Public Service Announcement: Schoolhouse Farm and the South Elm Urban Market

We participated in our first Farmer's Market, the South Elm Urban Market, this past Sunday. It was fantastic, and only encouraged us to try more. Naomi and Leviah loved it, as did Drew and I.

Honey was a huge hit, we offered a sampling to visitors, and sold through most of our stock--so, we may be squeezing the bees in a few weeks to have more ;)

We also took several plants, mainly tomatoes, to sell. These are a couple of the sampler packs we put together, 4 varieties of heirloom seedlings for $6, we sold all but one. People are excited about growing their own food, and about learning the history of plants like Cherokee Purples, Brandywines, Abe Lincolns, Good Neighbors and more... 

Not pictured is the lettuce, which we sold through quickly--we intend to bring more of that next week, we weren't expecting to sell it so well. Also, we sold rhubarb plants and tomatillos--other great plants that folks want to be able to grow for themselves and experiment with.

As we already knew, there's such a movement toward food understanding, and we LOVE participating and learning ourselves. Beyond anything, we're excited to be connected with the local movement of folks. So many new beekeepers, backyard growers and general smart consumers--the Urban Market is a brand new staple in Greensboro that this 'farm' family is thrilled to be a part of. Come and see us!

join Schoolhouse Farm on facebook to stay up-to-date with our movements!

GARDEN: Biodynam-what?!

We're starting to get the bees ready for Spring. Pollen patties and sugar water have been added to the hives, the new hives have been ordered while the old ones have been cleaned up. It's weird to think that in February Spring is here, but nature knows best. The bees are always the first sign. If you sit by a hive for a little while on a warm day you will see them bring in pollen. In early February they will drink sugar water like crazy and roll around in pollen--they will go for any food source you offer them. Once the first trees (in our case the red maple) start to bloom, they hardly touch anything we give them. This is my favorite time of year because now we know spring has arrived.

When Valentine's day came we even began to plant peas and the other spring veggies, right into the ground. This year we are going to start the conversion to BD, no that's not a disease. Bio-Dynamics is a method of farming/gardening that incorporates the spiritual into working the land. It's new to us, and another aspect of Steiner's (creator of the Waldorf methods) research. We have just started learning this past year so are by no means experts, but I will attempt to explain what I understand.

If you look up into the sky at night you will see a host of stars, if its clear anyhow. These stars form constellations and are made of planets too. Each planet, just like the moon and the sun, reflect certain cosmic forces down onto the earth at very specific times. So, when a certain planet aligns with or against the moon or sun certain forces are reflected strongly towards the earth.

These forces can be broken up into a few different days. In no particular order they are leaf, root, flower, and fruit. So, depending on when and where the planets, moon, sun and constellations are you plant certain things. Example: if you want good tomatoes, you plant them on a fruit day. Ever had a really good tomato crop one year and the next year did everything exactly the same but had a bad crop? It could be that you planted the tomatoes the second year on different kind of day. That is one part.

This book is fantastic for learning/explaining the processes

The other part, the part that has really attracted us to this method of gardening, is the idea that there is more to the earth than dirt. That just because you cant see something does not mean it does not exist. The earth--the 'dirt', has a spiritual element to it. This element needs to be acknowledged and respected, just as we work the physical soil we also need to work with the spiritual realm of the garden/farm to help heal the earth. When we can restore the right balance in the soil and plants we will be able to once again have produce that restores our bodies and the planet more effectively. The produce will have spiritual nourishment along with the physical.

Of course, we apply our faith to our life in a very physical way (what we eat/don't eat, what we wear, when we celebrate, etc). All of this connects us very spiritually to our faith, and in turn our understanding of nature has come to incorporate. In learning about Rudolf Steiner, while some of his particular word choice is different than ours may be, it rings of the same theme--we are spiritual beings living in a spiritual place. There is a Creator who has breathed life into this planet and if we recognize our connection to it, we'll in another sense realize more fully our connection to Him. 

So, to take on Biodynamics in our own garden there is quite a bit that needs to be done. First with planting times, then with composting and other additives. We are going to try and document all this change this spring. Any advice or questions would be greatly appreciated! 

One more thing: we'd love to see what's going on in your gardens! We're hoping that you'll share with us, perhaps every Sunday. If you'd like to participate by sharing a link to your recent garden update, please post a linkie here! (& reference it on your blog, if possible).

GARDEN: Ingenuity on the Home Front

first of all: we spent a LOT of moments outside over the weekend. Not all work--lots of play (& bicycle riding).

but we accomplished a great feat. at least it feels nice to have come up with an idea, put it into action, and it seems to be working...

We created these 'shelves' for the walls of our greenhouse. It's not the world's largest greenhouse, perfect size for our backyard garden really, but we want to make sure that we're getting the most benefit from it. So, some sort of shelving system was in order. While building shelves wouldn't have been a horrible option, it'd be difficult to build some that weren't so deep that they crowd the space, and we most likely would have used wood which would have meant we'd need some type of container for the pots & water on top. It all sounded pretty costly...

So, we've been thinking. Inspired a little by a friend who used gutters as bookshelves in her room, and a little by this toy the kids enjoy, we came up with the above pictured contraption. You water at the top and it flows down, through a hole into the next gutter keeping all our little seedlings watered thoroughly. Best part is we can line all the walls of the greenhouse with them as we have the need.

What did we have to buy?

• 1 2x4 board
• 1 10foot piece of aluminum gutter
• 4 gutter supports
• 4 gutter end caps

Total cost: approx $12 & for $6/2 shelves we can add to our hearts content! It's terrific, really. Not to toot my own horn or anything--but for once my ideas were the major contributors to solving our garden needs. I think we both walked away feeling like engineers.

Spring is in the air around here--on top of these seedlings we have many sewn in our garden beds. It is still February, but surely the trees wouldn't be budding and the bulbs wouldn't be peeking through if it weren't time for new growth!