Seasonal Notes

Dear friends, this next week will be the start of my radiation therapy. With the help of my daughter, Rachel, we are continuing to seek out the best quality in organic foods and essential oils. I will be posting occasional notes about our successes and failures and asking for input. Due to the radiation and chemotherapy, the postings and responses may not be regular. I thank you in advance for your patience.

My dear Seasonal Note Friends, I will be taking a hiatus from my business page . I was diagnosed with lung cancer Monday (I never smoked but was exposed to 2nd hand smoke through out my childhood)so my energy will be concentrating on getting better. Thank goodness for local, seasonal, organic food. With the tremendous loving support from my family and friends, I am expecting a good outcome. Keep me in your prayers. Love to all!

Here is my latest offering from Arugula's Star Farm. Absolutely phenomenal produce!

This week I received an email from a small, local organic grower-Arugula's Star Farm in Columbia, TN. In my quest to purchase local, seasonal, organic produce, the farm is a great resource for those of us who don't have the space for large crops. I used them several times last year to supplement what I was getting from a local CSA. I put in my order for garlic scapes, choggia beets, leaf lettuce, snow and sugar snap peas, buttercrunch lettuce, French sorrel and asparagus. I like going to Whole a Foods but locally grown organic produce supports my community and the farm. I will take pictures so you can see the quality. The owners, Allison Mills Neal and Matthew Neal seem(I've never met them personally) well educated about plants and deeply committed to to their organic approach to farming. Their website, www.ArugulasStarFarm.com, has a lot of information about their farm, their philosophy about growing and using non-GMO seed and some of their personal story. Stay tuned for pictures tomorrow.

Arugula's Star Farm | A Genuine Organically Grown Vegetable & Summer Fruit CSA Farm Matthew and Allison Mills Neal of Arugula's Star Farm stand behind and promote the ethic of what it means to call yourself a "Genuine Agrarian Ecosystem of Subsistence":

I came home from our trip to Waco Texas with eggplants, herbs, snow peas and purple jalapeño peppers just shy of being picked. I did go to the Farmers Market there last Saturday and was impressed with the selection. I will be looking closer at utilizing my sources here-the Columbia, Spring Hill and Franklin Farmers Markets.

The nice thing about a balcony garden is being able to plant early and harvest earlier. You can use dried herbs to make herbal vinegars but I prefer using fresh. You do use twice as much fresh then when using dry herbs. Harvest your herbs in the morning, clean and dry thoroughly. Make sure your jars are sterilized and if you don't have plastic lids, be sure to cover the jars with Saran Wrap. Let steep for a week, especially if you have added garlic cloves. Remove the cloves after tasting. I ended up with 12 jars with nine different varieties.

You can never have enough basil or eggplant. Ten different basils and four different eggplants. The varieties of eggplant are all the smaller and oriental style for grilling. Then I have my peppers! Purple jalapeño, ancho, "Big Bertha", And "Cubanelle". Of course, I'm still, "dancing", rotating my pots and moving them back and forth. I harvested all my baby spinach and lettuces.

Here at the Spring Hill Farmers Market May Fair. Really nice vendors , music and families. What a beautiful place to be today!

As I am getting ready for the Spring Hill May Fair, I still have to keep up with my balcony garden. I am realizing that I will be "dancing" with my plants by rotating them around the balcony to utilize the sun I do get.

Owl rag quilt. All three rag quilts are at least four feet tall.

Our first round of fresh "greens"-baby spinach, romaine and red leaf lettuce.

An "experiment" in the making! Our balcony faces south. I have a list of plants that can grow in semi shade, but I decided to add some others that I wanted to see how they would grow. Cheddar cauliflower with celery under micromesh to keep cabbage worms out. Texas 1015Y sweet onions. My peppers and eggplants are going in the window boxes. What ever doesn't work out, I have someone to pass the plants to before they expire. My thoughts being, some of these vegetable will grow OK, not as robustly as grown in full sun but adequately.

I had attended a Master Gardener meeting this week where the speaker, Teresa Kennedy, talked about sustainable urban "food forests" in Nashville. An urban "food forest" is a layered approach to growing edibles that encourage sharing with neighbors and eating more healthy. It is a process that can be duplicated anywhere, so long as it abides by neighborhood covenants, etc. It prompted me to consider adding things to my balcony garden as a test trial because these are vegetables we would eat. I don't believe in planting things I would not use in cooking myself.

I will keep you "posted".