Frog Log

The first leaves that poke through the soil from the germinating seed are appropriately called "seed leaves". A biologist would call them "cotyledons", which is fun to say, but doesn't tell most folks much. These very first leaves are charged with providing "nourishment to the elementary plant". They often look sort of nondescript and, despite their initial vital role, soon take a back seat to the next players on the foliar front: the true leaves. I like that image: true leaves. Leaves that are faithful; leaves that won't let you down. Leaves that are honest and will support the fruiting or flowering of just exactly what you planted. When the true leaves appear, that plant is pretty much on course, conforming to the original pattern, or to the essential characteristics of the genus. True leaves remain loyal, constant to the ideal character of the plant. True leaves are accurately fitted, placed or shaped. True leaves happen according to predicti...

Looks like a fairly innocuous item, doesn't it? When the blender gasket went missing, we got along without it for a while, but smoothies were getting messy and it was time to take action. Being a modern woman, I checked online and found a number of small appliance parts suppliers carrying the needed item for seventy-five cents. Being a not-so-modern woman, I couldn't bring myself to cough up $7.00 shipping for a seventy-five cent part! I decided to look locally. My first stop was the Tru-Value Hardware in Manchester. A friendly fellow looked blank when I described what I was looking for, but wondered if he could order it. I followed him to the back of the store, where another salesperson was intently researching hunting rifles on the one computer. He didn't seem all that happy to interrupt hunting season for a blender gasket, but the screen flipped back and forth between the two disparate items as my fellow thumbed through a huge catalog, suggesting different order numbers ...

From the wheelbarrow of soil (Frog Log 3/5) to the tower of seeds (Frog Log 3/10), we now have little seedlings starting to fill the flats. Here is the beginning of our salad mix; these are all flats of baby lettuce seedlings. A few nights ago I woke up with the words "grow dead grow" running through my mind. Kind of ominous when I write it, but I really didn't feel too bothered at the time. It was a weird night, but it reminded me of our very first greenhouse at the farm. We took the side off the old south-facing chicken coop and tried to figure out how to give the plants a head start. We probably didn't have much in the way of heat; I can't really remember - it was so long ago and I was so clueless about the growing process. We weren't really based on the farm much in those days -- still trying to pay for it by working in town. So, not surprisingly, a cool night came along in early spring and we either didn't notice or weren't around to place the p...

Being somewhat a linguaphile, I subscribe to a nifty little web offering called A Word A Day (AWAD), written by Anu Garg. Five days a week I receive a word, its definition, and its use in recent publication. The author always includes a quote from known and unknown thinkers from the past several centuries -- no specific word emphasis, but almost always thought-provoking. There is a guest author this week who seems to be a vegan and encourager of food awareness. This was a recent entry: factory farming (FAK-tuh-ree FAHR-ming) noun An industrialized system of producing meat, eggs, and milk in large-scale facilities where the animal is treated as a machine. [From the idea of operating a large-scale farm as an efficient factory.] Some of the characteristics of a factory farm include intensive crowding of animals, trimming of birds' beaks, cutting pigs' tails, force-feeding of ducks, injecting artificial growth hormones, restricting mobility, etc. A factor...

One son was taking the seeds up to the greenhouse -- all the seeds. And in one trip. It wasn't working so well and as he stopped in the kitchen to regroup, I realized that he was trying to carry our entire season's worth of seeds. So I took a picture and there it is. Those few boxes, with a little added sun and rain, will expand into a colorful cornucopia of vegetable nourishment. You can see that we get a lot of seeds from Johnny's Selected Seeds out of Maine. I believe that Frog Holler and Johnny's both began in the same year. Johnny's has definitely thrived and a year or so ago when the founder, Rob Johnston retired, Johnny's became a company that was owned by its employees. No sell-out to Burpee or Monsanto here. Underneath the Johnny's boxes is a box of yummy "baked stuffed potatoes". Good old Fedco seed company. These guys are righteous to the core -- but does a seed company that deals in the thousands of orders, really go out and trash pic...

We mixed our first batch of soil this week. There it sits in the wheelbarrow in the greenhouse. Nothing too special -- peat and vermiculite for the most part. But we'll start our first batch of seedlings in that soil. Once they have two or so "true leaves", the tiny plants will be transplanted to their little compartments -- three or four to a "cell". They will continue to grow in their new quarters until the stems are stocky and the roots established. When the weather welcomes, we will transplant the young sprouts to the field. There, good Lord willin', they will thrive in the springtime sun, rains and gentle breezes. When they have come into their varieties of vegetal fullness - mostly green and leafy - we will harvest them, wash, pack and transport to market. They will shine on the market table, waiting for you to put them in your basket. They'll ride home with you, to be washed, prepared and set on your table. From there to your plate, and then your ...

I did get sidetracked from the seed order froglog (January 25) by those winter tomatoes. In the meantime, the order was completed and the seeds have arrived. We did order a small selection of seeds from a company that distributes seeds from Franchi Sementi spa of Bergamo, Italy, "seedsmen for over 200 years!" The variety descriptions are intriguing and offer a glimpse into the Italian appreciation of vegetables and/or food in general. They say the Inuit have at least 25 words to describe snow; well, I counted 16 different varieties of zucchini in this one small catalog! And each described with a loving nuance, some popular in Northern Italy, some preferred in the South, some most common in the markets of Venice. This speaks to a traditional and regional cuisine, and I suggest that the regionality of the food preferences stems from an inherent connection to the locality of the vegetables grown and consumed. When the order arrived, the large photos covering the entire face of...