Sweetbrier Farms

new farm baby....

My sister-in-law turned 50 earlier this month. She shares my love for a lot of things. Kids, food, flowers, gardening, and animals. All the good stuff. I spent the two weeks leading up to her birthday searching for a kitten in need of a home.

On the morning of her birthday a friend connected me to someone who had rescued a litter of three super fluffy kitties the night before. The woman said I could have my pick because none were spoken for yet. I popped over to pick one out for my SIL and was greeted with this face....

 

 

His two siblings were equally as cute and fluffy. What's better than one kitten for your birthday? Two, of course. So I told her I would take all three. This little guy stayed with us and the other two were met with much excitement as a surprise birthday gift. 

 

 

 

The kids named him Neptune. Our tiny, fluffy, King of Sea. He's making us laugh and everyone is enjoying his snuggly + sweet personality. A wispy 22 ounces when we brought him home, he now weighs just over two pounds. Gosh they grow quickly. In the last week he's made friends with Elwood, our other male cat who is just barely a year old. They wrestle like you would expect a set of brothers to do and we are grateful they are friends and also grateful Elwood is helping to use up some of that crazy kitten energy!

 

 

So now we are a four house cat. (oh my!) No more baby animals for a good long while!

Welcome little Neptune, we're so glad you landed here with us.

xo~

s

august in the garden.....

Last night I was chatting with my mom on the phone. I haven't seen her for over a year. My parents, brother, and nephews all live in Alaska and our summer + fall travel plans have all been put on hold due to the pandemic. As my mom said last night, "It's hard, but it could definitely be much harder." She's right. She hasn't seen the farm since we've moved in, so I was chatting about the garden and how wild it gets this time of year. Kale waist-high, zucchini tripling in size overnight.....

Our garden last year was four raised beds full of mostly medicinal herbs and just a few basic veggies.....

I shared a little in a previous post about how we expanded things this spring, and now I've finally got some photos to share here. Recent happenings include a terraced row of Munstead Lavender along the hill (righthand side of the first photo below) and the second greenhouse is up. I'm a little late planting for winter, but it's mostly things like radishes and greens, so I think we'll be just fine.

The original four raised beds are what you can see on the left. Joe had the idea to have these curvy sort of organic-looking beds, which add so much to the magical feeling of the garden this year. You can see three new large beds on the right of the photo. There is a long mostly straight bed at the back with flowers + tomatoes + peppers + culinary herbs, a teardrop-shaped bed in the middle, and a curvy bed on the bottom right. Just out of the frame in the first photo, there is one more perennial medicinal herb + flower bed at the base of the hill on the far right. Also not visible are two 20 foot rows of raspberries to the right of the greenhouse and behind that 15 or so blueberry bushes, 3 rhubarb plants, and a nice two-bay compost setup that Joe built this spring.

This photo is looking up towards the house, which is just out of view to the right, you can see a strawberry bed at the top right which will probably become a perennial flower garden next year. I plan to move the strawberry bed into the bottom garden and will likely be fencing it off from our flock of 20+ free-range hens who love rearranging my garden mulch!

The medicinal herbs and veggies are all interplanted in what to some might seem like a bit of a mess, and to others a magical weaving of food and medicine that represents our use of these plant friends.... everything connected and together. Admittedly, this looser gardening style is new to me. In the past, I've been a straight-lines-and-specific-categories type of gardener. But a lot of biodynamic + permaculture reading along with Joe's desire for the garden to feel like it sprung up out of the woods has shifted everything. So far it seems to be working out pretty well...

In between baskets full of harvesting and weeding and preserving food - we're making mental and physical notes of what worked and what didn't. What we need less of or more of next year. It's our first year (ever!) having a garden this size and we've learned a lot about the specific pros and cons to growing food + medicine in this space. I suppose every year will bring knowledge with it, but this first year has seemed especially full of it. 

Here we are though, late August, busier than we've ever been and more times than not still in love with it all..... it's a pretty sweet spot all around.

more soon,

s

grow, harvest, dream.......

Harvest season is in full swing here on the farm. Almost every day we come in with a basket full of something that needs to be dried, tinctured, canned, or frozen. 

Some plants, like Tulsi pictured below, give us several harvests before the cold sets in. I have cut this patch back three times now and I'm certain I'll get one last big harvest. I made a double infused tincture, tulsi glycerine, tulsi honey, and the last harvest will be dried for tea. Sitting in a tulsi patch trimming plants is pure magic....

Echinacea Purpurea with a spider friend...... I use the leaf + flower + root to make a tincture each year and add it to our Cold + Flu tincture blend. 

Harvesting is my favorite part of growing food + medicine. Baskets full of herbs + veggies + berries make my heart sing. I almost always harvest solo and it's such a meditative time for me in the garden or woods. Thinking, giving gratitude, moving slowly. These are the times I notice the tiniest spiders on full blooms, pay attention to the birds singing + chipmunks chattering, feeling present + grounded.

Every other day right now, I pick a small quart basket of Calendula. I've made tincture for anti-fungal blends and the rest is dried in small batches, slowly filling half-gallon jars that will be used to infuse oil that will become skin healing salves and body butters.

My most recent wild harvest is Monarda fistulosa from our field. I made an infused honey, it's really lovely for sore throats, and a tincture that we'll add to our anti-viral blends. Lastly, I dried a whole gallon this year to experiment with cold + flu tea blends. If it's tasty, our CSA members will get some to try out in their winter shares. 

While out in the field harvesting and lost in thought imagining ways to use Monarda - a very abundant plant in our field - I wandered a bit far from my basket while plucking flowers and turned back to see this image....

A whole lot of wild, a little path, and my basket full of medicine. This is the kind of thing I tuck into my heart + soul in the long cold months of winter. It's the sort of thing my dreams are made of.....

Be well friends.

xo

~s

a few recent happenings.....

Spring was a whirlwind of events here on the farm.

Joe's much-anticipated gathering to celebrate his retirement from the Coast Guard was canceled due to the covid19 pandemic. He packed up solo at his apartment in Massachusetts, had a small informal retirement ceremony at work, and left. Four hours later he showed up at the little co-op I work at in his fancy dress uniform. We took photos at home in the yard, and that was the extent of his day. Definitely not what we expected, but memorable none the less I suppose.

Only a few days after Joe's arrival home, our farm-in-a-box arrived from Fedco with over 100+ plants. This spring we planted 20 fruit trees, a dozen blueberries, 3 dozen raspberries, a strawberry patch, a dozen more medicinal perennials, lots of veggies in raised beds near the house, and rows of potatoes and onions in our field. There were also far more shrubs, bushes, flowers, and medicinal herbs than anyone could keep track of. Something like 500 plants minus the veggie garden. And then it didn't rain for about 8 weeks so we (mostly Joe) spent 20+ hours a week watering all these new little plant babies. It was busy, to say the least. The reward is here though, lush green plants and baskets full of food.

We bought two greenhouse kits this spring, only one of which we got up before the planting extravaganza mentioned above. Soph and I started a couple of hundred veggie, herb, and flower seedlings in it. I'm hoping we'll get the second one assembled soon so we can get winter veggies started in early August for greens and such. My friend Bliss has a lovely little greenhouse that she picks salad greens and kale from all winter. Such abundance in January. 

We bought 8 chicks during the first part of social distancing and we just added another 16, plus four baby ducks. Fluffy = stress reduction! By the time this batch is ready to join the flock outside, the two dozen meat birds chicks will be here. This is our first time raising meat birds and we opted for Freedom Rangers which will grow slower and enjoy foraging.

Infrastructure projects included three new garden beds, cattle panel trellising for peas/beans/cucumbers, a chicken coop, and 300+ feet of deer fencing around the new orchard. Joe used a rototiller to till three forty-foot rows for potatoes and onions in the field next door - and then we spent hours picking rocks out of the soil. So. Many. Rocks. Joe installed recessed lighting in our dining room and living room as the first part of a bigger project - finishing the attic space! We're adding two small bedrooms and storage upstairs. The kids will move into the new rooms, Sophie's loft will become a guest space and sewing nook, and Luke's old room will become a much-needed studio space for Sweetbrier Farms Apothecary! All these projects pushed Joe's garage + pottery studio project off until next spring, he definitely took one for the team putting all of our needs before his, he's like that.

I suppose that pretty much has you up to date on the farm. Oh, one last thing. A sneaky photo taken by our kiddo on a recent sunset walk. It really is a little slice of heaven here on the farm.....

Until next time,

~s

community + tramp roaches.....

Our winter farmer’s market slows down quite a bit. The gift of this slower pace - and being in closer quarters indoors - is the chance to shoot the breeze with other vendors. There is a lot of sharing and a lot of joking. Once, a lone brussels sprout was tossed from one side of the building to the other during the slower moments. We joked we should sell tickets at the door for crowd control. Someone would always offer a midday coffee run to get us all through. Our regulars would come visit in any weather though, happy to chat and support their much loved little market.

After our very last market of the season, we gathered at the taproom next door to celebrate with food, local beer, and kombucha. I sat looking at the faces of these hard-hard working folks and laughed at their stories with a humbled heart. After a few months of slinging my wares, I had found community. I was sitting at the ultimate cool kid table.

Among these faces, there was a fleeting one. Cooper. A community farm in Vermont has a whole crew of young fresh-faced interns, just kids really. They show up ten minutes before the market starts and in a flurry unload several crates of beautiful bread and the best hummus you’ve ever had. Over the summer, I rarely saw the same face twice…. but without fail, one usually wandered over to my herbal concoctions and I would offer a trade. Bread and hummus for tinctures and soap.

For the second half of our eight-week winter market session, we had Cooper every week. He was just one table away and we had the chance to get to know him. He’s 21 years young, the same age as our oldest daughter. We talked about farming and traveling and finding your way in the world. My kids have taught me two important things about young people. One, shut up and listen. Two, ask questions, but don’t offer advice. I found out Cooper is the youngest of two boys. He’s traveled quite a bit. There was some crazy story about sleeping with only a tarp for shelter in the desert which involved waking up in a pile of sand after a windstorm. He grew up in Maine. He’s attended some really cool folk schools. He has the most lovely spirit that is half old soul and half something else I can’t quite put my finger on - beginner’s mind, adventurer, I can’t quite find the words. He bought some Christmas gifts for his mom at my table while I joked with him about always being the baby, even when he’s 30 someday. He gave the same half-smile, half-laugh I get from my own kids when I say the same thing to them.

On our last day, at the potluck, he talked about his plans for a quick trip home to see his family for the holidays and then hitting the road. Hitchhiking around the country with a group of friends, some instruments, working at farms along the way to make some money.

I told him to look up John Craigie.

Joe asked him if he had a tramp roach.

No one at our table had ever heard of a tramp roach or Utah Phillips. So, of course, the following story ensued. If you’ve never heard Mess With People, by Utah Phillips, it’s truly worth listening to. I’ll share an excerpt, but it’s worth the time to listen to Utah tell it, it is his story after all……

"I carry things around with me to kind of rag people, um, well let's see. God, well, I wouldn't leave home without my cockroach. I always have my roach with me. There's a rubber cockroach; it's a tramp roach, Frying Pan Jack calls that a tramp roach. He gave that to me. He says, "You know, if you're poor, and you haven't got any money, you're out on the street and you're hungry, you, you go into a restaurant with this, and you put it in the bottom of a bowl of soup, and then you eat down to it and say: 'Eccch! What's that?' and you storm out, and you say, 'I'm not gonna pay for that!' and you leave.”

Save you a lot of money! That little jewel'll save you a lot of money! Little feelers sticking out the side of a sandwich, god, you say, eat half of it, say, "Look at that!" Leave it!

The whole table was laughing at this point, Cooper was loving this story and I was thinking to myself, I think we’re giving this kid advice, and I’m not sure if it’s good!

“You can only use a tramp roach in a real emergency, like if you’re starving!” I say.

“Of course, of course,” he says laughing.

Oh my.

And then it’s time to pack up and part ways. Most of these folks we will see here and there throughout the winter, and regularly once market starts up late next spring. Cooper though? Who knows.

“Can I give you guys a hug?” He asks us.

“Yes,” I say, hugging him, “don’t forget to text your mom.”

“Happy travels man, be safe, have fun,” Joe says hugging him.

Later on that week I listen to Utah’s song/story. In it, he talks about being near Greenwich and Cambridge. He references Connecticut in the song, but when we shared the story with Cooper, we were sitting in a taproom in Cambridge, NY - just a few minutes from Greenwich, NY. I couldn’t help but wonder if it hadn’t really been us giving advice after all, but instead the spirit of another traveler reaching out to the next generation. That might sound a little woo to some of you, but I do believe stories have somewhat of a soul of their own and find their way to the ears that need them.

To Cooper’s mama, you raised a lovely human. We sure enjoyed his company.

To Cooper, happy travels kid. May the road treat you well.

 

More Soon.

 

~s