Herb and flower Highlight!

This spring I’ll be starting a new organic perennial herb to plant along our vegetable gardens. Echinacea Tennesseensis! Its a beautiful pink coneflower with thin petals that curl inward rather than droop outward like other coneflower varieties. What’s so exciting is that this rare beauty is on the Endangered Species list and is only grown in very few parts of the country. It’s very useful for organic vegetable gardens because it attracts beneficial insects such as bees and butterflies. Our untreated, organic seeds will be started indoors and in our transplanting house on the farm. Once they develop into seedlings we’ll plant them in our perennial gardens and also in larger pots for sale at the Bloomington Farmer’s Market.

If January is this busy what's July going to be like?!

It's been a busy January full of conferences and meetings. Dave spoke at the Indiana Horticulture Congress in Indianapolis and the whole family was invited to come with! Hans has been meeting with local vendors to introduce our upcoming crop and has gotten great reception! We've had the chance to meet lots of really awesome, knowledgeable people and be a part of some really worthwhile groups this month. So I'd like to take a moment and say thanks for the constant advice and information and all the hard work to propel the local and sustainable way of living forward further and further!

Have you seen Food Inc or Fresh? Excellent movies, very passionate and informative! Dave, Hans and I were able to join our Slow Food of Springfield friends for a viewing of Fresh last weekend and really enjoyed the community spirit and willingness to support local farmers! We hope movies like this will educate the public and shed some light on why we need sustainable agriculture and to support small farmers.

A final note... Hans has been working SO hard getting seeds started for our onions and leeks! I see new green sprouts every morning when I wake up and creep downstairs for a cup of coffee. Seeing bright green growth in the cold dark mornings of February leaves me very excited for the coming Spring and planting season! (I type this as the snow is falling.. we're suppose to get 3 inches tonight!). I've been ordering lots of fun culinary herbs and gorgeous flowers from the mountains of seed catalogs we've been getting. I have to say Johnny's and Baker Creek have been so wonderful to us. Lots of help getting the right tools and varieties of plants. I posted some video of Hans working on setting up row hoops and also the ongoing construction of our large hoop house. I can't believe it's almost built! Whenever Hans leaves to go work on it I always hug him goodbye and thank him for building our future!

Take care!
Katie