstanding flavours and rainbow of colours.  Our market customers and veggie box members notice the care we put into our food, not only in how we grow and harvest it, but also the varieties we choose and how we display it.  Many have reminisced about how their grandparents grew striped tomatoes or purple beans like ours, made ground cherry jam (that you can’t find in the store), and pickled dilly beans.  Food connects us to each other, but also to our past and our histories.  If we are to be “your farmer” we want you to feel cared for, nourished and appreciated with our foods, including the beauty they add to your table.

Where do you find beauty in your life?  Let us add beauty to your plate!