Garden
According to the vegetable garden, summer’s over. The squash plants look like they got cooked, and the parsley looks like it fell asleep. Secretly, the frosting and subsequent toppling over of the garden is a big relief to me. I worked hard all spring and summer figuring out how to get plants to grow. (As […]
What Happens When Pulitzer-Prize Photographer Anthony Suau Stays at Spirit Hill Farm? First of all, he falls in love with the chicken coop. Who wouldn’t? (One day soon it might even have a chandelier inside. The chickens are going to have to learn to say please and thank you first or at least pretend to […]
You need to be careful what magazines you look at when you’re a farmer-in-training. If you look at magazines that have recipes, for example, this could end up being a lot of work for you and mayhem for your poor, unsuspecting already-established plants. I was reading the Spring 2020 issue of Edible: Marin & Wine […]
I had no intention of falling in love with the chickens. I try to be a good person, but I have to tell you that I think chickens are weird. If I’m totally honest, I think I was partly scornful of them because they are my shadow selves running around freely: easily frightened, scared of […]
I wrote and published a book last week. Actually, I wrote the book in less than an hour, and then it took me the next six days to figure out how to get it formatted the way I wanted and up for sale on Amazon. It all started when I pulled a turnip from one […]
There are blackberries growing on the edge of the apple orchard by the street. This morning after feeding the chickens I wandered over to see what I could find (in my pajamas—luckily they mornings are so cool here I can throw on my long winter coat and look not exactly normal but okay). I had […]
The edible gardens here at Spirit Hill Farm have a story and the story is this: I’m the kid in elementary school whose desk was always a mess. I tried to keep track of the plants as they went from seeds to sprouts. It mostly did not work. For a while everything was marked dill. […]
Today I pulled a weed, and a long carrot came out instead of the tangled roots I was expecting. The carrot had grown underneath the arm of a tomato plant and I only saw it because I was trimming off the lower stems as my friend had suggested. She told me it would make the […]
I have found it’s impossible to be in a bad mood after going out into the morning at Spirit Hill Farm. I’ve tried. Even Jerry Seinfeld wakes up anxious, not feeling great. He said so. I forget where—maybe Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Anyway. He also said that as soon as he gets up, things […]
Why I put spinach in my coffee. And blueberries. And maybe a strawberry. Carolyn asked me to grow vegetables in the 17 planters between the main house and the chicken coop at Spirit Hill. I got both freaked out and excited. A garden! A whole bunch of gardens! Seventeen gardens! What a cool opportunity! But… […]