Blue Faerie Farm

We may be a little late, but we get there eventually. We finally, after some trials and tribulations, have secured both a URL and a web hosting service. The address (www.bluefaeriefarm.com) got co-opted along the way, so it has/had a page on the web not necessarily to our liking. It looks like it may a take a few days to clear out the old site and redirect to our new one. If you visit the site and it doesn't have celtic knots along the edges, then please wait a day or two and try again. For those of you web gurus in the audience, once we get OUR site up and running, please feel free to send comments or suggestions!

In other news, yesterday was our first market of the season with the Agro Depot market at Brunswick. It was good to be back out at a farm stand again and we really enjoyed ourselves! If you are in the neighborhood on Wednesday's, it is located between the Marc station and Main St. We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day Weekend. Ours was good, although they haven't been the same for us since my Grandmother passed a few years ago. We always used to go to her place in Southeastern West Virginia for a family reunion over Memorial Day Weekend. It wasn't anything fancy, just whoever from the family and friends that could be there sitting around telling stories, remembering things passed. We usually ended up going over to the local Baptist Church Homecoming potluck supper on the lawn. For a church with a congregation of 20, they put on a spread that always attracted at least 50 folks.

It was my grandparents that got me interested in farming in the first place. When I was a kid, we would spend a week of vacation up there every year. When I was 4 or 5 they bought 40 acres or so up in the mountains near all of the old family homesteads. Early on we would camp out and spend the days clearing the field and grubbing stumps. Later on, they would always have a HUGE (well for a kid from the city anyway) vegetable garden. We would plant, pull weeds, dig potatos and enjoy whatever was in season.

To this day I remember my grandad refusing to pick corn until the water was boiling. From the first ear the came off the stalk, it was a breakneck race to get them in the water. If you dropped an ear on the way back to the house, you just left it, cause there just wasn't time to stop and pick it up! I also remember the first time we loaded up a whole mess of fresh harvest that we had toiled all day to gather and put it into the car. I couldn't understand why we were going to give all of those wonderful vegetables away after we worked so hard to pick them, but it didn't take too many years for me to understand after repeated trips to older family and friends who couldn't manage to do for themselves any more.

Thinking back on the stories, the laughter, the lessons learned brings a smile to my face every time. I guess if Memorial Day is all about remembering, ours really was pretty good.

Well, it looks like the Radishes are almost ready for their first harvest!!! This is our first year growing French Breakfast. They seem to be maturing the fastest out of our varieties so I had a chance to try one last night. What a wonderful mild radish flavor!

We may not quite be ready for the Washington County Market this Saturday, but should be at Brunswick on Wednesday with Radishes and Apple Butter. Don't think I would try the two of these together, but hey, whatever make you happy!

Here is hoping for a great 2009 market season for all of us!

We are finally starting to get caught up enough on the planting to have time to talk about it a little bit. This spring has seen nearly 200 new apple trees, 13 varieties of potato and three weeks of rain! With the weather, we missed a few of the earlier vegetables that we were hoping for this year such as peas and spinach. Yesterday's sun has brought the beets shooting up though, so we are happy.

This is only our second year of market farming, so much of this is still very new and exciting to us. We will try to write updates as things develop in the fields and to share some of the exciting things we learn along the way.

Wishing everyone a joyous bounty.