Market garden

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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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The plan for Season 8 - continue to be frugal, start setting limits on work hours

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We’re now eight work days out from Jason leaving his full-time job. It might seem like a time for radical rethinking of farm revenue, but for two reasons this December isn’t much different than past years.

For one, the farm’s functioned for seven years now, and Jason’s meticulously tracked our yearly progress. Because of this, the adjustments we need to make on paper to prepare for the season are predictable. We’ll fill in details over the next few weeks, then it’s time to order seeds and start indoor seeding by late January.

The second reason we aren’t in a frenzied restructuring mode is that the farm will not be our sole source of income. Initially, our plan was to ramp the CSA back up to 75 members, as it was in Season 5, and attend three farmers markets a week. We also laid the groundwork with another regional retailer and planned to stock our produce there.

Over the summer, our plans for Season 8 shifted significantly when Jason started his grant-writing/project managing business, Spark Community Capital. This venture uses his decade of knowledge in this field, and lets him control his own schedule. It also provides a new income stream for our family and shifts pressure off the farm.

With this change, we decided to continue with an approximately 50-member CSA (this will once again include several free shares in our Give & Grown program). We’ll also be applying to attend one farmers market this year - the Meadville Market House on Saturdays.

Prior to the pandemic, we attended three farmers markets a week with the help of a part-time employee. In those days, we set up two days a week at the Titusville Open Air Market, and one day at the Market House. The Titusville market is wonderful, and helped us tremendously in our earliest years. But for the time being, we’re cutting back to the one market for two reasons.

The first reason is time. The day before any farmers market is spent harvesting, washing, and packing everything we plan to sell. In order to harvest enough to make the market worth our while, this process takes a whole day. Our goal is a table with a minimum of $300 of produce. A table with $400 of produce that we sell in about four hours would be a good day. More than that would be a great day. Then, of course, we spend a good portion of the following day actually at the market, setting up, selling, and closing down.

So a trip to the farmers market is about a day and a half of labor. The more markets we attend, the less time we have in the field or doing something entirely different, which brings me to the second reason.

We’ve decided that we no longer want our family going in different directions on Saturdays. We want to enjoy Saturdays during the growing season together. To make this happen, we’ll make all CSA deliveries on Thursdays (in the late afternoon/early evening), and then we can all be at the farmers market together.

We’re excited about this because the farmers market is a lot of fun, and so is downtown Meadville on a Saturday morning. Visiting with people who value local, no-spray produce, and the rainbow of foods NW Pa. provides, is rewarding for a farmer. It’s also good for a gardener’s soul to chat with fellow farmers. When much of your weekly conversation is the overheard humming of bees, the social connection is much appreciated.

Jason’s looking forward to it because he hasn’t had the opportunity to work a market regularly in all his years farming. He and Silas used to pop in to visit me as they passed through on CSA deliveries, and I know neither one of them ever wanted to get back on the road again.

There’s something special in the air at a farmers market. The ones in this area are small, not the endless stretches that sprout in larger cities. While I’m sure big markets are wonders to behold, little markets are cozy. Everyone knows everyone, and they’re easy to navigate. You’re doing right by your health and your community when you visit a market, big or small.

In 2022, we plan to continue selling to Core Goods, in Oil City, and Edinboro Market. These unique shops fill their shelves with local products and are important to small farms like ours.

We also plan to continue selling online via our website.

While our circumstances will change dramatically in 2022, our goal is not to push ourselves to our limits. We’ve done that for seven years. We also spent the last few years paying off our debts and developing a frugal lifestyle anchored by minimalist tenets. We did all this to essentially gain our freedom from the traditional work model, which structures a life around working for someone else and often leaves only crumbs of time (if that, even) for your family, your life, and your community.*

While this year feels experimental, it does not feel scary. Like any experiment, it could fail. But we believe in our hypothesis and we’ll tinker with it as needed. Our method includes living debt free and on a budget; cherishing people and experiences over material things; and working hard, but smart, as needed. We hope the conclusion to this experiment is a life with our loved ones and our own well-being at its core.

~ Stella

* If you’re new to this idea and it intrigues you, may I suggest, “Your Money or Your Life,” by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, and “The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy,” by Cait Flanders. You may also be interested in the excellent blog, “Frugalwoods.com.”