Turnips

No, these are not more radishes! At last the Purple Globe turnips are ready, along with the Seven Top Southern Prize leaf turnips. I hope all the good fertile compost and much love has made them nice and sweet. Say what you will, but I like the taste of turnips. They are not starchy like potatoes, but I like the mellow brassica flavor. These will be boiled with butter and salt for dinner. The greens will be boiled with bacon and a splash of vinegar to serve. These are the first, but there are more to follow. Mmmm....I can taste the saurruben already.

Aren't we sick of radishes yet?

Here is a new batch of radish pickles to be put up. It is so easy and they are so tasty I wanted to share the process.

First we harvest and clean the radishes. I throw the tops to the pigs because they love them so much and I am not really fond of radish greens. Then we trim the top and bottom and slice them in pretty shapes. Rosie likes to help me out with washing them.

Here are some radish rose pickles I'm trying. Salt is supposed to open them up, so I figure they will bloom in the salty brine. Or they'll stay closed and just be really tasty.

Next I wash the jars and add any seasonings: garlic, ginger, mustard, pepper, dill, etc. Then I pack in the radishes and add a tablespoon of fine sea salt on top. I've been liking to add a round slice of onion on the top, to keep the radishes in the brine, prevent molds while they are fermenting and for flavor.

Then I pour over well water to almost the top of the jar. Leave an inch or so for air space. Then I leave them in a warm place--on top of my stove in the cold weather. In warmer weather I leave them on the counter. They start bubbling and eventually become nice and sour--takes 3 days to more than a week, depending on if it is warm or cold.

Our Thanksgiving

First we must say how thankful we are for having the opportunity to grow food for ourselves, our family and our friends.

We are also very thankful for our Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys, who are continuing to feed us and are very delicious (don't worry, we still have Sulaymon. And he has a girlfriend now--names anyone?).

We are sorry the turkeys were so enormous this year that they were just not affordable. We had no idea they would be so big. I thought their feathers would account for more of their size. They were about 4olbs live weight, and pretty difficult to handle. I could hardly move the carcasses around to clean them. The one my inlaws roasted was 26lbs dressed out. They didn't even fit in our turkey cone and our beloved featherman plucker was no match for the monsters. We mostly hand plucked them, which was suprisingly not a pain. Turkeys must have less feathers than chickens.

Our plan for next year is to get a few different kinds of turkeys to give some different weights. We would like people to preorder, and mark if they'd like a small turkey, medium turkey or gianormous turkey. It was the best turkey we've ever eaten, very tender and moist despite the size.
This pumpkin pictured is one of our Forbes Family Favorite squashes, left to grow into a pumpkin. It was the pumpkin pie this thanksgiving. It was a very tasty squash, not unlike white sweet potato in that it was very sweet and sort of mealy. It wasn't stringy at all. It made a lovely smooth pumpkin pie. I saved the seeds, of course, to be planted next summer.

A little tour of the winter garden

The winter garden is really taking off with the cool weather. The peas have pods, although none have made it home so far, they are so tasty and easy to just snip off and eat. The golden peas are just starting to produce and are very lovely. The beets, too, are looking more and more cheerful.

Winter gardens are all roots and greens it seems. In the above photo you can see the Harris Model Parsnips and the Egyptian Walking Onions, planted with cilantro and parsley, the carrot beds and some of the arugula to the left, past the pea trellis. I must say I wasn't counting on the arugula to be quite so large. And we have already been eating salads from it as much as we can. The trick with arugula salad is goat cheese, walnuts and a simple balsamic dressing.

Here is the Japanese Giant Red Mustard. It is almost as colorful as the cosmos. We had some in stir fry already. It went very well with the Extra Dwarf Pak Choy.

Here the cabbage is starting to make heads. This is the savoy cabbage:

The lettuce was slow to start, but is looking very nice now. I think it was just too warm this fall until now. This lettuce below is from a mixture of lettuce, but we are also growing Yugoslavian Butterhead, which I like a lot.

The fruits of labor

This is what we took home the other day--a big pumpkin, lush bowlfuls of lettuce, arugula and Extra Dwarf Pak Choy (my favorite--the bowl above the pumpkin), eggs and a rainbow of radishes. I'm making a big batch of pickles this afternoon.
A humble harvest compared to more established farms, but I love the feeling of getting food from the land, and it is a vision of abundance that gets me up in the morning to work another day.

Ducklings

Our Christmas ducks have arrived! They are so cute. I've never raised ducks before. We do have four Muscovy ducks, but they came with a mama who did all the work for us. Lifting them out of the box I was surprised at how woolly and light they are. They have such funny little bills and feet. They don't just peck at the food, they gobble it and then pump their little necks up and down to swallow.

Their mannerisms are hilarious. We've been watching them for the entertainment factor (it beats TV). When we first got them they kept tripping over their feet and waddling funny and falling over on their backs and wiggling their feet in the air.

It is interesting to see the difference in mannerisms in poultry: Baby chickens have a busy way of cluster together peeping and scratching and the turkeys are solemn and polite, but the ducks are like little Charlie Chaplins with webbed feet.

They are very messy and are always dabbling in the waterer. The water runs down their big bills and wets the down around their necks so they look like a cross between a duck and a turken.

Radishes

Radishes! Our second harvest. I love the variety. From left to right they are Munchener Bier, Black Spanish, Misato Rose, one little Cherry Belle, Plum Purple, Jaune D'or Ovale, and a daikon.

I plan to pickle them this afternoon. The last pickles were great they are almost all gone already.

It was an easy recipe--a sliced onion, sliced radishes, 1 tablespoon of seasalt and water.

The Winter garden 2009

Donkey doo. I love it. It is the basis of all things green and lovely in our garden. Donkeys set out special place to poop, so there are nice manure piles in every paddock. It makes it easy to pick up and compost.

Here you can see the garden is finally doing something. The trellises have five different kinds of peas planted--golden peas, sutton's harbinger, green arrow, purple podded and little marvel, though they are still small. They are waiting for the cool weather to take off. The mass of green on the far right are carrot beds over planted with radishes. The miserable-looking plants in the foreground are the beets. They have not thrived. I was very please to go to another farm and see their beets suffering as well. I think beets don't really like Florida. I even limed them like you are supposed to when I planted the seeds. The beds to the far far left are newly seeded. Over all we have radishes, parsnips, beets, carrots, turnips, collards, kale, bok choy, pak choy, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, spinach, swiss chard, daikons, onions, elephant garlic and peas planted. A very nice garden I am starting to be proud of.

Here are some radish pickles I made the other day. The one on the left is sliced radish roots in a brine with onion. They are plum purple radishes, cherry belle, french breakfast, munchen beir and mitsatastu rose radishes. The greenish one on the right is a salted mixture of chopped radish leaves and grated daikon. Yum! I was so excited about winter pickles!

Prickly Pear Season

Our easiest crop! The cactus is finally doing something nice, as you can see, although even the fruits are rather unfriendly. You have to carefully peel or scrape all the little spines off the outside before they are edible, or risk having tiny spines stuck in the back of your throat--no fun.

The scary thing about the cactus out at the farm is that we could see it on google earth. Yes, it really is so bad that it is visible from space.

Rose is already an expert at de-spining prickly pears.

Pumpkin patch

It's just past Halloween and here's the rogue pumpkin patch in the old pig pen. This squash is one that spontaneously grew from the seeds of one we had tossed to the pigs. It is some weird hybrid of the many squashes we grew this past summer. From looking at the fruits I'm thinking it is a Ronde de Nice crossed with a Thelma Sander's Sweet Potato pumpkin.

Who knows, it could be a Seminole pumpkin/Cocozelle Italian zucchini cross. Anyway, the fruit are apple green with light streaks and have a graceful ribbed and slightly pointed shape. Very lovely and striking fruit. The leaves have silver splashes. The taste is also superb, very sweet when raw and fine-textured almost buttery when cooked. We've been really enjoying them, but I am now trying to keep some to save the seeds.

I am going to try to plant them next summer and de-hybridize them by roguing the off-type plants. After generations they can be open pollinated again, and with luck we could create our own plant breed. The Forbes Family Favorite squash perhaps???

It's nearly Thanksgiving...

And the turkeys are getting big. We discoverd one female, at least, so we will keep her and Sulaymon of course. They are such funny creatures. their heads are so wierd and wrinkly and their snoods grow and shrink according to mood. Also we've noticed that their heads change color. If they are resting their heads are white. If they get excited they blush to red. When they are flirting and dancing and raking their wings gallently they turn various shades of blue with the most beautiful periwinkle purple around the eyes.

I have to agree with Ben Franklin--the turkey would have been a much nicer national bird. They are red, white and blue, after all:

"For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

"With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country . . .

"I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."

They remind me of a dignified bunch of old-fashioned and stuffy men with sparse long beards and high collars. They have a clumsy dignity about them. They are also very funny. Whenever there is a loud noise they all gobble in unison.

The golden path to the chickens

Here are some photos I wanted to share of the beautiful crotalaria growing up beside the path to the old "Chickshaw" coop with the baby chicks in it. I hadn't been this way for a little while because all the animals are on the other side of the garden.

Walking between the sweet-smelling yellow plumes of flowers is like walking through a living veil. Other lovely little flowers like daisy fleabane (Erigeron strigosa, if I've spelled it correctly) and goldenrod and false foxglove are tucked away preciously in the perfect places as though they were planted with thought to their different colors.

A word on crotalaria: It is supposed to be a deadly poisonous plant (one of Ethan's ex-coworkers was afraid to walk through a field of it in case the toxins "seeped into his skin"). Ethan's grandfather, who was a soil scientist, said it was planted as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop. It isn't native, but there are so many insects that are attracted to it, it must have naturalized.
We haven't really seen the poisonous side of it yet. The sheep and goats are eating a lot of it and they seem fine. I've noticed they intentionally graze on it even though they are out free-ranging on 40 acres with other tasty grasses and legumes available, but they just like it for some reason. I've decided to trust their tastes. I was really worried when they were eating black cherry leaves, but it's still their favorite plant and they have survived a whole year so far (they even eat the dried brown leaves off the ground).

Beautiful Autumn

It is so beautiful out at the farm right now. The goldenrod and crotalaria are like a golden haze in the fields between the trees. The lovely black cherry trees are changing to fall colors and look like graceful aspens. The photos don't do it justice. They have missed the vibrancy of the yellows and the bright, clear blue of the sky. And the air has a beautiful dry aromatic quality and everywhere it smells sweetly from the flowers. I have been so enjoying the days working out here.

Surrounded on all sides by oaks it reminds me of some secret realm of faery. If anyone would like to come hang out with us sometime to enjoy the autumn wilderness, we are there most days except Mondays. Drop us a line, we'd love to have some company, only you must wear long pants and good shoes because it is very spiny.

The Sheep

We've had the sheep for a while now, but I wanted to post some photos of them because when I tell people we have hair sheep they are mystified. When Ethan suggested we get hair sheep rather than wool sheep (before I knew better) I imagined a very ugly animal. This is not the case--they are very lovely. They are perhaps a little stupid, but very docile and easy to handle (underfoot most of the time). They like it when I scratch their backs. The nice thing is that they need no shearing or tail docking. They are still lambs but will be ready to breed next March.

baby chicks out

The baby chicks are out! They are in the old chickshaw coop. They are cowering in the corner because they are so terrified of the camera. They seem very happy to be in such a large place now.

Donkey

Here's our new donkey, named Java, but for some reason I always want to call her Mocha. She's Karen and Ed Sherwood's old donkey. Apparently she liked to nurse on the milk cows so they had to sell her, which was just when we were looking for a donkey.

I realized we needed a guard animal one day when we got out there and there were three dogs and a goat running about on the driveway in. The guy who owned them came and got them saying, "The goat's the best dog of all of them." He also mentioned it was the only goat he had left after the coyotes ate all the others.

This was the second time a neighbor has told me about coyotes eating all their goats. There was even an old coyote burrow on the property. After what we went through with the chickens I just couldn't bear the thought of getting out there with my children and finding Ellie or Nougat devoured by a pack of coyotes. So we HAD to get a guard animal.

After looking around online I noticed donkeys were cheaper than Pyrenees dogs, and Karen just happened to be selling Java, so it all worked out.

We are very pleased with all the manure, which she makes little piles of and it is easy to collect and compost. She is very docile and loves the children. The other day she followed Mirin all over the place because he had a handful of alfalfa. We are wondering if we can train her and use her for draft. It would be nice to have a donkey to lug the feed out to the chickens.

It took her awhile to warm up to the goats. Today is the first day she is out with them. Before she has always tried to kick or bite them. Hopefully they are all there tommorrow.

New Chickies

This is little late in coming--but we were swamped a month ago when they were hatching out.

Our own little chickens have hatched. They are all mixed-up mutt chickens, and are very pretty as a result. We figure the white-ish ones are the Auracauna rooster's babies and the black-ish ones are Steve McQueen's. Most are black, so obviously the Auracauna rooster can barely get a sperm in edgewise, but he still managed a few. There are two very lovely silvery ones that look like a Barred Rock/Silver Spangled Hamberg cross. One of the silvery ones looked like a little bald eagle when it was newly hatched.

We got to watch them hatch. Right before the eggs hatched we could hear the babies peeping. A few of the eggs started to hatch but didn't make it out for some reason. We have 14 new babies now. They are already fairly grown up and look like little birds rather than fluffy little chicks.

They are terrified of the camera, if you can't tell from the way they are fleeing to the edges of their little chicken tractor coop. Maybe it's Steve's genes, but this batch of chicks seems unusually flighty. They are terrified of everything for about 10 seconds--including their food, until they realize it isn't going to eat THEM.

So now we know what "clean" means

Not that we didn't before--but here's what happened:

We went to look at a Jersey cow. It was unreasonably cheap, but when we got there we saw why. The poor cow was in a dusty lot being fed some poor-looking hay and "total mixed ration." She was very thin and bony and had pus oozing from the back quarter of her udder from mastitis. I felt so sorry for her--particularly about the mastitis (I've had it before myself). She needed to be wormed and milked and fed properly, but the guy told us "It's just too much trouble for a glass of milk. I'd rather just go down to the corner store."

The people who were selling her also wanted to show off their pigs to us once we had told them we had pigs as well. So we followed them to our house to look at their pigs. In the front of their house they had an incinerator going that was burning what smelled like plastic, and probably worse. Behind that was a small, squalid and dirty pen holding an enormous hog--nearly as long as our car. A smaller mother hog was there too, as well as some medium-sized pigs about as large as our pigs are now who had gashes on them from the big boar (named "Fat boy") and running about underfoot were some weak and dirty little piglets which had the same painful look on their pitiful little faces that you see in photographs of suffering children from the third world. You are never supposed to have all those pigs in together--the little ones can be crushed and don't get enough to eat. The man was obviously very proud of these pigs.

I came away from that place feeling contaminated and totally creeped out. Looking around our farm I have a new appreciation for it. I realize at last that my perfectionist judgmentalism is uncalled for.

Not that our farm is really dirty anywhere, but there are half-finished projects laying around, black bags of leaves we scavenged for mulch, some broken toys from the children. I am constantly and vigilantly picking up little bits of trash we track in--such as kombucha bottle tops, string from feed bags, pieces of wire and rope, etc. I had pangs of guilt when we had to wait for a weekend to move our pigs to a new pasture because it was getting muddy around their waterer, or when the baby chickies needed to be moved out, but again we had to wait for a weekend when Ethan could help. Even having the chickens in one spot for a week seemed like it was asking too much of the grass and the birds. There is always the doubt, "Are we really doing this the best way or the right way?"
But it seems so petty now, having seen the squallor that is possible. I have renewed pride and pleasure in the beauty of our farm and the health of our animals.

The Chicken Dilemma

Unfortunately I don't have any photos today, but I wanted to at least post an update.

We have been hard at work with some big changes and laying the foundations for autumn plans.

Our egg chickens were attacked over a couple weeks by hawks which dined very well those weeks and knocked out all but 16 chickens. Our dear chicken Henny Penny, the oldest and favorite chicken, was the first to be eaten. We tried the plastic owl, visual diversions, moving the coop, brush shelters. The poor chickens would be found dead underneath the coop, or under brush. Obviously nothing was working. Finally I switched our turkeys, who were getting a little large for their broiler coop anyway, to our old "Hell-on-Little-Wheels" coop and moved the poor chickens to the broiler coop which is very protected and has a solar-electric charger with electrified wires on the outside, just in case the raccoons or coyotes get any ideas.

I was initially against this move at all costs because the chickens are now confined, which means less grazing, less freedom, and I was worried the quality of our eggs would go down and the chickens would be stressed. But now that we have been using this production model rather than the "Chickshaw" coop, I see the many benefits, some of which are a great relief to our sore backs. I think we are going to continue to keep our chickens this way and even build some more.

The benefits are:

1. We only drive out once a day and so save time, money and fuel. We are able to stay out longer because I don't have to run back to town to put the baby down for a nap or start dinner, and as a result have been getting a lot done.

2. No more worrying about the Learning Disabled chickens that couldn't remember how to get in the coop and became raccoon and owl bait.

3. No more struggling with the useless ElectroNet that sags and doesn't work. Seriously, there was a photo in Mother Earth News showing an idyllic little homestead with a moveable chicken coop surrounded by ElectroNet--we counted only 11 chickens inside the fence and 8 running around outside, which is about how well it worked for us, too. At the end there they found they could pile up on a corner to ground it out and just walk over (they all had clipped wings--a big pain).

4. Chickens get moved DAILY rather than weekly. This means they get fresh grass every morning and this helps to spread out their manure better and lets them really work the soil. The old coop could only be moved with great effort or by both of us, but this coop is a breeze to move. I can move it while nursing Rosie in the backpack. As far as diet, I think they are getting more bugs and green grass this way.

5. They were far more stressed out as total wild-free range birds because of the enormous number of hawks here with voracious chicken-eating habits. To daily see one or more of your coop mates messily devoured before your eyes each morning is not the idyllic free-range chicken scene we normally picture. I am less stressed because they are safe, and they seem much more relaxed.

So we are back to moving the strongest-man contest coop over tall grass and cactus with the bizarre poultry menagerie inside (ducks, chicken, turkeys), but at least our chickens are safe.

turkeys

We have been raising Broad-Breasted Bronze turkeys. Our big tom, Suleymon the Magnificent, is a Standard Bronze turkey. They will mostly be for thanksgiving, but since Suleymon has been sort of a family pet since before the farm we are hoping to keep some females as his companions. He has mostly been hanging out with chickens and now ducks and there is no telling what kinds of bad habits he is learning.

Rainbow eggs

When we started our laying flock we selected mostly sturdy dual-purpose traditional breeds that lay a beautiful variety of colors. They include Barred Rocks, White Rocks, Americanas, Auracanas, Black Stars (a hybrid) and Cuckoo Marans. Over time some of the less-than-smart chickens have been weeded out—so gone are the Silver Spangled Hambergs and the Buff Orpingtons (some of the dumbest chickens ever in our opinion). Our rooster, a Silver-spangled Hamburg (see photo), is named Steve McQueen. Nobody can catch him.

We collect eggs daily and arrange them in beautiful rainbows. Some days there are only perfectly uniform brown eggs and we are disappointed.

We have just bought an incubator and hope to hatch our own eggs to add to our laying flock. We are excited because this lets us choose the chickens that have proven to thrive and survive in our specific conditions. We are also looking forward to having baby chicks again. They grow up into annoying adolescents too fast!

Sheep and Goats

We currently have four goats and two sheep. We have two milking goats, Ellie and Nougat, but only Ellie is milking now. They will be bred this fall and spring for next year. Our hair sheep are both young females that we bought this spring. We will breed them next spring to start our herd. They were very wild when we first got them but have become very docile and will do pretty much anything for a handful of oats.

Our goats get oats soaked with raw apple cider vinegar, flax seeds, diatomaceous earth, kelp and Sea-90 free choice. They are taken out to graze every day in a moveable electric fence. They are seldom in one spot for more than 2 days. The first day they eat the grass and the second day they browse the trees.

Piggies

The pigs we are currently raising and have been very happy with are not a standard breed of pig. They don’t get as large as other pigs—only about 100 lbs. They are unusually colored and of all different varieties. Some are black, some red, some pink and grey, some spotted tan and brown. One has a white stripe on his nose and around his middle. They are “brush hogs,” almost like wild pigs and they are very hardy and love the free-range set up. They are fed the organic pig feed from Countryside Naturals, which is supplemented by the acorns, bugs and roots they are finding.

Our first pigs were raised on where our garden is now. We had hoped they would be very destructive and root the area up entirely. Instead they mostly lounged around and scratched on the gate, which ended up breaking and being replaced. After a disaster involving a moveable electric goat fence which the pigs immediately found they could get out of by lifting the unelectified bottom wire with their nose, we put the new piglets in a smaller pasture that we hoped they wouldn’t tear up too much, but they are anyways.

We currently have five new piglets. They are growing fast and are expected to be ready soon. They are available for a pre-arranged sale and will be cut how ever you like. If a whole pig seems like too much feel free to find a friend or neighbor to share it with you. They can be divided in half. Please email us for more details.

For our next batch of piglets we have two major concerns: Feed and erosion. The feed is expensive and is made of grains which are very energy intensive. If we can reduce feed costs, it reduces the price of the pig and makes it more affordable and better for the environment. We think good food ought to be good for the earth and priced reasonably. As far as erosion, we need to be able to move the pigs to minimize the damage they cause with their sharp hooves and by rooting.

The solution we’ve come up with is—seasonal production. Our land has lots of young live oak trees. Some of these trees bear acorns so sweet we were eating them like chestnuts last fall. With moveable electric fencing and a solar charger we can move the piglets from oak tree to oak tree in the fall and have them ready for slaughter during the coldest part of the year when they would be the fattest and best for eating and making lard. One thing we’ve really noticed with these summer piglets is that they just aren't getting fat. There’s not much reason to if it’s 90 degrees out and 100% humidity.

The only drawback is that we will only have pigs in the winter, but we think it will be well worth it. This fall we will be focusing on a perimeter fence and getting set up for next fall’s piglets, so these summer pigs will be all we’ve got for a while.

The Garden

This summer we grew many heirloom varieties of vegetables and enjoyed a lovely array of colors, textures and flavors. Our garden grew so well that we have decided to offer a limited number of CSA subscriptions for next summer (2010).
Our garden plan includes 117 varieties of colorful and unusual open-pollinated and heirloom vegetables and fruits—of squash, pumpkins, watermelons, muskmelons, tomatoes, string beans and lima beans, tomatillos, ground cherries, cucumbers, sweet peppers, spice peppers, eggplant, okra, roselle, sweet corn, and oriental baby corn. Some of these varieties we have already grown and loved and others we would like to try.

The CSA would begin May-ish and last for at least 16 weeks (August-ish). One large basket of varied produce would be provided weekly for 4 months. For variety our baskets will include ferments, fresh herbs, herbal vinegars, oils and seasonings, dried fruits and vegetables, fresh fruits (such as blackberries and blueberries) and flowers. We will also include a little newsletter with recipes and serving suggestions each week and interesting history about the varieties you’ve received.
The cost is $200 for the entire season, which comes out to be $12.50 per week. This is a lower price than other local CSA’s in this area.
Because we are inexperienced with gardening for a market, we are looking for customers who could tolerate mistakes on our part and who would be willing to take the time to give us constructive feedback. If we have a crop failure—or maybe an over-abundance of something like zucchini, we can substitute eggs, goat milk or meat. If everything is a complete disaster we would of course refund your money.

For those of you not familiar with our growing practices—we are not certified organic, but we do not use chemical fertilizers or sprays. We use natural means, such as soap, essential oils, companion planting, soil mineralization and mulching to correct problems, and we fertilize with kelp, fish and crab meal, sea-90, compost and cover crops. We let our animals graze over the garden when the season is over to increase the soil fertility

If you have any questions or are interested in joining our CSA, please contact us at Foxgrapefarm@gmail.com. We hope to hear from you!