2011 at Fairy-Tale Farm was hard. In Spring, I had to take some time off of hosting events in order to tend to my health. Here I contemplate what to plant next.
Spring Diva
Months later, the fava beans behind the rocking chair grow into 6 foot towers. The triple compost system that Karsten built out of old wood pallets against the back fence slowly rots. Sweet peas bloom on the left next to the chicken coop. Giant red mustard continues to grow, and red lettuces snuggle in with baby carrots.
The migrating birds don't eat the red lettuces and they look pretty with the slowly growing carrots.
By early summer, sweet peas blossom on the left while red mustards bolt and shoot up yellow flowers in the background. Poppies line the path. The garden is glorious.
I grew some exotic poppies this year. I call the red and white one “poppy from outerspace”. The pink peony-like one was a volunteer. Red pom-pom type from Annie’s Annuals. Can’t wait to see what combo I get wildly this year.
I had so many sweet peas and fava beans I sold them at the Corralitos Farmer’s Market:
Fava beans and sweet pea flowers. The scent of the sweet peas is so delicious.
We also sold edible flowers. Nasturtium, borage, calendula, pansies, oxalis.
Then, I unfortunately ended up in the hospital with my sweet peas.
Trying to make the best of it at UCSF as I am here for 3 long weeks.
But in the summer I am free, and I spend hours sleeping on the porch as the garden slowly grows around me.
Fairy-Tale Farm is quiet with only the cat for company.
We get a farm dog named “Kia”. The purple, yellow, and red potatoes are dug up. Rainbow tomatoes are harvested. Pears.
The winter comes to a close and we harvest pumpkins and peas. I slowly mend, and contemplate what to do for 2012. Happy gardening, all. Stay tuned for upcoming events.
Sometimes you have to get out of the urban farm and visit cornfields up the coast for inspiration.
From the Santa Cruz Sentinel article found at: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_16109132
Living a Fairy-Tale: Santa Cruz family ‘grows’ community at their downtown area farm
By Justine DaCosta
Posted: 09/18/2010 01:30:39 AM PDT
Nestled among multiplexes not far from downtown Santa Cruz is a garden where 10-foot-high sunflowers overlook the winding vines of pumpkins and the soft ferns of overgrown asparagus. A few chickens wander through the aisles full of tomatoes and tomatillos, part of the 50-by-50-foot garden, which is shaped like a star, a red, circular wooden platform positioned in the center.
“It’s a magical garden,” said owner Debora Wade, pointing to a giant sunflower whose head has begun splitting into two sections. “It grows weird things.” Click to read more …
"jams and produce" by kthread (CC BY 2.0)
We tried another new idea, a distilled idea. We’ve done pop-up restaurants, pie parties, figure drawing, and workshops. We’ve long dreamed of house concerts, dance parties. We want to be a venue where people bring their goods, extra produce, music, art, and especially sense of community.
So was born the Summer Salons and Urban Farm Market. Click to read more …
Tags: art, community, food, jewelry, market, music, pictures, sweets
This Summer, beginning July 1st, we have our Summertime Salon! Every Thursday evening, from 5-9 PM, we have a wonderful dinner from the garden, figure drawing with a live model, Music jams, a nap corner, and various kid-friendly activities! You can figure draw for an hour, then join in with the musicians and sing a few songs. Or just eat pie.
- Music over here (bring your instrument, and just play with whoever shows up)
- Art/figure drawing over there (to make this free, I need free models! Sign up now for summer. You don’t have to be nude, come in costume if you’d like. I have a few easels, but bring your own art supplies and extra easel if you have one.)
- Collage on that table (bring your own supplies, especially magazines to cut!)
- Games on this table (bring a game you want to play)
- Kids craft table (anything from feather hair clips to nosegays. Craft from the garden.)
- Or just chase the chickens
We have coffee, tea, a delicious vegetarian dish from the garden, and pie for sale. Menu is dependent on what’s fresh from the garden. Pie is seasonal fruit. Sometimes we have biscuits and fresh jam.
Urban Farm Market: Now every Thursday of the month bring your excess produce, flowers, honey, homemade cheese, art, jewelry, sweet treats, etc. to our Urban Farm Market tables to sell or trade with the other vendors. Our intention is to grow a farmer’s market for the DIY community who don’t make enough to sell at the Farmer’s Market. This could also be a great time to barter. Just bring your goods and a fair price for them, and we can begin the underground market! If this is popular, we could do it every week, and into the Fall. It’s proving popular, so we’re extending the Urban Farm Market to every week.
You don’t have to RSVP to come play. Please let us know if you’d like to sell at the market, though, or if you’re interested in becoming a figure model. Tell all your friends, and come hang out into the night with us and dust off your talents! May your community, artistic, and creative dreams come true.
Tags: art, candy, cards, collage, dancing, dinner, figure drawing, food, games, jewelry, market, music, sweets
Recently we had the great pleasure of supplying flowers for India Joze’ flower festival. Pictures of these flowers are below.
Held 16 May at Joze’ new restaurant location, the scene I saw at the Flower Festival was the evolved artistic food expression I’ve come to know from Master Chef Jozseph Schultz. You can look at their pictures (Facebook pictures and event page) via the India Joze Facebook page. What I captured here are shots of our flower delivery. (These pictures are available under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 Unported.)
Nasturtiums, rose petals, borage, lemon petals, and edible pea flowers.
One of our Araucana chickens, Sparrow, likes her privacy when she’s laying her eggs. She’s also the strongest flyer, and flies the coop each day to lay her egg out in the greater homestead. She keeps her secret spots to an area that is not much more than 5000 square feet (464.5 square meters), but the combination of her low height, clever camouflage, and willingness to find somewhere new keeps us active. Whenever we find her latest clutch and start collecting the eggs, she soon gives up on that location and starts over with a new one. Because Araucanas lay blue-green-grey eggs, the experience reminds me of an Easter egg hunt.
This video shows the latest location Sparrow has been laying, the most difficult one she has devised. I’m afraid there are other locations she can reach that are more unpleasant to crawl to than this one was. One lesson learned – do the crawl with thick gloves on.
Tags: chickens, eggs, funny, how-to, Sparrow, sustainability, video
Even a small working urban farm such as ours needs a way to get essential farm materials brought here. Currently we are a bicycle-only house, although we car share with our neighbors and rent cars whenever we need to go out of town.
When I come back with a rental car, if there is time I like to run a few errands before returning it to the agency. The below videos are a quick view of how I fit three rice straw bales in the back of a Toyota Corolla:
I put a tarp down to cover the rear seat. This is a lesson learned from past experience. One time I brought back a mini-van that I had filled with seven bales of straw, then did a fair but not perfect sweeping job on it. When I returned it, the rental folks were bent out of shape. I was kind but firm; I didn’t do anything wrong, really, and I offered to clean the car further, especially if they’d lend me the shop vac, but I wasn’t paying any fees. In the end, it turned out they thought I had laid down a bed of straw to transport farm animals. Sheese! It’s just some straw, folks.
While I was checking the videos, I found Nancy Day, a woman in Ontario(?), who last year who got thirteen straw bales on her Toyota Corolla. Wow! However, when I watched how she loaded and strapped them in, I realized I could never get that load home across my city. She mentions at the end of the second video that she has to drive home via back roads. There aren’t back roads between my straw sources and Fairy-Tale Farm. I could get lucky and not be spotted with a huge load, but I’m more likely to get a citation for an unsafe or too-large load.
Next time, though, I’m going to shoot for five straw ebales using some borrowed techniques.
Tags: challenges, city living, how-to, mulch, straw, strawbales, sustainability, video
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