No CSA? No hog shares? Are we even still here?
Yep. We are here and working on improvements around the farm. A CSA is a labor of love as much as one of economy, and while we still love the farm we both work off the farm to make ends meet. Ellie is a GIS Applications Analyst (she does digital mapping) and Ted is a teacher–high school during the day, and the University of Memphis in the evenings. With so much going on, we might still have been able to eek out a CSA for spring, but hanging people’s CSA memberships on “might” didn’t seem smart.
Even so, we are actually doing, in some ways, more on the farm than we have in previous years. Since we started the CSA we have talked about using permaculture practices, but when it came down to planting time we gave our first efforts to spring annuals like kale, beets, and cabbage. This year we are putting more time into the apple orchard, the newly-expanded herb garden, the edible landscape around the house, and the hardscaping (fences, gates, and borders) to support it all. We see things growing in new ways, and instead of planting rows and rows of seeds we are tending plants that will grow and produce for years–if we have patience and love.I
f you want a CSA, you should check out Oleo Acres–or if they are full any of the other CSAs around the area (if you run a CSA, leave a comment on this post with a link!)
If you like herbs, both fresh and dried, we are planting both culinary and non-culinary herbs: thyme, rosemary, lavender, oregano, sage, lots of different mints, rue, wormwood, yarrow, fennel, mullein, bee balm, and more. Stay tuned!