Howdy friends!

   A couple acres of beds are made and I’m a little sunburned from hours of shoveling in the sun, but already a couple thousand dahlias have been planted by the ladies.  It’s always interesting to see how your mind responds to adding order and geometry to a field that was previously filled with grasses or cover crops.  You’d think it would feel alien and unsettling to take a “natural” space and add row after row, but instead it's quite calming and pleasing in appearance.  Perhaps it's subconscious satisfaction gained from a temporary victory over entropy and an erroneous belief that the second law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply to you.  Or maybe it's just that parallel lines gently arching over mildly elliptical terraces like small rainbows of dirt are truly just easy on the eyes.  Either way, it’s a phenomenon I’ve often felt surprised by, but never put into words and now that I have a page to fill, it just fell out of my head, so there you have it.

   Lavender is being harvested and the calming scent of this phenomenal flower is filling the studio and the cooler.  After enjoying it fresh, we like to dry it and put little bunches of it in our clothes drawers for added freshness and to burn sprigs of it as incense. “Phenomenal”  is actually the name of this variety if any of you gardeners are looking for a more humidity friendly variety to grow yourselves.

   We realized that we got a bit of a bumper crop this year, so we just decided to put it on sale and get it out to as many homes as possible this week and next, so send some scented love to a friend who could use it if you feel the call to share some love. There are two chunky bundles in each order, so there is plenty to share with a friend.

   Mums are all planted and every other greenhouse is now filled with cover crop or cover crop seeds in order to replenish the soils for next Spring’s flower crops.

   Mandy and I rescued a 5 foot beautiful black snake from being tangled up in bird netting yesterday and it was such a delight to be able to get it free and see that it was healthy, happy, and completely free of injury.   I have seen one perish in that situation before, but this one was great and if I do say….kind.  I had to cut netting that was cinched tight around its throat and though it flinched with anxiety repeatedly,  not once did it feign an interest in biting me.  A true gentleman.  Thank you to Ginny and Scotty who happened to generously gift us with a custom made snake handler stick earlier this week.  Once we got it free, Mandy was able to use it to transport the little feller away from the netting and off to safer environs. 

   The farm store is now closed for the summer and we send a hearty thank you to all who have spent time exploring all of its unique goodies this Spring.  We’ll open back up for the September plant sale and for dahlias.

   We’ll be taking some breaks from putting out a newsletter over the next couple of months as the farm slows down and we try to put our proverbial (and actual) house in order. I just realized that working 7 day weeks for 9 months, deprives us of weekends that many normal people use to rest, digest, repair, socialize, get away, etc..   That adds up to 78 days each year, or 2-1/2 months of personal time, that we are missing.  And we do miss it.  

   So we are planning our little hearts out to try and reclaim a tiny slice of that in our summer and we’ll be putting our focus on escaping farm chores when we can and to put that energy into fixing the house and visiting with family and friends, catching up on doctor/dentist visits,  and occasionally getting off the farm and away from the constant tug of chores that always need to be done.

   I know for certain that the next couple weeks will be word free for me, but I’ll probably pop back in after that for a week or two just to say hi.

   Thanks again to all who follow along on our farmscapades.  We thank you for a great Spring and wish you a joyful couple of weeks.
-Steve