Bittersweet Asparagus: Our Microfarm is Now For Sale

Today, I found the first asparagus spears of the season. It was such a bittersweet moment, as I was showing the garden to prospective buyers.

Yup. We're selling the microfarm and moving back to Cambridge. It was a wonderful and highly rewarding experiment, and I'm not convinced we'll eat all of last summer's tomatoes and raspberries before we move, but our lives have changed in some interesting and equally exciting ways.

First, I wrote a novel. I didn't mean to, really! But it kinda fell on my head, and I wrote it, and pitched it, and queried it, and sold it, and it's on Kickstarter right now (under my pen name, Dianna Sanchez) and will be available in stores in September. But a funny thing happened: the novel ate my brain. I'm usually very good at multitasking, but the more I worked on the novel, the less brain I had to keep track of anything else. I spent less and less time in the garden. At this point, the microfarm is too large for me to keep up with while also writing.

Second, my elder daughter is aging out of her Montessori school, the main reason we moved out to Beverly in the first place. And in the time since we moved, Cambridge has developed a promising Advanced Learning program. We're particularly interested in the high school. We also think CPS will be really good for our younger daughter.

And Third, we miss Cambridge. I miss being able to walk places. Alex's commute to work near Harvard Square is kinda awful, and it's harder for me to find tech writing work out here.

I'm looking forward to participating in community gardens in Cambridge and weeding with friends. But it's time to pass High Ground Microfarm on to someone with more time and mental space to devote to it.

If you or someone you know is interested in owning High Ground Microfarm (and this blog), please feel free to give us a call at 978-927-1969.

Switching Gears

Hello, all. It's been aaaaages since I posted, I know. But I have a really good excuse: I wrote a novel, and it ate all my writing brain. It's a middle grades fantasy called A Witch's Kitchen, and I'm publishing under the pen name Dianna Sanchez. Published by Dreaming Robot Press, the novel will initially be offered through a Kickstarter campaign beginning April 12, 2016, and will be generally available in September 2016.

Stay tuned for more details!

An Unexpected Visitor

Someone (admittedly, could have been me) left the garden gate open last night, and this saucy lady wandered in.

What a gorgeous, silky pelt! She seems quite friendly and not at all perturbed by humans, but went about digging up grubs and mostly leaving my seedlings alone. My elder daughter named her Fluffy. Left the gate open, and she wandered out again sometime before 10am.

Planted so far: beets, carrots, kale, tomatoes, one pepper, one eggplant, basil (half devoured by caterpillars already, must acquire more), zucchini, peas, kale, cucumbers, broccoli, beans. Garlic, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and herbs are all doing well, the arugula has come back nicely, and the asparagus has been producing like gangbusters. Had a huge pile of it for dinner last night. Still looking to acquire spaghetti squash seedlings, and then I will declare planting to be done.

Signs of Spring

Yesterday, I spotted the first carpenter bee of the season. Today, harvested the first two spears of asparagus. Since there's really no good way to divide two spears among four people, I chopped it up and made a delicious risotto of it along with shallots, tomatoes, spinach, and chives, accompanied by grilled steak kabobs. Mmmmm... spring.

I Can See Soil Again

Whuf! A year went by, and I hardly noticed.

Last summer, our gardening largely fell off our roadmap as a close family member was diagnosed with cancer and then died in early September with merciful swiftness. Dealing with the estate ate our fall, and then came winter. Epic, mind-bogglingly terrible winter. Snow every day for days on end. Over 100 inches of snow. I'm still astonished that our greenhouse came through the snow unscathed. Mind you, good things did come out of this. The girls went showshoeing for the first time. I wrote a novel.

But today, on the final day of March, the sun is shining brightly, the thermometer reads 45 degF, and I can see the tops of the garden bed peeking out from beneath the snow at last.

Time to plant peas.

Wait. What???

Somehow, spring crept up on me. I think all the normal triggers that make me think of planting were buried deep under mountains of snow. But suddenly, last week, I saw the winter kale peeking out from all that white, and it hit me. I haven't ordered seeds. I haven't planned a blessed thing for this year.

To be fair, I can't blame it all on the weather. Over the last season, I came to realize that I'm just not physically capable of coping with a 2200 sq. ft. garden. I can't keep up with the seeding and planting and weeding and watering and harvesting. My body complains and breaks down on me. I spend days recovering. When we planned our garden, we were wildly optimistic and overambitious. Now, after three seasons, we know our limitations.

I sat down with my husband and planned out this year's garden in all of five minutes. We will plant in only fourteen beds, and we'll plant only our bare necessities: peas, broccoli, lettuce, kale, carrots, beets, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, zucchini, bell peppers, basil, and summer squash. Of these, I'm only starting the broccoli, kale, and cukes in the greenhouse (currently rented out anyway). The rest, I'll direct seed or buy. Of course, we also have our perennial beds: raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, asparagus, herbs, and the amazing neverending arugula.

The rest of the beds are up for grabs. I'm sure our girls will snag one or two for flowers. The others will lie fallow or be cover cropped. If you live nearby, and you're interested in using a bed or two for yourself, let me know.

ASPARAGUS! Also, Overwintered Kale

The Jersey Supreme asparagus crowns we planted last spring came through gloriously. I gently raked away the leaf cover today and found about two dozen of these:

I'm not used to having so much fresh produce in the spring, but with overwintered kale and arugula, self-seeded lettuce, and spinach and lamb's quarters in the greenhouse, we are eating very, very well.

I planted this kale last fall, and it overwintered quite nicely. We hardly touched it all winter because we were still harvesting from the spring kale until February! Now the fall kale is greening up and growing like gangbusters. I have to remember this trick for getting fresh produce early in the season.

Seed Shopping on a Budget

I love saving seeds and using them year after year to grow my own vegetables, not just because it's free, but because I'm perpetuating a genetic line. And sometimes I get surprising results and hybridizations, which always makes me feel a bit like Gregor Mendel. But even saving seed, I always need to buy some seed, too. Some varieties I use, like Winterbor kale or Sungold cherry tomatoes, are hybrids, so I can't save their seed. Sometimes I just want to try something new.

When I do go shopping for seeds, I'm always surprised by the final bill. 20 or 30 packets of seeds at $4 each adds up fast! This year, I carefully checked across several catalogs for the lowest prices on seeds. I found that well established companies like Johnny's Selected Seeds, Territorial Seed Company, and Seeds of Change charged about a dollar more per packet. Now, one argument I've heard is that the amounts differ, so I also checked the amounts in the packets. Here's a comparison on some common seeds I priced. SoC = Seeds of Change, NGC = The Natural Gardening Company, SESE = Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Seed Variety	Johnny's	SoC	NGC	Territorial	SESE
Arugula (Roquette)	$3.95 (500 seeds)	---	---	$2.80 (1g (~660 seeds))	$2.25 (1g (~660 seeds))
Chioggia Beet	3.95 (350 seeds)	---	---	3.85 (5g (~385 seeds))	2.50 (3g (~230 seeds))
Oregon Giant Peas	3.65 (250 seeds)	$3.49 (~50 seeds)	$2.75 (125 seeds)	2.05 (1oz)	2.50 (28 g)
Garlic Chives	3.65 (200 seeds)	3.49 (200 seeds)	2.50 (225 seeds)	2.35 (225 seeds)	2.25 (175 seeds)
Veronica Cauliflower	8.95 (100 seeds)	3.49 (50 seeds)	4.50 (25 seeds)	4.30 (25 seeds)	---

Quantity can matter. If I'm planning to plant a lot of beets, buying 5g from Territorial Seeds makes better financial sense than 3g at Southern Exposure (in this case, only SESE has organic seed, so I'll buy there). But I really, really do not need a ton of garlic chive seeds. I fact, I want about five. So buying the minimum amount for the minimum price from SESE is the clever plan. And why on earth would I pay nine bucks for twenty times as much Veronica seed as I need?

So I've done my shopping and made my choices. More on that when I can figure out how to get it from csv format to HTML without breaking Blogger.