Downing Hollow under the snow

A chance to reflect upon the fragile seeds recently planted as well as the ones we have yet to nurture. Small chicories, beets, endives and lettuces are slowly sprouting from the ground inside the ice-covered green house; inside, we turn the heat up and seed some purple osaka mustard greens. For lunch, Lori made avgolemono, a Greek egg and lemon soup with some of our neighbors' pasture-raised chicken. Alex is making bread for dinner. That's what Alex does – bread. He lovingly dolls out the flour, the yeast and the water every week (or two days, or day, or 12 hours, as the case may be). My goodness... bread. Snow. Yum!
Tomorrow, more chicory and endive go into the ground, I hope they make it. When you're farming, failure is not failure. Failure is part of farming. It's hard but it's true and so, when I see the snow falling, I don't worry, knowing that, like every year, enough plants will thrive for this family to make it through another season.
I love you, my little plants!
entry by Caitlin Dupuigrenet

Happy New Year to all. It's turning out to be a cold start to the new year with expected temps down to 2 degrees here in the hollow. I went out today to look about my amendments for starting seeds and kicked the bag of rock phosphate and nearly broke my toe. All is frozen solid. So we will be toting in the peat moss, greensand, rock phosphate and blood meal into the house starting tomorrow. I've got to drag up my grow lights out of the basement cause we have a mama dog and three pups down there weathering out the cold in my seed starting room. Lucky is the pet that steps foot on our property and believe me when you don't have a friend in the world, Downing Hollow Farm is a bright spot on the map for such unwanted creatures of all shapes, sorts and conditions. Counting thus far we have rescued 9 animals that have been abandoned at our place or there abouts.

We had a amazing year last year and we are so psyched for this coming season of growing and socializing. Our kids are thriving and learning and keeping us in stitches with their crazy shows they put on like the Henry Gargling Show with Encore by Hattie where she gargles the Star Wars theme. They continue to be our greatest advocates of healthy eating. My best advice for feeding kids is to cut up a big plateful of raw vegetables of all kinds and put it out there on the counter or table before dinner...especially when you are running late with dinner cause the kids will be so hungry they will end up munching on the raw vegetables for an hour before dinner is even ready. Works every time for us! And we eat more vegetables that way too.

This year we have openings for internships at the farm. We had a total of 7 interns last year. As many as 5 here at one time. They all had different lengths of stay and different reasons for being here but I think the overall theme was one of connection to the earth and that of meeting people that respected the role of the farmer. Market days were really inspiring for us all as we got to know our CSA members,market customers and fellow farmers and vendors. Many a great conversation was had!!

So this year looms in front of us with all it's challenges and surprises. I'm excited to dive in and let's just hope the weather cooperates and God willing and the creek don't rise.