The Hollow is awash in green and beautiful new flowers.  We have tulips, daffodils, hyancinths, lilacs and blooming trees everywhere.  I think flowering trees are one of the best parts of Spring.  Even when we are driving down the road I am always in awe of the many full grown red buds, cherries, dogwoods, magnolias, etc. that we see in so many front lawns. 

It wont be long now, our main season CSA should be starting up soon.  To say we are excited would be a bit of an understatement.  We have been planting and digging and moving everything into place.  Everytime I look out the window the whole area looks different.  The hoop house has all new plantings in it and we finally found a place to grow ALL THOSE HERBS we sprouted for this year.  I cannot wait until the rosemary gets bigger, the smell will be amazing.  Suzy and Jamie have started various flower seeds in the green house.  Once the ground dries up a bit I will be planting them in a big patch by the hoop house.  I am not sure what all has been started so this should be very interesting.  I do love flower suprises. 

So, what are you doing this weekend?  I have a suggestion.  How about going to the Fairie festival at Spoutwood Farms in Glen Rock, PA!  Rob and Lucy have this wonderful festival every year to celebrate the beauty and joy of the Earth.  It is great fun for the whole family, the many costumes, music acts, story tellers, drum circles and activities create hours of entertainment.  It started today and will go on until Sunday.  (Saturday from 1 to 7 and Sunday from 1 to 6.)  On top of the beautiful experience of sharing in this lovely time with wonderful people you will also be supporting another local CSA.  Also, Under One Sun will be there as a food vender.  If you have not had a chance to sample the food that Jolene (the owner) creates you will be able to this weekend.  Under One Sun will be getting produce from our CSA this year to create the delicious food they are known for.  Anyway, for more information please go to www.spoutwood.org/fairie-festival.  Me, Jamie, Natalia and Autumn will be going on Saturday around 3:00.  Hopefully we will see you there! 

Here is a picture of the girls all dressed up at the festival last year:

Well, I hope you are all well.  We will chat again soon!  Take care.

Hi there folks!

I'm hoping you are all well and enjoying the arrival of Spring as much as we are.  We are blessed to live in the hollow and be able to watch the seasons change here.  One of the best parts of Spring is finding all the little bulb plants that start to come up.  It's always a bit of a treasure hunt since you never really know what and where things are going to show up.  

The other thing that is neat about the Spring is that Gale's (Jamie's mom) and my sister's brithdays are right at the beginning.  We celebrated Gale's birthday yesterday with a nice dinner here and a pumpkin cheesecake.  The pumpkin cheesecake was a request from the birthday girl.  I made one for Jamie's birthday last year and apparently it was good so it was requested again.  I have never actually had any of it since it is full of dairy and I don't eat dairy.  I can say it smells awfully good though.  Anyway, I thought since it was such a hit I would actually give you nice folks the recipe for it. It is a bit involved but the finished product is pretty and (apparently) delicious.  You can find the recipe under our recipe tab on this website.  *I used a pumpkin puree from one of our pumpkins we grew last year.  I defrosted it 2 days in advance and pureed it using my super fancy, hi-tech food processor that I got for Christmas from my wonderful parents.  (I finally figured out how to get that dang thing to work!!)  When I made it for Jamie's birthday I used store bought organic canned stuff. They both worked but I could not tell you which one tasted better.  I can say that using your own pumpkin to make things is just AWESOME.  *

These psychedlic butterflies were a gift from my gal pal; Monica.  In addition to the cake we also had a butternut squash lasagna, a regular lasagna (for Tally), salad with homemade salad dressings, vegan chickpea rice casserole, fruit salad and wine (thank you Dave).  We ate a ton and there are still leftovers!  I cannot say enough how fun it is to puree.  I had to make the butternut squash puree from one of our HUGE (looked like a caveman club) butternut squashes that are in the basement. The 2 purees of pumpkin and squash were different orange colors and looked so nice sitting next to eachother.  I love orange so it was a nice treat to see the happy color greeting me everytime I opened the refrigerator door.  

Today is my younger sister Stephanie and Jamie's Aunt Lynn's birthdays.  Happy Birthday guys!  We love you!

This month is the beginning of our bussiest times here at the Hollow.  As you probably know we had some amazing weather last week.  During that warm spell a lot of ground tilling, planting and hoophouse work was done by Jamie and our wonderful farm helper Suzy.

I planted a ton of dried beans in the greenhouse that we will transplant around the hoop house later. The hoop house has some tomatoes planted in it.  They are looking fresh and lovely.  They are planted in the ground which is covered in red plastic ground cover so it looks like we have a red carpet in there.  

We also have a tomatoe growing in the greenhouse.  It's so pretty and is such a nice reminder of what is coming.

The mushroom logs are looking awesome.  We think they are close to completely colonized with mushroom spores.  That is great news!  I cannot wait to have tons of delicious homegrown mushrooms to eat.  We have  a total of 26 logs plugged so hopefully that transfers to a bunch of shrooms to eat and share.  Most of the ones we are growing are culinary but there are a couple medicinals that we are growing as well.  The medicinals will be used in teas and once they start coming up I will tell you all about them and why we grew them.  This is my pet project so I am excited to really get into the growing season.  

Our chickens are back to laying a good amount of eggs again.  It is topping off at 5 a day now.  They have been transferred to thier moveable fence area.  We put them in certain areas to help prepare our soils.  They just got done cleaning up my peace garden and are now up on the hill.  They are so happy when it rains.  You would think in downpours they would go into thier shelter but nope, they just stand outside getting soaked and eating every earthworm they can find.  It must be like a buffet for them.  :)  Today Jamie is working on thier house and cleaning up their beds and so forth.  

We are so excited about this season!  I am hoping to put together some pot lucks once the weather gets nicer to help everyone get to know eachother better.  We have people joining our CSA from all over the place, even down near Blatimore city!  Lots of people with children are involved this year as well so it will be nice to get the whole community together and eat some great food, swim in the pond and maybe work a bit in the gardens. Berry picking has traditionally been the kid's favorite time to come. We don't get  a lot of berries from those visits but the kids go home with full bellys and stained fingers.  :)  

So that is all the updates I have for you guys.  I promise to write more soon.  Until then, Enjoy the Good Food and WELCOME SPRING!  

Love and Light,

Nicole

We have just finished creating our new website and we are very excited about it.  Of course we have no real experience with the world of web pages so we are going to be constantly changing and adding things to it.  The neat thing about this is that you can now purchase shares from us online and using a secure paypal account!  Also, you will be able to see what products are available at the farm, what wonderful restaurants and markets carry our produce and most importantly, you can read my (Nicole) latest musings on farming, food and anything else that pops into my little dread-locked head.  Oh we are going to have so much fun together! 

We actually have mushrooms coming this year and our hoop house is up and growing some killer spinach and cilantro.  The chickens are milling around the property as I type to you and they seem very satisfied with all the lovely stuff they are finding.  Their egg production is definitely increasing which is good news for Jamie since he eats eggs almost every morning. 

We are so ready for this coming season.  Even though we still see snow on the ground and the earth is muddy and the temps are low, we can feel the Spring moving in slowly.  We have made some wonderful new contacts for meat and cheese that we will share with you as the season continues. 

We have a new arrival to our family this year.  We got a dog!  His name is Diesel and he is a Border Collie mix.  He is the nicest, most gentle dog ever.  He just turned 1 year old this month, I made him a cake and he was a happy boy.  So next time you are over be ready to play with our dog!  He's the best. 

We look forward to hearing from all of you and hope you will pass this site along to whomever you wish.