Farm Party Pics and Many Thanks to Miki and Lulu

We had an awesome "open farm day" on Sunday, and we want to thank all of you who came out to visit. It's so exciting to share the farm with you, and we are really starting to feel like part of a community here. There were plenty of good eats at the party, all featuring fresh produce from the garden, but the biggest hit was definitely the homemade ice cream with fresh blackberries and strawberries. We even did a little folk dance together at the end (thank you, Juliet!).

Folk dancing on the farm

Everyone getting serious about ice cream making

Skylar wanted to eat the ice cream and the bowl!

Miki and Lulu

Miki and Lulu are off to their next farm stay. We are so grateful to them for all their help over the past couple weeks. The farm is looking great thanks to all their hard work! We wish them all the best in their journeys and hope to see them again soon.

Farm Volunteers and Farm Party!

Lulu, age 7, picking blackberries

We have been blessed with our first-ever WWOOFers! WWOOFers are farm volunteers who are members of World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Our volunteers are a mother-daughter team from Japan, and they have been here on our farm for about a week now. Miki and Lulu have been a huge help around here with all kinds of farming projects like weeding, trellising tomatoes, harvesting and cleaning produce, saving seeds, and so much more! Until recently they had their own organic farm in Japan, growing vegetables and making a few specialized products, including pesto made with ashtaba leaves, a plant commonly used for medicinal purposes in Japan. They left their farm because it was too close to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and now they are traveling in California and searching for their next steps in life, which hopefully will involve finding or starting a new farm. If you're interested in learning more about our visitors, check out this article about them that ran in the Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/07/03/3744366/japanese-organic-farmer-picks.html

Better yet, come meet them (and visit us) at our Summer Barbecue Party and Open Farm Day this Sunday, July 24th starting at noon.

Odd Things on the Farm

Amongst all the many things growing at this time of year are a few strange looking plants. I photographed a few of the more interesting ones this morning to share with you. The picture above is a tomatillo plant (the ones you make green salsa out of). They grow papery "lanterns," and the actual fruit slowly forms inside. Right now the lanterns are huge, but the fruits inside have just started to develop. When the fruits start to burst forth from their lantern, we'll know it's time for harvest.

This is a Swiss chard plant going to seed. Vegetable plants often look quite different when they start to bolt and make seed. These chards are about 6 ft. tall now. We're saving as much seed as possible this year from all kinds of plants to help reduce our farm expenses. It's fascinating to see the plants through their entire life cycle and back again.

One more...I thought these were lima beans when they were smaller. But, when they started shooting up stalks of little white flowers, I reconsidered. I remembered having planted a small patch of buckwheat from seeds my friend Jen shared with me.