Happy Friday y’all.    It’s been a full and interesting week out here.  Mother’s day bouquet harvest, making, packing, and shipping is always enough to fill our plates, but this year we had 200 mum plant orders to add to it and a couple of crazy storms come through and throw a few wrenches in the gears.   There was talk of a hail storm on Monday, but we have a tiny microclimate where hailstorms historically never affect us.  Neighboring farms have reported hail multiple times over the years, but we’re always spared despite being 10 minutes away from those farms. We decided not to worry about it and after the crew left, Mandy hopped in the van to go...

 They have emerged.  The ground is littered with holes carved up through the hard clay, spotted like Swiss cheese.  The leaves and branches of every bush and tree are covered in vacuous chitinous shadows of earlier incarnations.  A never-ending crescendo of humming is the soundtrack to our lives.  Gently turning the volume ever upward.  When I reach into a bush to cut a peony, or stick my torso into a small pump house to fix a well, I’m greeted by orange eyes starting at me and orange wings humming past my face, occasionally landing on my clothes.  Bent over the carcass of an old greenhouse table this afternoon, I felt an unfamiliar and slightly prickly presence on the back of...

Happy Friday!    The lovely purple Lunaria that carpeted our world has all gone to seed but for a few stubborn petals holding out til the last minute. The snowball viburnum dropped all their bruised and faded flowers in the last rain.  The buckeyes’ new leaves look like a droopy, wet hat. The bamboo is ferociously aggressive and the new shoots are already 15 feet tall.  The Smokebush is beginning to flower while the nearby Pecans’ pollen is making us choke a bit and get red in the eyes.  The poppies are just about done for the year and the deer flies seem to love when I harvest the peonies. The love is not reciprocal. The honeysuckle is absolutely lovely...

Happy Friday y’all!    It’s been a sweaty week down here.  The seasonal cramping has begun as the days have been in the mid to upper 80’s, construction work needed doing, and the air smells like chicken farts.     We’re surrounded by 100 acres of hay fields and after mowing and baling, comes fertilizing.  They’ve got chicken houses, so it’s an in-house sorta deal.  They load a dump truck with the doo doo, then drive it out to the fields and spread it out. Feeds the grass, but it’s a little gamey in the nostrils for a minute.  Fortunately the nearest fields haven’t been graced yet, so once the dust settles, the fragrance passes and the sweet scent of roses...

   Happy Friday yet again.  They just keep coming.  Spring is zipping by.    Smoke bushes are leafing out, the lunaria has formed its silver dollars, the chlorophyll has filled in the leaves of the Japanese maple and obscured the anthocyanins, the bamboo shoots are 5 feet tall, the mower’s broke and the grass is tall, two and a half greenhouses are already finished and empty, and the peonies are starting to bloom.  And if you’re following along from last week….the plums survived!!  So excited about that last one.    The farm store is open and is actually going to have veggie plants for sale out front this weekend.  Normally you have to buy them in advance, but we’re switching...

Happy Friday y'all!  It's a beautiful day out here at the absolute peak of Spring.  A nip to the air this morning and a potential frost this evening though, so we may lose some foliar friends to frost.  Hoping it doesn't damage the peonies too much or take out my favorite plum tree.  I really want those plums.  We all do.  Communally gathering around a bountiful tree, silently stuffing our smiling faces with juicy sweet plums is a highlight in my memory banks.  It happened one summer out of 13.  One summer the fruit escaped the frost and every friend we had over got to share our delight in the magic of this unbelievable plum tree.  Unparalleled in flavor.  The...

Happy Friday y'all!      The plant sale is happening and it couldn't be a more pretty time to visit the farm store.  The weather is great, everything is leafing out or blossoming out, and there's just that peaceful, freshness permeating the air.  Everything is young and chipper and full of potential and you kinda feel like you can absorb some of it through osmosis.  So far it hasn't reversed my crow's feet, but it does wonders for my spirits.    We gratefully got some extra help over these last two weeks and not only are they pleasant to have around, but our collective load has been lightened and you can feel a sense of relief from the whole crew.  Everyone...

Happy Friday!    Birds are singing, cows are mooing, and Chaos, seemingly oblivious to yesterday's neutering,  is puppy scampering about with Mandy's shoe in his mouth.  The Lunaria are splashing exceedingly welcome bits of purple throughout the carpet of green in the landscape.  Snowball viburnums are just beginning the transition from subtle green foliage to explosive white beauty with the first few petals going white at the tippy tops of the plants.  The Japanese Maples are red with anthocyanins, the Loropetalums are going full Jackson Pollock, and the grass is tall enough to impede bipedalism in various places.    The blossoms have all rained off of the plums and the last of the peach blossoms will wash away with today's...

Happy Friday y’all!    It’s beautiful out here!  The peaches, plums, Loropetalum, Spirea, Carolina Jessamine, Clematis armandii, wild plums, sand pear, and so much more are dripping in flowers.  Petals are raining down in the wind and rain and sprinkling the ground with beauty around the base of the plums.  The grass is getting tall, taunting me with threats of another job that requires my time.    We had plans to celebrate St. Patrick's day with some special friends (both are responsible for Mandy and I connecting), but realized we are back in that space of farm flow where the world is moving so fast that no matter how much you run, you can’t quite catch it.  So in the name of responsibility, we...

   Heaven’s to Betsy it’s been busy. We are all running at max capacity all day every day at this point. Good problem to have I guess, but what the hell does heaven’s to Betsy even mean? Sometimes you write something down and are confused as to why you are writing it down. I could google the origins, but I think I’ll prefer to stay ignorant right now. Too fried to self educate.     So, “Is everything always perfect and easy over at 3 Porch Farm?”, you beginning farmers might be asking yourselves. Indeed it’s a veritable cake walk. (Has anyone ever been on a cake walk? What is a cake walk? Do you need new shoes or just a...