New compost supplier this season!

Hello, friends! Hope you’re having a wonderful spring. We’re busy transplanting, and this year, we’re exclusively using compost from Conservation Compost, a commercial composting operation based in Saegertown.

The company’s mission is to “divert organic materials destined for landfills into valuable, locally produced compost.”

They collect food scraps from local homes, offices, and businesses, and mix that food waste with wood chips from local tree companies. (They do not use yard waste, manure, biosolids, or industrial waste in their compost production.)

Conservation Compost is the region's first large-scale commercial composting facility.

To learn more, click here for Conservation Compost’s website.

It is a beautiful product, and we’re so excited to see the results this summer!

~ Stella

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Where did we go?

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We’re right here! But, if you kept up with news of the farm, you may have wondered.

For the busiest folks, I’ll sum it up with a single line: We had a good year at the farmer’s market, and a great year at… well, life.

If you have a little more time, here’s a recap of what we’ve been up to, and a farm update. But first, please allow me to explain my hiatus.

After keeping this journal for several years, I took a break from it this year. Although it’s been incredibly fun, regular posts require a lot of time, and I needed to use that time in a different way.

Some of you may know this, but to others it may be a bit of a surprise. I’ve been a screenwriter for about 15 years. I write “specs.” Sometimes solo, sometimes with a partner who lives in Maryland. Spec is an industry word for a screenplay that nobody asked you to write. It’s a script you’re trying to sell, or use to attract a manager or producer. After years of shoehorning screenwriting into the nooks and crannies of my life (nap time… at 5 in the morning… during PJ Masks), my schedule, headspace, and finances allowed me the incredible opportunity to write full time.

This past year, I wrote and rewrote, and cut my teeth pitching. I pitched projects to more than 50 managers and producers, and had a fun ride as a finalist in the PAGE International Screenwriting Awards — a contest that draws about 9,000 entries. In the science fiction category, my script made the Top 10 out of 500 scripts.

It was a thrilling year, with one learning curve after the next. And 2024 is shaping up to be just as exciting.

So — yes! I’m still here. We’re still here. Life just continues to evolve.

Our biggest news this year isn’t farm related.

After nine wonderful years with our little guy at home, the time had come to send him to in-person school for the third grade. The decision was a combination of factors — a mix of what was best for him… and for me.

As summer clipped along, we all had big feelings about the change. It’s been the three of us at home together for the past few years, and, of course, Silas has been at my side for almost a decade. Letting him go, it hurt.

But first, let me back up a bit to May, when we returned to the farmer’s market at the lovely Meadville Market House.

This was our first season without the CSA. Since we no longer needed to provide produce for approximately 50 families a week, we scaled back the amounts we grew, especially when it came to greens. We still planted an abundance of kale, but only a limited amount of lettuce in the spring. With the sale of greens no longer financially necessary, we decided to ease up.

A more relaxed farm season helped us take two wonderful trips this summer. One was to visit with Jason’s family in Alexandria Bay, on the Saint Lawrence River in upstate New York. The other was hiking the mountains and waterfalls of Shenandoah National Park. This park has more than 100 drivable miles along the Blue Ridge Mountains. You can cruise through the park at 35 mph and pull up to incredible vistas along the entire way. The mountain experience left an impression on all of us, and we’re planning to explore another range next year.

Here are a few photos from our trip to Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia. These were taken on Hawksbill Summit, Shenandoah’s highest peak.

The hikes were awe-inspiring to Silas. We want to see as many national parks with him as we can.

Hi! It’s me on a mountain.

We’ve never been so sad to see a summer end. I cried harder than I have in decades the first morning that school bus pulled away.

It wasn’t long after the tears dried up, that we were beset with constant school-borne viruses. It was so bad we had to end our farmer’s market season two weeks earlier than intended. (This first year of in-person school has been a doozy. Silas is recouping from his eleventh sickness since September.)

Apart from the parade of illnesses, Silas has successfully transitioned into school. Any chance he gets, he makes it known to us that he prefers school at home, but there are perks to regular school that even he can’t deny. It’s helped tremendously that he has a very kind teacher who has nearly 30 years of experience. Art and tech are his favorite classes, and he loves all the fun that happens around the holidays.

We sure do miss him, and we can’t wait for Christmas vacation to start. (Neither can he!)

Jason will take a few days off around Christmas, too, but he’ll have to hit the ground running in January, with grant deadlines looming. He stays busy in his “hobbit hole,” as we call it. His basement office is a cozy, windowless room with an ornate door that’s rounded on the top. It was built by my uncle, and looks exactly like something you’d expect Bilbo Baggins to pop out of.

Kidding aside, I’m so proud of him. His intelligence and conscientious manner have made him an asset to many worthwhile regional projects. (For those who don’t know: Jason is a grant writer and project manager. The company he created, Spark Community Capital, will have its third anniversary next year.)

But what about the farm? Ah, yes — the farm!

Here we are at the farmer’s market.

In the spring, we’ll reconfigure the layout of the gardens. There are sections we no longer need, and we’ll till those under. This will let us brush hog those areas. They’ll be more sightly and less of a haven for varmints.

We’re also redesigning the sections that we’ll continue to plant, and rethinking the 125-foot long beds. The extra long beds were necessary when we were growing CSA-sized quantities, but now truncated rows will be more manageable.

Kale and Swiss chard growing in the Big Tunnel this spring.

And we’re yet again rethinking how we approach the farm. The goal was to become self-employed. We achieved this, although ironically not through farming. While this has been wonderful for our family, it’s left us unsure of how to proceed with the farm.

And the question was raised this year: Do we proceed?

Do we want to?

Ultimately, we decided the answer was yes. We’re going forward with Season 10. But that brings me to how we’re rethinking the farm. Our mindset for this year will be that we’re growing again for us. We’re approaching this season less like a business, and more like, well, a garden. We’re trusting our instincts and listening to our hearts. Anything else has never really suited us.

Jason plants garlic for next year.

I’m not sure how much you’ll hear from me here. There are only so many hours in a day, in a year, in a lifetime. I don’t regret how I’ve spent mine in the past nine years, but I do have a strong sense of how I want to spend the next decade. Merry Christmas, friends. And may you make excellent use of your hours in the new year, too.

~ Stella

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June on the farm

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It’s almost officially summer, and I wanted to share a few farm photos. That’s sage in bloom. Isn’t it pretty? Behind the sage, is the Little Tunnel. We spent today composting the tunnel and laying fabric. Later this week, we’ll fill it with cucumbers, peppers, and eggplant.

This is the Big Tunnel. It has several kale varieties, Swiss chard, collards, tomatoes, and peppers (although most of those were eaten by some insect).

Here’s the other side of the Big Tunnel, where the tomatoes are planted.

The outdoor tomatoes are still small, but they’re doing well.

We planted fewer onions than last year, and it’s been much easier to care for them.

We should have a lot of beans this year.

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How I found relief from costochondritis

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About five years ago, I developed a dull ache in my chest. At that time, I was farming and doing overly intense workouts. I figured the discomfort would go away in time. But instead, the pain went from dull to an inflamed sensation that worsened at night. It became so painful that I couldn’t take deep breaths. I (stupidly) didn’t seek help, and kept telling myself it would get better on its own.

And while the pain would lessen in the winter, as soon as a new farm season rolled around in March, it came back in full force. It took me two seasons to finally tell Jason. (For me, telling someone meant having to admit to myself that I had a problem.) When I finally did come clean, he felt terrible and immediately sought answers.

What I was experiencing was costochondritis. It’s an inflammation of the cartilage that connects the ribs to the breastbone. Pain caused by costochondritis can mimic a heart attack or other heart problems. Medical websites say it has no apparent direct cause, and treatment focuses on easing the pain while you wait to get better. It’s more common in women. Some medical websites classify costochondritis as “relatively harmless,” but while it may not be dangerous, it sure makes a person miserable. Even when I wasn’t having a total flare up, the dull pain remained and my breaths were shallow. When it was really bad, it felt like I was suffocating and made me panicky.

All of our research wasn’t turning up any relief. Since everything we read focused on costochondritis being a chest issue, I focused on my chest, doing chest-opening yoga and stretches. But none of this helped, actually it made it way worse. Visits to the chiropractor helped with other issues, but did nothing for my chest.

Then, Jason found two online physical therapists: Bob and Brad (Bob Shrupp and Brad Heineck). One of them has costochondritis. To explain the problem, they compared the ribs to rusty bucket handles — that rust needs to be worked off. They also confirmed that chest-opening exercises seemed to do more harm than good. Two of their videos turned my situation around entirely.

Here they are:

Video 1

And this one, which truly unlocked relief for me:

Video 2

Around the 10:50 mark there’s an exercise that gave me my breath back. You stand with your feet about hip-width apart, and raise up your elbows — fist pressed to palm — and swivel. I did this every morning, and noticed improvement after just a few days! After all this time? This was what I needed to do? Thirty seconds of simple motion!

I’ve been doing this exercise regularly for about three years now, especially after a day of weeding or heavy lifting. The pain still flares up now and then, but the swivel motion eases it, and lets me breathe normally.

~ Stella

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Saturday at the market

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Another great Saturday in the books. Saturdays at the Meadville Market House are always a good time, and Second Saturdays especially so. It was lovely catching up with friends I haven’t seen in awhile. And it was such a beautiful day, I took a stroll around town after market and treated myself to lunch at Kettle Lake Kitchen. The fun is back in farming for me.

~ Stella

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First planting of the season

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With the first farmers market about three weeks away, it was definitely time to get plants out of the propagation greenhouse and in the ground.

We were all feeling (mostly) better after a round of colds, so we headed up to the farm to plant kale (green curly, purple, and red), collards, Swiss chard, lettuce, and green onions. We’ll be seeding radishes and a few other things this weekend.

After a long break, Jason will soon get microgreens going for the Saturday, May 6, market at the Meadville Market House.

It was a beautiful, warm night, and we could hear the peepers in the woods. Ever since last season ended, Jason and I (and Silas, too) have been mostly working from our computers, and it felt good to get back on the farm. The garter snakes are back. The spiders and bugs are back, and so are the frogs, groundhogs, kale, and Ruggieros. See you all soon! Enjoy the lovely weather.

~ Stella