Happy Friday, happy Native American Heritage Day, and happy belated Thanksgiving!  Today is an appropriate day to make a book recommendation.  I highly recommend getting your hands on 1491.  A fascinating book on the Americas prior to European settlers.  Truly mind-blowing on so many levels.  A really expansive, yet in-depth, complex and nuanced portrait of the thriving civilizations that proliferated on these 2 continents for so long.  It’s hard to overstate just how profound the information in that book is.  Okay. Back to farm talk.

Our crew is all off for the latter half of this week spending time with family.  Our niece is visiting from Mississippi and is currently out with Mandy collecting Cosmo seeds before the rain and likely playing with puppies.

We recently had a country dog take up with us and she subsequently had a fling or two leaving us with a bunch of puppies. We’ve got 6 of them.  I wanted zero, because I’ve maxed out my quota of animals to care for, but somehow have fallen in love with all of them and can’t stop cuddling them.  They are so freakin adorable it kind of hurts.  Each one has developed its own personality and wormed its way into our hearts, but they are destined to be small dogs that can squeeze through our perimeter fence and become vulnerable to our local pack of coyotes, so we are begrudgingly looking for good homes for them.  Mandy swears they are brilliant animals, that are all really responsive to training, and that she’s not being bias in her assessment :).  I just cuddle them, so I can’t speak to her assessment, but they do seem to be responding to her commands somehow despite being only 9 weeks old.  She’s a bit of a dog whisperer I guess.

  We spent the early part of the week cataloging the mums, digging them all out, potting them up, and preparing to turn them into “mother” plants for propagating cuttings for all the  gardeners and farmers interested in growing their own next Spring.  We have to refresh that whole tunnel still in order to get it ready for a whole bunch of ranunculus plants, but will wait until after the holiday to start that process.

We’ve now filled about 90% of all the rest of the tunnels in snapdragons, godetia, ranunculus, anemones, butterfly ranunculus, and poppies.  Soooo maaaannnnyyy plaaaants!!!

If we’re diligent and if weather and good fortune are on our side, we should be swimming in our favorite blooms by February.  It’s always such a beautiful time of year.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  

For those that are interested in fresh flowers, we’ll be starting back around Valentine’s day unless we have a very warm winter, in which case we could start cutting anemones in January.  

I do have some more immediately gratifying flower news though.  We have decided to offer flower subscriptions for Spring and we’ll be offering pre-purchases just in time for the holiday season! So, if you, or a loved one wants fresh flowers to arrive at their door each week without having to wait for noon each Friday to anxiously make a purchase, this is the option for you.  We’ll have more details available soon.

The store is closed today and tomorrow, but will be back open next Thursday and completely restocked with tons of new and unique pottery and woodwork.  Tony is unveiling his line of charcuterie boards just in time for the holidays.  We’ll also be putting the remaining dried Lunaria that Mandy has been saving for our local customers in the store.

We have our digital wreath making course available on our website, which teaches you how to make a wreath completely from materials that can be gathered and harvested.  However, we will not be offering wreath kits this winter.  We’ve got too much work to do to prepare for Spring to be able to spare the time to make the kits.  Perhaps we’ll be able to do them again next year.

Before I go, I’d like to say that if you are looking for a small business to support this week and haven’t picked one yet, we’ll be announcing a wonderful opportunity to do so next week.  Some amazingly talented, hard working, and big hearted friends have been hustling for years to get their own brick and mortar operation going and are about to go live with their final step of crowdfunding next week.  They are the perfect combination of extreme talent, incredible work ethic, and genuine kindness and generosity.  A rare blend, so we very much hope they find the support they need to make the magic we know they can in Athens.  We’ll keep you updated.

  Wishing you a wonderful weekend.  Thank you for all you do for our farm and our farm family!!!