A free Saturday, care of Mother Nature

After much rain outside, the greenhouse just couldn't handle it anymore and flooded.  In fact, one of them was almost a swamp!

And the spinach did not like being flooded.

Kind of like when you overwater plants and they wilt and die, so did the spinach.  On the positive side, we did not have a farmer's market today, giving us a break until the farmer's market starts outside in Clintonville April 29th.  Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean free time, we've still got lots of preparing to do for the upcoming season.  And with this recent cold weather, we're spending our time adding wood to the fire out in the greenhouse every 3 hours.  Oh how I look forward to spring and warm weather!

So I brought in some forsythia to force it into bloom to brighten my day.

And earlier this week, before the 30 degree weather, the crocuses and daffodils bloomed.

The tulips think it's time for spring!

We found a turnip as big as my head!  That's enough to feed a family for a week, who needs that much turnip?  I see it as a challenge to figure out how many ways I can use turnips!

And there was one field on high ground that was tillable.  The soil was still a little too wet in some spots, but we couldn't resist the itch to plant outside.

Yeah seed starting!

We look forward to these rows filled with lettuce and sunflowers.  Spring here we come!

We get by with a little help from our friends

We just wanted to give some thanks to Steve and Chuck for helping us pot up all the lisianthus we got in.  We ordered them as plugs because they are pretty much impossible to start from seed, and they take forever, but they were just little itty bitty guys.  Unfortunately too, we had 5 trays of 288 plugs which needed to be put into trays that only hold 50 so they can continue to grow even more before they get planted out.  So, let's do the math: that means we potted up 1,440 plugs into 28 trays.  Whew!  Now you see why we couldn't have done it without them!

Well, extreme heat I don't think we are going to have to worry about, but cold maybe.  We're thinking maybe we got them a little too early, but we put a wood burning stove into the seed starting greenhouse so we are hoping they will make it!

This year is our first experimenting with heat and with trying to have flowers this early.  We are shooting for Mother's Day flowers, so wish us luck!

Makes me proud to continue on the tradition of small scale flower farming!

The week of presentations

After being on 10 tv plugging my business and my presentation at the Home and Garden show, I came home, took a nap, and then was off to the show.  Although there were only about 5-6 people that listened to my presentation, the stage manager there said I just picked a bad time to do it and suggested that I come back another year and go earlier in the day.  It was a good place to start though, hearing myself in a microphone was kind of intimidating.  Once I get the 10 tv DVD I will upload it onto here for everyone to see.

Then on Thursday, we went to Keller Farms to talk about how to grow greens in the winter.  It began their Backyard Gardener's Series and was a huge success.  There were more people there than there were seats and they were really excited to hear about it.  And now that the presentations are over, time for finals week for my Columbus State classes, wish me luck!

These make for some fun projects

http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/recipe-project/project-20110221.asp

Our spinach harvest last week... on a bright and sunny day!

Even though it looked like this outside, the sun shone into the greenhouse and really heated it up.

Look at all the beautiful spinach.

It was warm enough in there, I couldn't resist temptation to take my shoes off and stick them in the dirt.  Now don't get me wrong, this didn't last long, the soil was still cold.

Since it was so warm, I had to have some ice cream too.  I figured I might as well take full advantage!

Steve didn't really want to take a break from working to eat ice cream, but I think he enjoyed it anyway.

We're also gearing up to heat our seed starting greenhouse.  Our goal this year is to have flowers by Mother's Day, which requires starting things a little earlier than usual and our basement seed starting area isn't big enough to hold everything we are trying this spring.  

Check it out!

http://www.local-matters.org/story/sunny-meadows-grows-food-flowers-and-community

2011 Cooperative CSA info is finally here!

This year we are proud to announce...

Sunny Meadows Flower Farm 2011 Farmers' Cooperative Community Supported Agriculture Program

This season will be a total of 20 weeks, beginning the week of June 7^th and ending October 18^th. Each week you will get an array of all natural, local, farm fresh vegetables based on seasonality. Mother Nature will ultimately determine crop availability, but your share will include more than a variety of produce. Instead this year, it will be a cooperative of local farms. Your share will also include fresh cut flowers, fruit, herbs, fresh baked bread, canned goods, homemade soap, cheese, eggs, meats and other things throughout the season.

This year's partners include: Honeyrun Farm, Osage Lane Creamery, Lucky Cat Bakery, Blue Owl Garden Emporium, Anderson's Orchards, Triple J Farms and an Amish farmer named Vernon Yoder. All participating farms use sustainable, all natural practices and are in the Central Ohio area. There may be others involved too, but we will always make sure to let you know where you got it from, so you know where you can get more. Our goal is to expose you to the array of things that are available locally and also to give you a more eclectic CSA share each week. Please let us know if you are a vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, or have any other dietary restrictions that would affect your weekly CSA share.

CSA newsletter:

There will be weekly updates via newsletter about the share that is to come. With the vegetables that you may not be familiar, will be a full description and recipes. We have found that people who utilize the recipes are the ones who typically enjoy their share the most, as they find new ways to use their share contents. To be environmentally conscious we would prefer to have the newsletter online, but for those of you whom that will not work for will receive one when you pick up your share.

For the 2011 growing season the share price is $475, but we offer payment plans:

• Early bird: $450 if paid by March 1^st, 2011
• Full price: $475 paid by May 1^st, 2011
• Installment plan: 3 installments of $160 paid by March 1^st, April 1^st, and May 1^st
• Half share: $250 paid by May 1^st, 2011

Pick up spots:

Granville Farmer’s Market, Granville

Saturday 8 am-12 pm

At our farm, 3555 Watkins Road, Columbus

Wednesday 3-6pm

Upper Arlington Farmer's Market

Wednesday 3-6

Just email us if you want more information and a copy of the contract:

sunnymeadowsflowerfarm@gmail.com

Thank you for your support,

Gretel and Steve Adams

Sunny Meadows Flower Farm

Getting married near Columbus? Join the Green Wedding Movement!

We are revamping our website, so soon this will be available to everyone on the new site, but I just thought I would get this out there.  Soon I will have a flickr account just for the wedding photos too, a portfolio for display.  

We operate based on seasonality, so we encourage brides to use the flowers that we grow so you get the freshest, most beautiful bouquet. Contact us and we can discuss the possibilities. We have three options available for wedding services:

1. Buy Bulk Wedding Flowers: You would pick these flowers up a day or two before the weddings and do your own arranging. Or, combine it with some a la carte options and make sure your wedding party looks sharp.
2. A La Carte Design Work: Have us do some of the floral design, usually including anything the wedding party would wear or carry. These arrangements would be picked up day of or the day before the wedding. Can be combined with bulk flowers for the reception.
3. Full Service: This package includes everything for the ceremony, reception, set-up and delivery. This is the hassle free option, so no worrying necessary!

Contact us soon to ensure your date is still available. Then, fill out the contract below the best you can and make a deposit. You can come visit us at one of our farmer's markets to see our arranging in person. And for other wedding services you may need, check out the links we have to some of our friends who do great work.  

Spring has sprung, well kind of...

And so the season begins.

This is Munki.  She was in with the chickens and trying to figure out how to get out.  Crazy kitty!

Thanks to this handy, old tiller, it was time for reworking some of this ground for spring.

So, we tilled in the old beds.

Out with the old, and in with the new.  We're planting some Bells of Ireland, flowers that will hopefully be ready early spring.  It's kind of an experiment, so we'll see how it goes!

This is one of our Larkspur beds, which will be a nice greenhouse crop this year.  Last year they weren't ready until after Mother's Day, but this year we are hoping they come right on time.

This one was originally a spinach bed, but the larkspur from last year reseeded and took over.  We decided to sacrifice what little spinach was left in there, like that one leaf that you can see, to let the flowers grow.

This is ranunculus finally popping through the soil.  It's a new spring crop for us and we're really excited about the beautiful bouquets it will make.

I found another one!  So plural, would it be ranunculi?  It's just so nice to see things sprouting.  It gives me hope on these dreary winter days.

The farming community mourns today

Our beloved farmer friend, Cliff Nishimura, Zenjiro Gardens, passed away unexpectedly Sunday the 30th. We will miss that laugh, his beautiful bouquets, and a great man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Cliff's family and friends, and all the other people who have been touched by his kindness. A memorial celebration is this Sat. Feb 5th, 11am-1pm at Jagers and Sons Funeral Home in Athens, OH.

Gretel and I are extremely thankful for being able to visit Cliff's gardens, it was amazing. His gardens were beautiful, and his place had a lot of character. Seeing his place gave us a greater sense of who Cliff was. He lived the way I always wanted to live, simple, minimal, and in the mountains. Cliff lived a hard life, but was always smiling and had an infectious laugh. We wanted to be at markets that he was at because they were so much more fun. Even though we were flower growers too and you would think there may be a sense of competition, instead it was something that brought us together and made us closer friends. He was the first farmer to reach out to us when we were fresh into doing the farmer's markets, and the friendship continued to build from there.

I learned a lot about flowers from him, and will continue to learn from Cliff. What is really sad is that his garden will not be tended to like it always has been. I think about seeing it next year with all the perennials holding on as well as they naturally can, over grown with weeds, lost in nature, and wonder what will come of it. His memory will always be a part of what we do and who we are as flower farmers and as people. He will be very dearly missed and this season just won't be the same without him.

Living the homesteading lifestyle

This is a homemade alfredo made with pesto from our garlic scapes this spring that was saved in the freezer, topped with a delicious veggie burger from Luna Burger, a Columbus company.

And the dryer broke, so we are now having to hang all of our clothes in the living room where the wood burning stove is to get everything dry.

Ultimately it just looks like a tornado went through and spewed clothes everywhere, but you gotta do what you gotta do I guess.  We're just living the gypsy lifestyle.

This is my first batch of homemade granola and it was amazing.  I even dehydrated some blueberries we got from the farmer's market to put on top.  Mix that in with some Greek yogurt and you've got yourself a nice healthy snack... much better for you then processed cereals.

This is chicken we got from an Amish farmer which we made unhealthy by frying, but who can resist fried chicken every once in a while?  And with it, is cream of sweet potato soup... yum!

Overall, we're really loving winter.  Although we live on a busy road, so we never technically get snowed in, we can always pretend like we are, snuggled up next to the wood burning stove.  And between all the canning we do, our milk that gets delivered to us, and the stuff in the freezer, we really only need to go to the grocery store for things like toilet paper and other things we can't make ourselves. It's a good life we lead!

We're officially members!

Today we joined the membership of the Bexley Natural Market and are super excited.  We are close enough to it that we feel like we are a part of a community, people striving for the same goal of local, healthy, and organic.  We look forward to the relationships we'll build and the sense of community we will gain.  Check it out y'all!

Fighting cabin fever

During the winter, Steve still needs things to do.  It's actually nice because we have time inside to focus on the house.  In the summer, we aren't really in it enough to spend time reorganizing and redecorating.  So, we got a new shelf to organize all of our goods.

All of our tomatoes from this year, some homemade sauerkraut, and some pickled grape leaves.

Our dried goods section, herbs and teas, beans, and some more canned goods.

This Hoosier cabinet was my Valentine's Day present 2 years ago and has really been great storage space since we have no pantry.  And sitting on top are a couple beers from Rockmill Brewery.  We went for a taste testing on Thursday, and the Belgian style beer was so amazing we had to bring more home with us.  We also discovered that good beer isn't served ice cold, that's just what the crappy tasting beer wants you to believe.  That way, you just taste cold instead of the flavor of their beer.  So, this good beer is served chilled, like a good bottle of wine. 

Bread from our baker friend at Lucky Cat Bakery.  His stuff is amazing!  This is his famous Focaccia, and his new Multigrain Rye Sourdough which is 90% organic and super yummy!  (The only things not organic are the local honey in it and the rye chops, which is like an oatmeal sort of mixture that helps the rye flour rise).  Ultimately, the best bread around!

After the kitchen reorganizing, we moved to the spare bedroom, and there is a floor... yay!

9 degrees outside doesn't hold us back!

Although we had some inches of snow in the past couple of days, it really just created an insulating layer and with the bright sun, it was nice and toasty in the greenhouse.

We even sanitized flats for our seed starting.  We just brought in hot water from inside and I got pretend I was on the beach with my hands in warm water and the sun shining down upon us.

Steve's showing those seeds who's boss.

My stack of sanitized pots and flats.  To save on plastic, we wash all of our plasticware and reuse it until it works no longer, then it gets recycled.

And, my Amaryllis I got around Christmas time is finally blooming.  It's nice to have flowers around in the winter.

Philo was enjoying being outside off leash, although he didn't quite understand the concept of the greenhouse.  It's like he was outside, he could see the outside, but he just couldn't quite get there.  He pretty much spent the whole time sniffing around, plotting his escape.

Overall, it was a good snow day for us!