Foodie Field Trip: Flip and Star Provisions

2:30 on Thursday - thinking i would go ahead and pack in some calories before my Jan. 1st fast

decor is cross between Clockwork Orange milk bar and Dukes of Hazzard garage

MMMMM what to do, what to do? I ordered the special: burger with fries and choice of shake

A pair of Krispy Kreme shakes await the Nitro treatment (yes real doughnuts are in this shake)

Here ya go

This one is the "burnt marshmellow Nutella" shake

I chose the Pistachio White Truffle shake. 

I give it an A+. Full of flavor and not too sweet; lots of pistachio pieces all the way down

the special. very nice -especially however they dressed the lettuce -nice and tangy

at 3 pm it was still packed

Bid Jason good-bye and headed for another foodie destination:

star provisions: a great shop for food and crafty home decor

if you can't make your own biscuits, then i don't know what. 

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.

The CliffsNotes to the Last 14 days

Koby ate a chair. I had an art show in Atlanta at the downtown library with 3 other artists. Show looked good. I sold one of the flower scan paintings to a librarian who works there. I had thought nothing would sell as the show was in a non-commercial venue and was less likely to draw "people with expendable cash". But i was reminded that art sells when the work resonates with the viewer on a personal level -in this case the painting was like a portrait of the librarian's Atlanta garden.

I laid in the insulation on the studio. It was harder than i thought it would be. balancing on the very top of the ladder to do the ceiling was difficult since i had to hold on to 6 foot strips of pink panther C19 and the metal sticks that hold the insulation in, all while trying to avoid getting tiny shards of glass in my eyes. Goggles didnt work; they fogged up making the top of the ladder routine stupid and dangerous. Later, in the loft area, there was an epic battle for territory with black hornets who were happy with the studio as it was. When i started to sweat i became aware of the fiberglass embedded in my skin. i should have consulted Google first. I would have learned that to avoid getting itchy i should have covered myself in oil or baby powder first. When the first two showers didnt end the itching, i took yet another - this time i coated myself in bath oil and scraped the entire surface of my body with an american express card with pretty good success; fresh sheets followed and i finally was able to sleep.

I designed a poster for the farmer's market pro bono. The farmers market board was thrilled and they bestowed upon me a free slot at the market for life. If i live to be 76 then that will be the equivalent of 2500 dollars! ($5 per 20 saturdays for the next 25 years). grrrrrrrherhahaha. I was very happy to do this project and hope that they make good money with the sales of the poster.

My seeds from the packet called "grandmothers cutting garden" are coming up nicely. There are flowers i do not recognize emerging including an airy white flower that is very weed like but i love it. Also coming up: cosmos, zinnia, phlox, all kinds of coreopsis, dianthus, daisies, and a variety of spikey salvias.

I found a ring necked snake in the hay. I harvested the last of my lettuce and pulled up a carrot to see where they were only to find a tiny cone of veggie. The effusive foliage on top fooled me. My onions looked and tasted good as did the sugar snap peas. I had a giant FAIL with the cabbage. I did not treat them with chemicals before i left for a few days and when i returned they were completely destroyed and inedible as they had been attacked by cabbage moth worms.


Lettuce was harvested at about 4" and was tender and flavorful. Not a hint of bitter and oh so pretty.


the spring onions


The field was dotted with dandelions the day before the mowers arrived and trimmed it to an even green.


Koby does an impression of Coco; Koby the perfect angel; RAWR! I chew through sticks like a chain saw.


Since Koby ate Trout's chair, we made another bed for Trout, situated so that she can do her job which is to watch the street. Trout's eyes are flaring up again as they did last year. This time i know it isnt glaucoma and went straight to the prednisone drops. I still dont know what causes it. Koby is 80 pounds now at 8 months. These two clash like stallions all day, up on their hind legs, snarling and neck biting. Now they are an even match, we shall see if Trout can maintain ALPHA status. Koby ate another chair: this time the crappy one at the cabin.

Mmmmmmmmm! Who want's cole slaw? Isn't this photograph unreal? Looks like a horror movie poster but it happened in my garden.

SO much for insecticidal soap! I had to go to atlanta for a few days and tried to protect my cabbage without harming my ladybugs or bees -so i was reluctant to use chemicals. When i returned just 5 days later i found my cabbage covered in cabbage moth caterpillars who had made lace of the leaves and ruined the tightly formed heads i had waited for for months.

Garden insects inspired my latest round of Kokeshi which i made for the arts festival but didnt sell any of them. I made a ladybug, a honey bee, and a cabbage moth caterpillar. It was interesting to make a character based on an insect i had just cursed and cut up with scissors.




I made these poultry family portraits for the arts fest too. I sold "Dovey" but not "Ski" which was regretful. They were such a perfect couple. I need to find more of these old timey cameo style frames so i can make more.

The festival wasn't too bad. I had a good time merchandizing my booth but it was a ton of work. V sacrificed his holiday weekend doing all the hard parts like set up and take down -both in the rain. And we only went to DefCon 4 once! I made a little pocket change and rejoiced in the fact that i dont do this every weekend like some artists do. Now i am back on the studio -this time cleaning up after the sheet rocking (very very messy) and preparing to paint the walls. I should be ready to work in there by the end of June.

How i spent memorial day:










How is everyone? Ive missed you all and your blogs. I struggled to write this. Im just not feeling it. maybe i am all blogged out.
or maybe its just a bit of the blues.

Progress Report

Today is mild with a lovely breeze out of the northwest with fingers of clouds stretching into yesterdays solid blue. Im racing to get in 9 tomato plants and three peppers in time for the rain tomorrow. A woodpecker is working hard on the snag just beyond the tree line; the pecking a deep rhythm of hollow echo. Mourning doves, the waterfall, tenacious dry leaves rattling and holding fast to hardwoods and harley davidsons way off in the distance are the music for the day. The radishes (above) are up, firm and healthy and the carrots have wee little airy shoots just beginning.


Lettuce is in great shape. I took a few leaves for my salad last night and they tasted good. I have butter crunch, romaine, red sail and another red i forgot what.


I planted this mesclun mix called "valentine" a mixture of red and green lettuce. Since i am not a volume farmer, i have to be a boutique farmer. I want to have some unusual offerings for the farmers market this year. I was attracted to the spotted lettuce and can already tell which of the tiny seeds are the spotted, the solid reds and the green with red edges. I didnt get them placed well, there are clumps of leaves too tight together. Hopefully, in a week or two i can move them apart a bit. If not, i'll eat the sprouts while working.


Peggy Jean enjoys a romp in the field; every day a little greener.


The hens are out all day everyday getting spoiled. They will not tolerate confinement now, they complain bitterly and loudly when i am late to let them out. Im trying to keep them cooped until they lay; im short some eggs which means they are in the yard somewhere. I found a few in the big bag of mulch in the barn. A few years ago i thought Red had stopped laying. Then i found a clutch of over 20 eggs in the bottom of a hose caddy. But they need to be out eating greens and insects. Yesterday i turned over a rotting log to let them get at tiny termite nits.


The silver maples are just beginning to bud. From a distance, they still look bare but soon they will have that fresh spring green color to them. They call them silver maples because the underside of the mature leaves are a dusty silvery color. When the wind blows the silver shows and it is beautiful.

Trout contemplates todays mischief.


I am growing the chard mostly for my garden scans. I will be looking into ways to prepare and serve it - i dont think i want to do anything that makes it lose its spectacular color. Im a bit disappointed i dont have any of the ones with bright pink stems. But this red is pretty good.

The blueberries are waking up.

This was one of my garden scans from March....


And this is the painting i made from it.


I am working on three others for an upcoming show called "Weathervane: 4 Artists, 4 Directions" opening at the Atlanta Fulton Public Library May 6th; a part of the Downtown Atlanta Art Walk. (You're invited).
I decided to work from my garden scans because i have gotten in a rut as an artist; i work from my mind's eye too much. So in addition to painting these for the show, its like a disciplinary action i have taken. I need to train myself once again to really LOOK at things and try to record them as they are. This will be very helpful later when i return to my regular process. As you can see from this side by side comparison, i am in no danger of being literal or a realist.


The studio is finally in the dry! Next comes the wiring, the insulation, the sheet rock and the floor. And then i can at least move in it and use it. Hopefully, by May. Then i will get to the outside as soon as i can afford to.


From inside the studio i can see out every direction. In this corner, i have a great view of the deer path. I might hang my big moultrie game feeder out there and see what i get. I need a wildlife cam.

Speaking of wildlife cams...have you seen the Owl Box? Its a live streaming camera of a pair of barn owls raising their new fledglings. Yesterday i saw them bring a rat or squirrel in to feed the babies. its amazing. You can watch the owls HERE

This weekend i am looking forward to a visit from my sister, who is going to participate with me in the Plein Air Festival here in Blue Ridge! How it works is on saturday you arrive and the judges stamp your paper or canvas and you are given a map of pretty destinations around town. You have until 3 pm sunday to turn the work in for an exhibition and judging. They stamp your paper or canvas so you cant just show up and produce something you did in your studio. Im excited about it because i never paint on site. I either paint from my imagination or memory or photographs. I plan to take lots of photographs of the event and will report back here on sunday. Have a great weekend everyone.