Leaping Waters Farm is a 1000 acre farm in Southwest Virginia devoted to raising the heritage breed animals. We have, as the centerpiece to our farm, Ancient White Park cattle, a variety of pig breeds including Large Black, English and American Saddlebacks, Ossabaw and Berkshire and a healthy flock of heritage turkeys.
Since I'm no longer working on the farm every day, I don't have as much to contribute to the blog. However, inspired by our experiences at Leaping Waters, Dina and I built our own little urban garden on our balcony here in Vienna. We didn't actually have to fight for our right to garden. But if you watch the video at the end of this post, you'll understand the title.
What we did do is decide that despite the limitations of our suburban apartment's balcony, we'd garden nonetheless. With help from our good friend over at Arcadia, Farmer Mo, we decided on a combination of deep pots for vertical veggies like tomatoes, some more shallow boxes for shorter plants such as herbs and radishes.
Dina and I celebrated Easter by heading over to Cravens Nursery and Pottery last Sunday to choose seedlings for our garden. We were wowed by exotic bushes from Japan and lovely little lemon trees, but made our way eventually to the vegetable section. As we strolled through the herbs and tomatoes, the excitement of growing our own food took hold. I think, if we could, we would have walked away with one of everything. But given our budget and our space limitations, we had to make tough choices - green zebras, cherry peppers, and chocolate mint, for example, all made the final cut.
We then headed over to Home Depot for deep pots, long planters, railing box holders, and organic soil. Before long we were home and elbow deep in warm, dark soil.
Except for today's torrential rains which shook some of the more fragile herbs up a bit, the garden's great. We even have radish sprouts breaking through the soil!
I'll keep you posted on our progress and will look forward to seeing you all at Holy Cow!
If you're interested, you can also follow my new urban food adventures here.
Had a chance to do a garden inspection. I am always at work when Jeana is here. Tomorrow I have the day off work and we plan to work together. The chard ,fennell,cilantro,spinach and baby lettuce will be ready for the new May 2nd veggie basket start up date. There will be plenty of peas shoots too. I am amazed at how fast everything is growing- including the weeds! The flea beetles have started to eat the tiny arugula,mustard greens and raab so we will need to water these (flea beetles hate water!) then cover them with row cover immediately. The green house is overflowing and we will transplant the largest tomato plants ,cucumbers and summer squash and the beans and corn we have started in soil blocks to get an early crop. I feel a little overwhelmed by all there is to do - but know that with 2 of us working tomorrow and Jeana with full days the rest of the week it can be done!!! Sarah
Sorry no photo avail. Just picture the smile on my face. I just prepared a turkey egg omelette with purple asparagus and chives that were picked from the garden less than 5 minutes before cooking. WOW. I love spring!
HOLY COW!! MEMORIAL DAY EVENT
Monday May 30th, 2011 3-9pm
Come enjoy the food as 4 amazing chefs prepare our Ancient White Park beef out in the open fields where our animals graze.
True farm to table cuisine!
Tarver King from The Ashby Inn & Restaurant
Chef Kostas from Local Roots in Roanoke
Scott Lockhart from Horizon Bar and Grill in Roanoke
Joe Palma from West End Bistro in Washington DC
Purchase tickets @ TicketDerby.com
$50 adult, $10 child 5-12 y, child <5 y free
When I received my very first basket from the CSA, my first thought was.....now what? You might be thinking the same thing. There were greens in there that I thought were just weeds! But after a few weeks I found some awesome resources to help me figure out what I was cooking.
The first cookbook that I bought was The Organic Cook's Bible. This was really helpful because it had a ton of colored pictures so that I could just match what was in the picture to what was on my kitchen counter.
The second book I have used a lot is Clean Food. This is a seasonal cookbook and a lot of what the Bradfords grow falls in line with the recipes.
And finally, www.allrecipes.com has been an awesome resource. Type in the ingredients that you have and it picks recipes for you!
What we did do is decide that despite the limitations of our suburban apartment's balcony, we'd garden nonetheless. With help from our good friend over at Arcadia, Farmer Mo, we decided on a combination of deep pots for vertical veggies like tomatoes, some more shallow boxes for shorter plants such as herbs and radishes.
