For those of you readers who eat our food or are interested in the happenings on the farm; meet the crew who will be on the farm growing the food and tending to the chickens and pigs for the 2011 production season. We will be working very hard this entire season seeding, transplanting, hoeing attempting to keep weeds at bay, moving rocks and floating row cover around the fields, setting up irrigation pipe, feeding the pigs, harvesting and processing your food, both breaking and fixing equipment, fixing fencing to keep the animals contained, plus doing all the endless farm tasks that surface on a daily basis. We will also be enjoying some great meals from the food we grow and occasionally splurging on some wood fired pizza with incredible choices of toppings from our abundance (hopefully) of food.
In this photo…..
Danielle is with Sir Bud. When Danielle is not busy farming, you will find her working very hard at getting Sir Bud back into shape since he has been a pasture ornament for the past couple years. Sir Bud has a personality that is very adventurous so Danielle, who has a lot of experience with horses, is teaching him how to jump and obey her commands. She has been riding him around the farm and by the end of the summer my guess is that she will probably be taking him on the Bluff Mountain trails.
Townes Mozer has a bottle of Lenny Boy Kumbucha, which is the best kumbucha we have ever had, and he has a stockpile full of the brew. When he is not farming or fermenting a batch of kumbucha, he is growing herbs for his “herbal and mountain flavored” kumbucha. He is also using various native trees and plants from our Appalachian Mountains for his teas. Townes is also inoculating mushroom logs, and being the generous person that he is, I am certain he will share his mushrooms with us once his logs start producing!
When Nern Ostendorf is not busy farming, reading or listening to music, she is playing her banjo. She will be entertaining us around camp fires and while we are splurging on pizza. You might also see Nern riding her bicycle as she is a big fan at using that for a means of transportation. Nern brings with her farming experience after having worked at a CSA farm during the 2010 production season.
Carl Evans is wearing the orange chaps and standing next to his chainsaw. I have nicknamed the chainsaw “Big Daddy” because this saw is able to saw down large trees for lumber. Carl is strategizing our tree harvest and will be harvesting most of the trees that will be sawn into lumber for building our vacation cabin.
Julie Mansfield holding a flat of swiss chard. Julie occasionally has trouble sleeping at night because she is worrying about the babies in the greenhouse. Of coarse, once the babies go outdoors into the fields, she continues worrying about them until the are ready for harvesting. She loves “digging in the dirt” and the smell and touch of soil.
