Farmer's Market / Half Moon Bay

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Marigolds

Marigolds do not get much love as a cut flower. Most people use them as a companion plant for tomatoes; they have a natural insecticide and a fragrance that repels critters like rabbits from your garden.

They are absolutely fool-proof they never get any kind of fungus or other heat and wet related problems. It is this ordinariness that prevents many from seeing their possibilities as a cut flower. Now that they have been growing since early spring there are stems long enough to cut and arrange.

I put Marigolds together with Bright Lights Cosmos, Bi-colored and Red Coreopsis, Pinwheel Zinnias, and Persian Carpet Zinnias. The Marigold has a nice ferny leaf so leaving them on is all you need for filler.

Flowers are the most profitable and successful organic thing I offer at the farmer's market. From now on any food I grow I am keeping and eating, giving to friends or canning. Its just too hard to get enough to be able to sell it in bulk, and its not worth it to see all that work walk away in a bag for a few dollars. Food always was my loss leader, Im really there to sell folk art. But with my truck in the shop and my freelance jobs backing up I will probably only do the farmer's market every couple of weeks or so. 

Im going to be on a blog break for a few weeks while I paint for a show with a 7/31 deadline. This is a national juried show with good prize money. Ive come close -honorable mention which wasnt a money prize but I did get a great easel and some paint. This year I actually have a strategy and hope it pays off. The show isnt until October, the July deadline is just to see if you can get in. I had one painting get in last year but the other one was rejected. So, I need to focus. I'll be back in August. Enjoy the dog days everyone.

Saturday Mornings at the Farmer's Market

Friday nights have become busy nights for me. Gone are the afternoons at the Blue Ridge Brewery hanging out with friends. Now, I spend Friday evenings in the ditches looking for wildflowers, making chicken paintings on plywood, and prepping my vegetables for sale. The combination of wildflowers and garden flowers is a pleasing mix; many people have commented on the inclusion of blackberry vines...they add a country charm as well as texture and striking color in black and bright red. I think the bouquets speak to the goodness of home and simple pleasures. This is not a mix you can pick up wrapped in cellophane at the grocery.


I am proud to announce that Chef Danny at Harvest on Main bought my cherry tomatoes for the restaurant.


Susan parks next to me and specializes in heirloom tomatoes and potted herbs. Last weekend she gave me a green zebra heirloom that i am saving the seeds to plant next year. I have some black prince, cherokee purples and pineapple tomatoes that will be ready for this weeks market. But i could never top Susan's variety - and they are in such beautiful shape too.


The Tin Man is an old marine vet that makes these guys....i bought the one on the right. He's pretty big, his chest is one of those mini Heineken kegs. He only charges $8 for these things!


The corn is coming in now. When i see it, i get a tiny vibe of fall coming. and lately, though its hot, i see little signs of the change. Growing a garden has tuned me into the slight shifts in light and color.


Everybody's tomatoes are coming in. Its time for canning. I don't know how to do it, but there is a community cannery and i heard they have people from the technical school there to help greenhorns like myself with the process. I only planted 2 rows of beans and ate them all. So i just have tomatoes and squash and cucumbers to preserve. I dont know why i grew the cucumbers. i dont even like them. Actually, i dont love the summer foods. I like the spring foods much more.


Nice presentation of beans!


These are spaghetti squashes. When you cut them open, the fleshy part inside is stringy - like spaghetti.


The blueberry girl. I wish my bushes had produced more but i did the wrong thing to them in spring by giving them lime. Wrong! They like acidic soil. I have a few, but i mostly just eat them as i work in the garden. There isnt enough to do anything with them.


Every week i buy artisan bread from the Queen ladies. Their breads are delicious. And for you foodies, you really need to check out Hannah Queen's beautiful food blog Honey and Jam. At only 19 years old, Hannah is a gifted photographer and her blog just sings with beauty. There are a lot of recipes on her site too, so check her out and tell her chickory sent you.


This guy won a bunch of first place ribbons at the Georgia State Fair for his salsas, jams and pickles. He always sells out on Saturdays.




Back home on saturday afternoon i spent some time just hanging out on the porch with V and the dogs where it is nice and cool. V made me a table for my art studio while i was at the farmers market and it was a very nice surprise. I will post pictures of the studio soon - I have moved in but i still dont have any siding.


Today I am working on weeding (after 6 pm, that is) and on my new "product" for this saturday, which i will post maybe tomorrow. I found a way to use all the triangle pieces the builders left after building my stairs. Can you guess what they are going to be? First right answer gets one as a prize.

In and Out of the Garden

My eyes are like a dam holding back a river of grief. I recognize the gulf disaster as a life-altering event and it strikes at the heart of all I hold dear. Most of my family came from and still live in the gulf states. What real wealth i have inherited from my forebears are an attachment to land; to place and to the order of nature. My great uncle was the game and fish warden for Forrest County -just sixty miles north of the Mississippi gulf shore. He used to take me out where he would find illegal animal traps, then spring and collect them. He gave me my first horse and taught me the birds and the trees while I rode with him into the wild and magical places of southern mississsippi.

My grandmother had a house on stilts on Lake Ponchatrain in New Orleans, and later a little brick house in Baton Rouge. I never smell mint that I dont hear the squeak of her screen door. While visiting her, I can remember going to watch big ships gliding into locks on the great Mississippi river to be pumped down to sea level where they could enter the gulf. I can remember flying in my dad's little piper aircraft over Cat Island in the gulf and landing in a fresh cut field in Louisianna to visit cousins. I can smell it even now and remember the golden light on grassy brackish creeks, the tips of the grasses decorated with bright blue dragonflies.

Where does a grief-stricken spirit take refuge from a situation that continues on unabated now for 71 days?


Forget-Me-Nots


Cosmos "Bright Lights"


Moonbeam Coreopsis


Bean vine


Baby Zucchini


A kind of Baby's Breath -much better than the kind that comes with roses

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The farmers market moved to the city park and it is much much better. It is now the charming truck market a small town should have and the shady trees make it a pleasant promenade. Last week there were homemade breads and jams, lots of beans and cabbage and onions, herbs, daylillies, birdhouses, tie dyed t-shirts and my market:


I had both sunshine carrots, and the ones that are purple on the outside but orange on the inside.



Both of them are very sweet and crunchy. Next time, I plan to thin them more because I had too many that were too small to sell. I mostly eat those while weeding. I usually have 4-5 wildflower bouquets that have some of my garden flowers mixed in.

I had my herbs for sale in little cones of brown paper tied with a very thin golden thread. A package of red, orange and yellow cherry tomatoes went home with my friend Sarah, the unofficial mayor of Blue RIdge. Peppers, both banana and jalapeno, were the last to sell. The eggs always go and i think packaging them in groups of five is appreciated by those in single or just a two person household. I also started making inexpensive "folk art" paintings on wood:


This is an Old-English Game Hen. I love this one and wouldnt mind keeping it for myself.


After the market, I passed a fresh cut hay field on the way home and savored its sweet fragrance.


Koby had a big day in the creek and Trout was off on an adventure. She is free to leave the property because I know she is wily and can take care of herself. She would never even let a stranger touch her, much less get in a car with them. Koby, however, is too friendly to be allowed "off-campus".



On saturday evenings, I take my Honey out for a ride around the county. We go out around 8:15 and stay out until almost dark. Here he is waiting patiently while I photograph an old barn. He is so good.


Do you need refuge from gulf heartache too? I made up the guest room for you, and made my mom's eggy Mac-n-Cheese in the crock pot.

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Finally, my state-of-the-union commentary.

building a shed

its taken the whole summer, but i have saved about half the money i will need to build a garden shed. I think i found the right fellow for the job, we looked at a book of sheds and started with what i liked and took things away as the reality of my budget was considered.

at first, i looked at those pre-fab things you see at home depot. but the materials are so cheap and the price is still high -and on top of that a tractor trailer is just going to drop it off and it still has to be constructed. my carpenter assures me i can have something better for the same money.

so next week i will look at materials. I have some ideas about what i want: id like to use as much salvage as i can. I have some old windows i hope to use for a mini greenhouse section, and an old enamel sink i want the carpenter to attach to the outside of the shed. I know i want a tin roof. i know i want a little deck off of it where i can put a few chairs and maybe a table. Id like to find a way to use unconventional materials or local materials too.


I want to put the chicken church out at the garden along with the shed and add a nice large dog pen that i will overlay with chicken wire for their run. that way, when i am out in the garden working, they can be out free ranging where i can supervise them. as it is now, i have to take them out to the garden and then take them back to their pen which is by the barn -far from the garden. The chicks will lay better with more light, and i will enjoy seeing them playing among the blooms scratching and searching for bugs. I built them a PVC and poultry net chicken tractor for their city home and it works great! its light, i can move it all around to fresh grassy areas. the neighbors really didnt appreciate my anti-hawk missile defense system (bottle rockets).

I was inspired by this New York Times story of a builder In Huntsville Texas who builds low income housing with recycled materials that are works of art. To see a slideshow of his work click here, you wont be sorry. I wouldnt mind having a tree house either. Does anybody have any great shed ideas? i am open to suggestions. Fishy? what do you think? im thinking of siting the shed at an angle with southern and western exposure.

I figure another 200 saturdays at the farmer's market ought to cover it. btw, it is STILL raining. the ground is saturated, the watermelons rotted and the creeks are swollen. and there is moss everywhere. have a great weekend everyone.