Nature
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 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 […]
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… […]
I came to visit Spirit Hill Farm for a week, and four months later, I’m still here with no plans in the foreseeable future to leave (keep this in mind when you book your visit: pack something you are willing to wear for the rest of your life!). Carolyn had invited me to stay here so […]
I’ve been seeing — and hearing — a whole lotta quail around the property lately and wondered where they come from. Not that I don’t know where birds come from. I just didn’t know where THESE birds came from. Turns out their nest was right under my nose . . . behind the planter-box outside the […]