pawpaws 🍈 Our pawpaw fruits are getting bigger!! ...shown with my hand for size comparison (and a ground cover of lemon balm underneath). 🍈 We planted the pawpaw trees nine years ago and have waited eagerly for them to start producing. Not only are we thrilled to see our largest one begin fruiting now, it is also coinciding with another wonderful development at the farm and sanctuary. Exciting News... 🍈 We are anticipating the ...
By Sarenth Óðinsson, Board Member of Crossing Hedgerows The world is alive. This is especially easy to know at Crossing Hedgerows. You can feel life pulsing beneath your feet, even in the midst of Winter. There is life. Perennial food crops and flowers around the farm are coming back to life, with shoots beginning to pop up, and fruit blossoms preparing to open. The greenhouse is thriving with green interspersed with the decay of the last hops ...
Ground cherries are a crop that has done well for us over the years. Physalis pruinosa is in the nightshade family and is related to tomatoes, potatoes, tomatillos, peppers, and such (but not cherries!). Like tomatillos, they have a papery husk on them. However, ground cherries are sweet, with a flavor similar to pineapple or strawberry. Ground cherries are native to the Americas. "Estimates for the earliest use of Physalis for human consumption range from 900BCE to 5000BCE. ...
I am currently recovering from some sort of illness that struck me a couple of days ago. In any case, I feel well enough to make a post, so here goes. The farm produce is flourishing, with the exception of some cabbage moth and slug damage to the brassicas. In the picture are some onions and cress in the hoophouse. The cress is some that reseeded itself, so we let it grow along with the other vegetables ...
Along with the Sanctuary land, which includes beautiful woodland and wetland areas with trails, we also operate a permaculture farm and enjoy sharing the farm experience with our members as an added bonus. Today I wanted to give you an update on how the farm is doing with several photos of the annual crops we're growing right now. garlic in the front garden A few of our chickens Basil ...
In our May gathering, one of the areas we walked through on our tour was the hoophouse. Cabbage and Leeks When we look at growing crops through the lens of healthy ecosystems, it requires that we think of all the elements involved and what they want and need to be healthy. Chard, Leeks, Onions, and Milkweed Some of the things I touched on during the tour, is how we ...
Continuing from my previous post about food forest crops, sunchokes are one of the perennials we've planted around the farmstead area. As you can see, they have a gorgeous flower which blossoms in late summer. They're a type of sunflower with an edible tuber root which can be used similarly to potatoes, though they have perhaps more of a water chestnut consistency. Also they can be eaten raw, sliced up on a salad with a bit of ...
Amazingly, it's been a couple of years now that Sarenth Odinsson and his family have been volunteering at the Farm and Sanctuary. Time has flown by so quickly. We've formed a wonderful relationship and it was delightful to hear Brandon talking about the yummy leek soup he likes to make, while we were transplanting leeks this week. The leeks are ones that self-seeded from some that were in our very first planting of the hoophouse in 2017. They've ...