Frog Log

 Rhythm - a pleasant word to say, and, for many, a rather unpleasant word to try and spell. But rhythm is all around us and, well, within us. Before we were born, our mother's heartbeat must have offered a soothing rhythmic backdrop as well as preparation for our solo journey to come - and the rhythm of our own heartbeat provides a constant companion to our days. Beyond anatomy, rhythm serves as significant guide and metaphor. Merriam-Webster offers one definition, out of many uses for this term:  movement, fluctuation, or variation marked by the regular recurrence or natural flow of related elements. It goes on to add helpfully : the rhythms of country life. And that's what brings us to this post. The rhythms of country life. As growers, we ultimately base our lives and livelihoods on the cycles of nature. These cycles follow a general but often unpredictable pattern. To dance with them, we must accept the rhythm - who could ask for anything more? We are reminded of a li...

  Billy King is an optimist. And that's a wonderful quality to have, and for lucky folks to be around. But would you want an optimist reading a trail map? Well, only if you want an adventure! Billy, Emily and I were on the west coast of Michigan, looking to take a hike. The night before someone we met at our campsite told us about two possibilities for hiking: Van Buren State Park for the beach and dunes, and Pilgrim Haven Nature Preserve for woodland trails. Billy was a little ho-hum about a "boring walk on the beach", but we thought we would go first to Van Buren State Park first to see the lake, and then visit Pilgrim Haven for the real hiking trails. When we got down to the beach, Billy checked the GPS on his phone and announced that we could actually walk to Pilgrim Haven along the beach, and it would only take thirty-seven minutes! I admit that I looked at the phone and saw a number of little red dots that seemed to connect our present location with a spot designate...

Going down the rows, it's always a matter of life and death. Life, if we're planting. And if we're weeding - well, these weeds must die! So planting garlic on a beautiful fall day is a matter of life, but also a matter of faith. Like penitents of old, we crawl down the rows in service to our task. Heads down, each clove we gently push into the soft ground is a prayer of hope and survival. For those tiny cloves, planted in October, will barely sprout before the winter freeze arrives. They must hold that faint memory of life through the dark, still season. In spring, when air and soil temperatures conjoin to beckon the sprouts from their cold cradles, tiny green shoots will appear where frozen ground had recently been. By harvest time in July, a field of large lush fronds will wave in the breeze, ready to continue the cycle. So the garlic does have to "die" in order to be plucked from the growing ground, dried, and head toward our spaghetti sauce. But within eac...

I graduated from Michigan State in 2010 with strong passions for local organic food, community development, and a healthy (or maybe unhealthy) fear of not making enough money in the career path that I would eventually be forced to choose. The looming decision often weighed on me heavily as my inner self struggled to put a value on working with my passions vs. working for a salary. Towards the end of my college career, I spent weeks toiling over the situation. After contracting shingles and likely straining many of my interpersonal relationships, I still felt as if I had not made any progress in terms of knowing what was right. I eventually decided that I would “sacrifice” a year in order to pursue work that I really loved before zeroing in on a more lucrative desk job. I was lucky enough to find a dream job in my hometown of Ann Arbor working for Avalon Housing in coordination with Growing Hope on gardening and nutrition education for low-income Ann Arbor residents. I loved my wo...

Someone Digging in the Ground    by Jalaluddin Rumi An eye is meant to see things. The soul is here for its own joy. A head has one use: For loving a true love. Legs: To run after. Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind, for learning what men have done and tried to do. Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why. A lover is always accused of something. But when he finds his love, whatever was lost in the looking comes back completely changed. On the way to Mecca, many dangers: Thieves, the blowing sand, only camel's milk to drink. Still, each pilgrim kisses the black stone there with pure longing, feeling in the surface the taste of the lips he wants. This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up,  while the real work is done outside by someone digging in the ground. Ken King, founder of Frog Holler Farm, made his transition four years ago today. It was a beautiful bloom-filled day on May, just like...

Repotting by Lynne Sharon Schwartz The healthy plant outgrows its pot the way a healthy child outgrows its clothes. Don't let it suffer constriction. Spread the Sports or Business section of the New York Times on the dining room table. Find a clay pot big enough for fresh growth. In the bottom place pebbles and shards from a broken pot for drainage. Add handfuls of moist black potting soil, digging your hands deep in the bag, rooting so the soil gets under your fingernails. Using a small spade or butter knife, ease the plant out of its old pot with extreme care so as not to disturb its wiry roots. The plant is naked, suspended from your hand like a newborn, roots and clinging soil exposed. Treat it gently. Settle it into the center of the new pot, adding soil on the sides for support—who isn't shaky, moving into a new home ? Pack more soil around the plant, tapping it down till you almost rea...

First trays planted in the greenhouse... and so it begins.   Good friend, neighbor and writer Tom Hines describes the start of a cycle at Frog Holler he has witnessed many times.  Pre Spring                 The boys won’t say much.   They’ll build a wood fire in the green house and plant seeds.   They’ll keep it warm enough over night and water it in the day.   They’ll bring in wood to make heat in the blower stove and try to limit use of propane fuel.   They’ll bring in wood for the boiler which warms water circulating through the thick concrete table top which warms soil trays of planted seeds.   They won’t look at the gauges, they’ll feel the warming concrete table and put a finger in the soil and look at the sprouting green.    They’ll mix soil, maybe some well aged compost and manure , maybe some swamp muck mixed with store-bought soil fr...

 Lacking a herd of cattle and the accompanying natural fertilizer, we need to find ways to give back to the soil from which we extract so many luscious vegetables. Plans are afoot to harvest our pond weed and cover crops have always figured heavily into our fertility plan. But, for now, our concentrated fertilizer (or "inputs")comes to us in bags on a big truck. Distributed by Ohio Earth Food, near Akron,  it's good stuff - a yummy organic blend of composted poultry manure, dried seaweed, feathermeal, and potash. Three tons of "ReVita-Pro"  arrived on one of our more wintry days in February, and neighbor Tom Hines with his trusty "Bobcat" helped us unload. A steady hand at the wheel. But a heavy load - check out those airborne back tires! Okay, sometimes you need a little ballast! Our friendly truck driver gets a ride. Unloaded and waiting to help us grow!

Happy New Year! The present incarnation of Frog Holler Farm turns 40 years old this year. Watch for a big celebration - maybe August 24-26. Stay tuned!

Eliot Coleman, one of the early spokespersons for the organic movement and now a "revered icon", has been in the news lately. His daughter, Melissa, has just published a memoir of her life growing up on Coleman's remote homestead in the early '70's, as he and Melissa's mother, his then-wife, honed the skills that would enable him to write three popular how-to books, host radio and public television shows, and guide countless apprentices who made the pilgrimage to his working farm near the Maine coast. From the reviews I have read, Melissa Coleman's book, titled "This Life is in Your Hands", offers an unsentimental account of growing up with a father who was unswervingly committed to the execution of his ideals. Eliot Coleman embraced the back-to-the-land/voluntary simplicity ethic with a single-minded determination that enabled him to spend twelve-hour days felling trees and clearing stumps with only an axe, hauling water with an oxen-yoke, bui...

This article was written by Ken King, Frog Holler's founder. Although Ken passed away in 2009, his vision continues to inform and guide. Measuring Up to Mother Nature, by Ken King (First written in 1980, republished for the People's Food Coop "Connection," January 1990) (PFC Connection Editor’s Note: The following essay originally appeared in the January 1980 issue of The Alchemist, a now-defunct local Ann Arbor publication whose content and design could be described as falling somewhere between The Observer and The Agenda, two current area publications. Ken King is a local organic grower who has had a long working relationship with PFC. He and his family have artistic interests as well – some of you may remember them performing at the last PFC meeting along with other musicians. Although first published ten years ago this month, the following could easily seem to have been written within the last few weeks. Ken’s statements are as appropriate at the beginning of ...

Living in the Ann Arbor area, where non-tradition is more the tradition, we were invited to a vegan thanksgiving. As organic vegetable growers, we support the inordinate consumption of veggies, so were happy to accept the invite and contribute our share to the vegetative bounty. The day before the event we scoured the garden for the final harvest of remaining crops. The generous yield was surprising : 4 crates of cabbage, 2 crates of napa, broccoli, turnips, brussels sprouts, rutabagas, lettuce, parsley, arugula, cilantro - and on and on. We're finished with market, so this is all for us to store, freeze, and eat throughout the winter months. And also to share! I can't describe the kitchen counters filled with vegan dishes that everyone contributed to the feast; it was a veritable cornucopia. But I can recount what veggies the Frog Holler gardens supplied and what we did with them: We made a fresh batch of our salad mix - thanks lettuce, arugula, swiss chard, chives, sorrel, p...

There is a shortage of seed garlic in the land! And although this might seem like a good thing for vampires, it actually suggests that more folks are planting garlic and soon little plots of homegrown garlic will make it impossible for hungry vampires to find a place to land - sorry, fans of the Twilight series! The Frog Holler garlic crop was a little pathetic this year. Although I would like to blame it on vampire intervention, I have to admit that the weeds got the better of the patch, despite the heavy mulch we applied last fall. Luckily for us, a dear friend and ace garlic grower had more garlic than she knew what to do with, so sold us a nice selection of healthy garlic bulbs for our planting pleasure. Did you know garlic comes in many flavors? We have always planted "Music", a homegrown standard known for its flavor and reliable yield - we love its robust richness and also like the name! Bur now, thanks to our friend, we have planted "Killarney Red", ...

Not that any one has been looking for me. Loyal blog readers must have long given up, unless they got the memo to click over to the Frog Holler Farm CSA Newsletter . My summer blogging has been dedicated to that weekly endeavor, and you can view lots of photos and vignettes reflecting the season in the garden, if you're so inclined. Now, as the calendar marches through October, and the temperatures dip, and the leaves start to fall, and the crops start to dwindle, we feel the imminent end to the unlimited fresh produce that we have enjoyed all season. And that's scary! This week we took action in the kitchen! First we cooked and canned 16 more jars of spaghetti sauce - bringing our total to 50. That might get us through the winter. We saved some of the tomatoes for our last fresh salsa of the season. No photo -it was gone too fast! While the sauce was simmering, Kirsten sliced apples for the dehydrator for dried apple snacks throughout the winter (except everyone munched on the...

Mosey on over to our CSA Newsletter #5 for the latest Frog Holler news and photos. Thanks for stopping by!

Since I just learned to link, I will send all you fine readers over to the latest CSA Newsletter which is full of recipes, farm fotos and an important invite to the social event of the holiday weekend. You simply must click on the link!

Last week we started our CSA session for 2010. for the next 17 weeks we will do our best to fill a box with delicious seasonal veggies for our CSA members. We'll also include a newsletter full of farm doin's and vegetable lore. It isn't quite the same content as the Frog Log, but it will no doubt take precedence over any other writing. I doubt if there are any faithful Frog Log readers left after such " few-and-far-between" posting, but if anyone is still interested, most posting will be done at http://froghollercsa.blogspot.com/ Also, being busy as a bee, and apparently a bit of a birdbrain, I am now tweeting at http://twitter.com/ - look for froghollerfarm! Off to the newsletter - tweet tweet and ribbit!

I just finished a book titled "A Drunkard's Walk, How Randomness Rules Our Lives", by Leonard Mlodinow. Well, actually I sort of weaved my way through it rather than reading from start to finish - but the gist of it, I think, is that as we look back on the events that brought us to where we are at a certain point in time, it's like watching a drunkard walk - unpredictable, without apparent direction, and with a random ricochet from one unexpected interaction to another. Mr. Mlodinow's presentation is sort of convincing, and as I look back on the 39 years of "randomness" at Frog Holler Farm that have preceded this day, I do see many unexpected events. Of course! How boring if we could predict life! But I also see something that Mr. Mlodinow may not have accounted for in his theory. Woven through the myriad and seemingly disparate choices, incidents and experiments of these decades on the farm, there has been a vision - an unwavering underlying thread of...

Frog Holler seedlings ready to grow ! "Locavore" was chosen by the New Oxford American Dictionary as the word of the year in 2007. The narrowest definition of a locavore would be a person who seeks out locally produced food. And the most local food would be right out your back door, or in your nearby Project Grow garden! So unleash your inner locavore and come see us at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market for an enticing array of organically grown seedlings to get your garden off to an early start. We will be selling seedlings starting Saturday, April 10, and continue through mid-June. Sure, it's early, but Spring has been warm and many cool weather crops would be very happy to spread their leaves right now. Home gardeners don't need a Word of the Year to acknowledge what they have known for generations. Home-grown produce is the freshest, tastiest, most nutritious and usually most cost-effective food to put on your table. A Square-Foot Garden, a Lasagna Garden, a herb ...

I am a farmer, and I fear that my words will sound rustic and plain when I try to speak about our world situation. It is complex, experts say, and dangerous too, no fit subject for a tiller of the soil. And yet I have watched things grow, bear fruit and die under many circumstances and have come to believe that the health of my little garden and the health of this world bear a relationship stronger than analogical. - Ken King, found writing Wendell Berry and Ken King never met; it's uncertain if Ken even read any of Berry's writing. Yet both men, deep thinkers and lifelong "tillers of the soil," drew a resonant guidance from living and working in tune with nature's cycles. Berry published many thoughtful volumes of poetry and essays; Ken has left us provocative snippets. Each man, in his own way, expresses a wisdom inextricably tied to the "simple" act of working the land, and succeeding when working with nature. Berry's concern, in his essay, Life ...