Fullness

Upon reflecting on this past week, the word that best encompasses these days is “fullness”.  

Full moon: At the start of the week we had a beautiful full moon, keeping us awake and encouraging late-night sky gazing from our porch.  We noticed the days are getting shorter, as it was dark by the time we were done our garden chores, our chickens were put into the coop for night, and we could finally settle on the porch.  

Full days: We attended 3 different markets during the week, meaning our days felt extremely full.  Between harvesting, washing, preparing vegetables, and baking bread for market in advance, to setting up our booth and spending hours at the markets themselves, the days seemed to fly by.  It also meant there was not a lot of extra time left for chores back here at the farm, so the gardens now have a fullness of weeds among the vegetables.  We hope to catch up a bit this week.

Full kitchen: We have a bounty coming in our gardens, including new this week: new varieties of zucchini (including the gorgeous ribbed Italian heirloom Romanescu), green and yellow beans, bucket loads of cucumbers, newly dug potatoes, hot peppers, cucamelons, berries, edible flowers, zinnias and more!  This has meant a fullness in our bellies from the wonderful meals we are eating, and fullness in the kitchen as we preserve, dehydrate, pickle, and ferment much of this bounty to fill our pantry and root cellar for winter eating.  We hope you can share this bounty with us through our farm store or market booth!  In our weekly newsletter we include recipes to get your excited about this week’s food offerings.

Full drying shed: In the past week we dug up all our garlic.  It was a bit of a milestone, as garlic was the very first thing we planted when we moved here last fall (getting it in just before the first frost came).  We had planted over 1000 garlic, three different hard-neck varieties that are good for storage.  Greg built a series of large wire drying racks, which we completely filled with garlic and set up in our quonset to dry over the course of this month.  Cured garlic, and seed garlic, will be ready at the end of August and it’s looking beautiful!

Full life: We are noting the fullness of life every day, as we observe the landscape and ecology we are surrounded by.  We hear coyotes at night, watch birds on the river bank behind our house, the bald eagles regularly fly over at dusk, the purple martins sing in the trees near the garden, a swallowtail butterfly hatched on our fennel this week.  Our 8 year old son rescued a dozen tadpoles and raised them in our rainbarrel - over the course of the week they grew legs and climbed out as tiny frogs.  We try to find moments of stillness to just be with the land, listen, wonder and observe.  There is much to learn.

Full hearts: Finally, we have the fullness of our hearts as we continue to work hard every day to make our farmstead dream into a reality.  Thanks for joining us on our new farm journey!