Double Oak Farm

They’ve arrived! Those lovely, colorful packets full of hope and promise, each with it’s perfect picture bringing the promise of a bountiful, beautiful harvest.

Today the first of several seed orders arrived in the mail. The excitement began back in December with the arrival of the seed catalogs. They greeted me at the mail box with countless possibilities. After planning and plotting I narrowed down the choices and placed the order. Then began the wait.

Finally they arrived bringing with them the promise of spring, warm weather, new life, hope. They are the perfect remedy to a drab, cold day.

The snow of last week has faded. It is dirty and old and tired. But my seed packets are bright and new. They hold a rainbow of colors, green edamame, purple lettuce, neon chard, orange, red and black tomatoes, chocolate peppers, yellow cucumbers, pink eggplant.

There will be a day late this summer that is the perfect contrast to this day. It will be hot and humid. The weeds will grow inches every day. It won’t cool off even at night. I’ll stand in the garden and think of winter, of cool weather and no weeds or bugs. I won’t remember being tired of cold, tired of the indoors, tired of the dark. I will try to appreciate the heat as I look forward to winter days and fire places.

For now I get to play with my seeds. I spread them out and look at them.  I sort them by variety and planting times and start making notes about what gets planted and when.  I dream of long warm days in the garden and perfect weedless rows of vegetables. And I try to appreciate the few weeks of winter that remain.

You can find out more about our plans for the summer at our website: www.2oakfarm.com - Lori

One of our favorite family activities each fall is checking the persimmon seeds. Our neighbor has many prolific persimmon trees and she generously provides us with persimmons each year. She also taught us about the persimmon seeds. The legend says that if you crack the seed open you will find either a knife, a spoon or a fork inside. If you find a knife it will be a cold winter with cutting winds. A spoon will bring heaps of snow. A fork is a split in the weather with both mild and severe spells.

We have tried this experiment each year since we moved to Indiana, and each year the seeds have been spot on. It is actually the epicotyl or small plant part of the seed and every year it has a distinct shape. We always check several seeds and each year all the seeds  have an identical shape.  One year it’s a fork, the next a spoon.

Now keep in mind that when we moved here we were told that in Columbus you will get 2 inches of snow 2 times a year and it will last for 2 days. For the most part this has been true. Big snows are unusual and they usually melt right away.

Well this fall it was a spoon. The kids rejoiced. They started guessing how soon they would have a snow day. The last time we found a spoon we had a record two feet of snow just before Christmas. The kids have never had so much fun.

We’ll we waited and waited. We had inches of rain and bitter cold. The pond froze 6 inches thick. I told the kids maybe the seed was wrong. Maybe we just had a lot of rain, after all if the inches of rain had been snow it would have been feet of snow. Maybe this would be the year we never used the sleds, only the ice skates. The kids are very happy mom was wrong.

We had 6 inches of snow followed by an inch of ice topped with 6 inches of snow. The driveway is a toboggan run. We went sledding until we were exhausted. When the light peaks out from behind the clouds, the layer of ice in the middle of the snow is the bright blue you see in the glaciers of Alaska.

I agree with the kids. I’m glad mom was wrong.  Every winter needs a day like today.

See more of our farm at www.2oakfarm.com

I am so excited to be making my first post on our Double Oak Farm blog! It has been a big weekend. We finally got the website up and running. We have our first subscription to our new CSA. I’ve started a blog. I think I made a functioning mailing list for our customers. Oh, and I posted our information on Local Harvest. That’s a lot to accomplish in one weekend, especially for a non-tech person like me.

This is such a convenient way to keep everyone informed of our latest plans for this market season. I look forward to hearing what our customers have to say as well. So in addition to all this work on the cyber end of our business we have a few things brewing. Tim is working on the final details of our logo so we can add it to the website and other publications. DJ is working with our Amish growers and our boxes for the CSA. Rod has the fun job of working with the legal stuff so we can have a store to sell from this summer. Christy will help blog, write newsletters and bring you many delicious recipes this summer.

I am pouring over seed catalogs dreaming about spring. Once again I am sure that I need a bigger garden! It's a favorite January activity to sit in front of the wood stove and dream of spring as I sketch out our planting plans.

 It was just last Saturday when the website went “live” and the response has been tremendous! Thank you to everyone who has given feedback. It’s been very helpful. We have sold 4 CSA shares in 3 days and I have a feeling the rest are going to go quickly. We really appreciate all the “word of mouth” advertising.  Next week we hope to start really advertising so if you have friends and family who are interested in a CSA share tell them not to wait.

To show our appreciation for your help with advertising we are going to keep track of referrals. If you refer someone and they join the CSA we will have a special “thank you” gift later this summer.

 To see our full blog with pictures check out our website at www.2oakfarm.com .

Stay warm and we'll keep you posted.

 Lori