Frog Log

Mulching the new strawberry patch - Check! And mulching the second strawberry patch - Check! Garlic mulched - check! Straw in my pockets - check!

Confetti leaves! Planting garlic. Spreading manure, hardhat in place. Kale palm trees. Spinach off to market. Hey, that's my crew lookin' mighty fine! Okay, Spike, not now, I need to get this posted.. Post "Hollerween" revelers. Drying calendulas, raspberry leaves, rose hips. Painting the house... green! An' I do approve of that color! Spike!! Can it! Oops, sorry, I mean please be quiet, this is my post! The new kitty.. awwww. ( An' just exackly what does this have to do with gardening I might ask...) Okay, Spike, I give up, you can have the next post!

yeah, as in Frost - oooo scary! Spike Spinach still here, but sometimes I wonder how long I can stick around this place after what I saw last week. Okay, so they gets this Frost warning and they starts runnin' around like th' sky was fallin'. They start pullin' out all this crazy cover stuff and it looks like they was trying to wrap up the whole blinkin' farm! Well, almost the whole farm - they did not, I am proud to say, need to put even a shred of pro-tective type cover stuff on my crew in the spinach patch. Here's the proof - and they's comin' along nicely - rain, shine or F! What the frog farmers seemed most worried about was, you guessed it, the pampered darlin's of this here spread - the lettuce patch. Now we been here before when I had to witness the embarrassin' lengths they go to in the spring to keep ther preshus poppets all warm and cozy.(May 15, 2008 Frog Log if ya want a little helpful educashun) But man, like them plants is all gr...

Yeah, Spike here. I'm back. Me n' frog lady been arguin' 'bout who's writin' this here blah blah blahg. She's all hepped up 'bout some festival here and some award there, and like I say hey - ain't there some farmin' to do around here?? Sometimes she seems mighty dee-stracted. An' I checked out that little festival of hers. Wasn't nobody around at the gardens so thought I'd better see what was up. Hitched a ride with this guy walkin' down the road. He was headed over to the food line so I jumped off before I found myself in a servin' bowl!They was dishin' it up as fast as they could - and lots of it! Downright dangerous - I didn't stick around. I tried to scope out the rest of the scene but man, it just wasn't safe around there! There was this green giant sort of stompin' around. I had to jump outta the way a couple times. I didn't get it myself but people seemed to like her - or it. So to save myself I hea...

Yeah, Spike Spinach here. I'm back and I guess I'm stickin' around for a while. That frog lady's been kinda low since Mr. Frog Farmer got harvested and she don't do much with her little bump on a frog log. Sheez, she missed th' whole spinach season and a lot of good material as far as I's concerned. But I can kinda understand. I liked that guy too - man, he could really hoe a row. Shined us up mighty fine when he was done. And remember when I was educatin' you good folks 'bout how spinach gets planted practickly in th' middle of winter while all them little hothouse seedlings is cuddlin' up to their energy-hog "germination mats?" Awww, ain't they cute? Well, somebuddy has to plant us spinaches out ther in the wind and snow and it was always Mr. Farmer frog. Th' weather just didn't faze him. Come to think of it, there must have been a little spinach in him. So I thinks to hitch a ride over to the memorial a whiles back ...

You know those kid's pictures where there are a bunch of items hidden in a bigger picture? The instructions are something along the lines of: "Find fifteen monkeys in this picture of Johnny at the beach". Or something like that. When I took a look at an enlarged version of the photo above, I thought, wow, there's a lot of Frog Holler history hidden in that photo. Can you find it? I'll help you! First off, did you know that by clicking on the photo, you too can make it bigger?! I just found that out a little while ago and it's very satisfying! So...where are we? We're up at the top of one of Frog Holler's higher hills, planting a potato patch where no patch has gone before. Last Fall Farmer Ken was on a mission. Determined to find new ground for an expanded garden, he surprised everyone by selecting this spot 'overlooking' the front garden (by about 500 feet!). This area had actually been planted to dwarf apple trees thirty years ago, but that...

Sorrel leaves poking through Seedlings in the greenhouse Fixing equipment Building projects Geese on the pond Jupiter in the pond Geese chasing Jupiter out of the pond!

Did you ever notice how when a building or structure gets altered or removed, it seems to release the memories? It's like the walls absorbed images of the events they witnessed, and as the walls come down, memories that have been long forgotten suddenly reappear. Can you remember back thirty or so years ago? No internet - no cell phones - and two, yes only two, periodical resources for organic gardeners: Mother Earth News and Rodale's Organic Gardening magazine. At the very back of Organic Gardening, in the classifieds, was a tiny ad of just a few lines: "Four acres under glass. Being demolished. Glass for sale." An Indiana address followed. First thought: "Four ACRES under glass?" Second thought: "Being dem olished ?!" Third thought: "How can we salvage some??" Okay, those were early days on the farm. We didn't have much in the way of trucks, cash or even a phone where we lived. No MapQuest either! But somehow we contacted the gre...

I made a new friend last year and her name is Kim Bayer and she writes one of the most perceptive, wise and charming blogs in the area and she wrote a post about Frog Holler Farm last May when she visited the farm and we first really met. I never linked to the post then - got lost in the flurry that is May on the farm, I guess. The post was sucked down a cyber hole for a while, but Space Cadet Kim just retrieved it and now seems like a good time to complete the circle from Kim's blog to mine! And I'm actually going to link it this time rather than mention her blog but not provide that oh so easy linking mechanism. (Assuming that my other blogger friend Joan taught me right! More on Joan later..) In the Hoophouse Memorial post of 1/26, I feature the photo that Kim took on that first visit and mention her blog, but don't facilitate a visit! So here comes the magic link, and I will say that I like this post, not just because it is so kind to us at Frog Holler, but because Ki...

Seeds have been ordered. It's a fairly exhausting process as we cruise from catalog to catalog, looking for the best variety at the best price. Some comments heard around the catalog-filled table: From practical son B.: "This would be so much easier if we didn't have to think about price." From visionary son K.: "Just order it; we're going to grow a lot!" From Farmer K.: "Well now, you don't want to overextend yourselves!". From impractical Farmerette Cathy: "Ooh, look how pretty these are; can we grow them??" ( Around the table, eyes roll.) Yes, I fear my seed ordering choices run toward the colorful and the bizarre. I also think a variety with a really interesting name definitely bears consideration, but my suggestions are generally overruled in the name of efficiency and practicality. (Except, hey, we're organic growers - how practical is that?!) So I invite you into my magic garden; it's right over here - right through...

In May 2008, Kim Bayer visited the farm for the first time. Kim is a food blogger extraordinaire and I suggest you follow this link to her blog right now and settle in for some tasty reading. http://thefarmersmarketer.com/ Okay, you back? Well, Kim's blog about the visit unfortunately got eaten by her server. But she still had copies of the photos, so I appreciate her sending the only existing photo of our dear departed hoophouse. (See Frog Log 1/12/09) The tomatoes were just babies in May; they eventually grew to fill the entire structure in a jumbly jungle of vines and fruit. Kim called it the Daniel Boone Hoophouse - a fitting acknowledgment of its woodsy, primitive frontier quality. Sadly, like the frontier, it is gone for good in this incarnation. We'll salvage what we can and make something out of the pieces. And I'll let you know when we do!

Picture one snowflake. One tiny snowflake landing on your mitten or a sparkle of cold on your outstretched tongue. One weightless atom of ice crystals drift ing earthward. And then another. And another. And another. And another. And... As I leaned with all my might into the snowy mass that was bulging the greenhouse plastic wall inward, I wondered just how many snowflakes I wrestled with. As many as dollars in the bailout? As in both bailouts? As in the National Debt?? Just how many of those little mites did it take to make a solid wall of snow that I could not budge. And budge it had to. Son K. and I were standing in the warm kitchen discussing lunch possibilities when son B. stuck his head in the door and, in his calm understated manner, mentioned that we might lose the greenhouse if we didn't clear some snow away - better get some brooms and shovels and come out. From the previous Frog Log, you can see that we can't stand to lose another greenhouse. The snow had surprised us...

In my New Year's 'blogolution', I described this blog as depicting "the cares and concerns of a working small organic farm." Well, here's a concern all right! You can probably tell from these photos that something is very very broken. And it's something that was big. (Jupiter went out with me to survey the damage so I had to include him in an obviously sympathizing mode.) Yes, it's our hoophouse that was bursting with juicy tomatoes really not all that long ago. In one of the photos you can see our greenhouse through the wreckage of the hoophouse; the greenhouse and hoophouse were the same size. (Greenhouse: heated with solid "endwalls" and ventilation system. Hoophouse: basically plastic stretched over a frame - no auxiliary heat but still warming the plants nicely in early spring and late fall.) We had gone to bed to dire predictions of (another!) snowstorm, but not a flake to be seen. A neighbor was up at 3:30 AM - still no snow. Somewhere...