Greetings from the Garden! The box this week has salad mix, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, onions, garlic, carrots, and cabbage Field Notes. Ken continues planting for the salad mixes, and has been making pottery. Soon he will start full season crops like onions and celery and parsley. Then it will be one planting after the next. Soon after that Ken will be seeding and transplanting in green houses. This time of year …
Winter includes many necessary tasks. Now the following are done: seeds ordered, taxes prepped, sales tax filed and paid, etc. Now I clean and weave between harvest dates. I am finishing off a test warp. I thought it would make two rugs, but I have enough warp for a smaller third rug with the remaining balls from three worn out wool blankets I am trying out something new – I had read about this …
Ken is in the studio making pots. I like to sneak down with a camera and snap some photos. He centers the clay He pulls up the pot’s sides He cleans the top with a chamois He trims excess off the bottom With a wire Ken cuts the pot from the …
Greetings from the Garden! This CSA box has salad mix, cabbage, potatoes, winter tomatoes, onions, garlic, winter squash, carrots, and beets Field Notes. Ken’s winter routine is to ski out to the greenhouses and check for deer and rodent damage. Soon he will be checking the inside temperatures in for planting! Ken continues planting in winter – he is planting greens for salad mix. People ask why we don’t do shoots and micro greens year …
Tonight’s supper was comfort food to my New England roots. Saute side pork or bacon and onion, add thyme and either clams or corn. I also had some boiled cubed potatoes to add. Add chicken or light soup stock, milk and cream, salt and pepper to taste. For the muffins I had masa from our dry corn, our lard, our eggs, and kefir from a friend’s milk. The flour is locally milled. It …
Ken taught the first pottery class of 2017 yesterday morning. Today he started making pottery. He said he was “warming up” by making some larger coil pots. As I headed down the stairs he was busy on a banding wheel. He had decided to smooth out some texture. Then he finished that pot. When I went down to announce supper was ready, he was making a second …
Ken’s pug mill of 40+ years needed repairs this week. A pug mill has an auger that mixes clay to a uniform consistency and a vacuum pump that sucks surplus air from the clay. The resulting clay needs minimal wedging (like kneading bread) before it can be used Ken had to take it apart He got out the manual The bearings needed to …
Ken has bees here. He is most concerned with having a healthy hive to help with pollination of our crops. Honey bees also make two useful things for us:honey and beeswax Ken has been saving wax to make candles. I got him some molds and wicks a while back. While cleaning, Ken came across his beeswax stash and decided to make candles. He melts the wax in a pan of water …
