We swear!

Don’t  be fooled by this weather, and don’t let it get you down. We’re chugging along over here, pretending we don’t see mounds of snow in the field and changing shirts and socks when it gets too damp.

Also, I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors. Planning, and hanging out with the newest Crooked Row additions – Team Chick, but I do have to say that I have also been sleeping with my triangle pillow a lot.

The day after the Mid-March snowstorm I drove out to the middle of the state and picked up 200-some Austrolorp chicks. These little tykes have completely derailed my days, softened my soul and have given me immeasurable joy in the last month.

They’re hilarious, curious, exhausting at moments, and such…mighty…brats.

It’ll be months before these peeps are big enough to lay eggs, but I’m amazed by how quickly they are growing and changing shape. With each day they get braver, hungrier, and more motivated to prove to me that my brooder room is not, despite my constant efforts, chick-proofed.

Using the light cord like a tight rope. Face. Palm.

So, yeah. This is where I’ve been spending a fair amount of my mornings and evenings. But don’t worry – our original gals (who celebrated their one-year anniversary at our place this month!), are still getting regular TLC as well, and are still laying magnificent and delicious eggs.

This April has been a bit different than those previous. Along with the seeding and the planning and the certification renewals and supply ordering, there’s been planning, inventory estimating, design and redesign.

Instead of our wide-reaching CSA as in previous years, I’ve scaled things back to a Stand Share option, with Market Dollars or a CSA-style bag as you choose (and ignore the deadline in this link- we’re taking sign-ups through April). We’ve partnered with the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Center again this year for a season of healthy initiatives, but otherwise I’m hoping you’ll be able to make it to the stand for the food you love. Otherwise, give me a holler and I’ll point you in the direction of a CSA grower near you. They’re there, and they’re amazing.

My main focus is our stand. If you know me, you know I have a tendency to overextend, and I’ve done a lot to mentally and logistically reign that in this year. The Crooked Row Farm Market is an incredible opportunity for us, and it also gives great exposure to our neighbors and friends who grow and produce such amazing food in our region. I want to be able to do this more effectively and successfully this year.

First up – We’ve got an Official Website now, huzzah! It’s beautiful. Enter.Net worked some serious magic on my mish-mashed life, and now it shines.

Next up – Making friends: Liebe Media has taken on this year’s Crooked Row adventures with a camera, and I cannot wait to see what becomes of our collaboration. Kimber spent an afternoon hanging out with the chicks and loved it, and we discovered that we have aligned missions and passions that make us wildly compatible as pals, too.

I mean, look at these photos of our girls. Swoon.

Programming – You responded, and we listened. I’m excited to have a physical space from everything from Yoga in the Field with our dear friends at Tribe Yoga (and our other beloveds!) to Healthy Gardening workshops with Green Heron Tools, to picnic days and more, I look forward to spending time with you at the stand throughout the season as we explore local food and local life together.

Keeping Up – I love this farmerliz blog, since it’s been my way of sharing with everyone since the get-go, but soon I’ll be putting out a newsletter twice a month throughout the season to more specifically highlight local specials, events, recipes, and share the CR love with those who aren’t as hyped on the blogosphere. If you’d like to be added to the newsletter, add your name and e-mail to the comments here. More on this once I sit down and build it. 🙂

THE STAND! – We’ll be opening APRIL 14TH, and I’m so excited. Obviously the veggies will be slim pickings this early in the year, but we’ll have early greens and herbs – and, of course, THE BEST EGGS YOU WILL EVER EAT – as well as all the other local eats you’ve come to expect and love. With the Wayfare Baker gone we are excited to introduce The Daily Loaf from Hamburg, and her delicious, amazing breads. Taste of Country will be back with her incredible canned goods – including some featuring our own fruits and veggies this year! Stay tuned on that. Valley Milkhouse, Klein’s and BAD Farm will stock our dairy fridge, Wholesome Beef and Wild Fox are slated for our freezer, mushrooms from Primordia and Hudulfolk Homestead will grace the cooler with LV Kombucha, and Red Cat grains will once again showcase the diversity of the Lehigh Valley food scene and, perhaps, some pizza crusts? Like I said, stay tuned.

At the outset, we’ll be set up partly as a garden center. Everyone’s favorite Teena Bailey of Red Cat is growing hundreds of organically-raised vegetables starts for those of you looking for your own garden spaces this year. I’ve got a tote of organic Vermont Compost potting mix on the way for that same purpose. If you’re more inclined to be a seed-starter, we’ll have nearly a hundred varieties of organic and open pollinated seeds from High Mowing and Strictly Medicinals. Let’s get growing!

Because spring has sprung, my friends. And we can’t wait.

Yours in Peeps and Seasonal Treats,

Liz

One of my closest childhood friends gave me a copy of Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking for Christmas this year, and it’s pulling down all these interesting walls in my brain I hadn’t realized were there.

I’m notoriously bad at asking for help. Is everyone? Are you? Even when people offer to help, I backpedal from it (EVEN WHEN I, LIKE, REALLY NEED IT). Amanda writes about her life as a performer, from statueing as a street artist to touring with the Dresden Dolls and Tweeting fans for support, places to sleep with a back support pillow, meals after gigs and, later, a financial hand to launch an album without a label.

She also talks about Impostor Syndrome, or what she calls the Fraud Police, which are the voices in your head and, perhaps, within your peripherals that are telling you to get a real job; to not ask others for things; that you are not good at what you are doing and that what you are doing is silly and pointless and certainly not worth another person’s time or support.

One of my farmer friends used the term Impostor Syndrome last year to describe a feeling of inadequacy. I’d never heard that term before but immediately felt it was spot on, nailing down this panicky, insecure feeling inside me that fills me with trepidation instead of elation whenever a CSA share check comes in.

What do you think you’re doing, asking for money for food you haven’t grown yet? that frustrating, internal voice says. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t have the chops. You were an ENGLISH major!

Truth: I get anxiety when posting CSA bag photos.

Etc., etc.

I imagine a fair amount of humans experience this inside and outside noise.  I felt that way about writing, when I was writing  a lot more, and especially when I was thinking that I would pursue writing professionally. I felt like a hack when I edited the college paper. I felt like a phony the summer I was posted up at the Philadelphia Inquirer, covering bike crimes and murders and municipal meetings. Hell, I would feel like a fraud writing an album review, regardless of my prior experience with the band or with music in general. I didn’t feel that I knew enough, was savvy enough, was critical enough to have opinions that mattered.  

Side note – reading Amanda’s book has me excited about music for the first time in years. As in, I want to make time for young music and new music again. I wish I could explain to you how thrilling this is for me. Hop Along and the New Pornographers used to wreck me in college. I once locked myself in a room at the farm house in New York and listened to the Mountain Goats’ “This Year” for something like three hours straight. When I moved into Little House and was sleeping in a sleeping bag in the living room at night and trying not to be terrified about being alone in this house out in the woods, I would stay up all night painting my walls to Side A of Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City and a rapid succession of everything by The Killers. But it’s been years since I’ve really let the sound in – I think, at least in part, because I didn’t feel like I was a loyal enough fan to be a part of a music scene. And maybe because I’ve let other humans in my peripherals cast judgements on the sounds that make me happy.

I started the farm in 2013. It was, hands down, the most challenging year of my life. Also, the worst, for a whole pile of reasons I’ll tell you about over a beer or three sometime. Also, in moments, the most beautiful. I was living in my childhood bedroom, trying to start a business with minimum experience, trying to grow food and hoping people would want to eat this food and holding down two other jobs because there was no way this food thing was going to be a sure bet.

See this? This right here is a panic face.

And then, in all that chaos, something started to happen. For every woody radish I was tossing into my compost pile and for every beet that didn’t germinate, someone would approach me at market to thank me for the tastiest romaine they’ve had since they were a kid. I spent a whole season without irrigation, but a restaurant bought a trunk load of my heirloom tomatoes. Friends in my life suddenly got excited about broccoli raab. People I’d known for my whole life and people I’d just met were sending me photos of the food they were cooking. They were thanking me for doing what I do.

Something else happened over the last few years, something I didn’t realize was happening at the time: I stopped hearing people when they said these things.

Because I felt like I didn’t deserve it. I can name a dozen growers off the top of my head who grow really amazing, beautiful food that I’ve yet to feel I can measure up to. They are older, more established and, at least in my head, more professional. Their arugula never has flea beetle damage. They are holding down families and lives that don’t consist of making a giant pan of curry with leftover frozen stand veggies to eat for the next seven days. I spent the better part of a week this winter coming home to hit the restart button on my furnace while I simultaneously held my fire extinguisher and my breath because I don’t understand machines or combustion. I feel like adults with their fingers on the pulse of their careers maybe aren’t doing this.

#childfarmer? #notadulting?

What The Art of Asking is teaching me, one emotionally-volatile page at a time, is that maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe Crooked Row works because it’s a bit slapstick and messy. Because sometimes carrots decide they don’t want to grow in one field but the strawberries are the best you’ve had in years. Because sometimes you find me on the verge of tears over a tub of red beets because I really don’t know anything about running a store, and WHY CAN’T I GET MY BEETS TO GROW LIKE THESE?! Because somehow I got your kids to like chard. And, most importantly, because each year gets a little better for you and for me. A little tastier, a little more organized, a little more like the farm life that I want. And, once you’re in the door (by which I mean the receiving end of the vegetable bag), we are that much closer.

So here’s me passing the hat, on behalf of myself and for all the other growers here. We all do it differently. We are from every walk of life. We are your classmates, neighbors, employees, market friends. Some of us have been doing this for years, and some of us are still figuring it out. But we are here, and we want to stay here, and we want to grow for you. For every farm sunrise, chicken video, delicious dinner, farmers’ market date, farmland preservation vote, CSA bag you love and remember, support us this season. Please.

This one. Right here.

We are asking you to trust us. We want to feed you. Let us feed you?

These are some of the ways I can feed you this season. These are some of the ways my friends can.

Lehigh Valley, let’s keep growing this food family.

All My Green Love,

Liz

Winter is always a very disorienting time for me. At the start I imagine myself recharging energy packs that I’ve burned out and used up over the course of the previous season. Weeding through July, seeding through May, harvesting each week and wrapping up in November means I get to shut off my alarm for a few weeks, right?

And then the thoughts start trickling in. The food thoughts. As I sat bundled up with my space heater at the stand leading up to the holidays, I daydreamed about butternut squash, roasted apples, hot bean soup. I thought about all the berries I’d been freezing through the summer, tucked away in my freezers and waiting to be blended into summer-nostalgia smoothies in January. I daydreamed about stir fry. All the stir fry.

I’m a quick study in my meal prep. Hand me a vegetable, and I’ll roast it or throw it in a wok. It’s one of my most satisfying activities as a grower and as a homeowner. It’s nearly midnight as I write this and I want to pull out the last of my beets and do this right now.

Anywho. It’s about this time, just past the new year and straight on through February, that I start to feel the first tug of excitement for the growing season again. The seed catalogs begin to arrive. My heart soars. I pull boxes of potatoes out of the basement and assess my seed stock needs. My mind turns to potting soil and tomato stakes.

And tomatoes. So many tomatoes. I’ve reeled myself in over the last few years, paring down my tomato choices to less than a dozen instead of the twenty-plus varieties I used to plant. 2018 marks my sixth growing season in the Lehigh Valley, and I’ve taken a more pragmatic approach to what I am ordering and what I’d like to grow. Of course, I still have a whole box of exciting and hard-to-pronounce herb seeds from Strictly Medicinals, but you have to keep some of your darlings.

My farm stand opens again in April, with organic seeds and organically-grown plants and all folks will need to outfit a solid garden, along with the early spring veggies. I’m already planning, and I’m already stoked. If you had told me three weeks ago I’d be feeling this way, I wouldn’t have believed you.

My style of farming, like the seasons, is cyclical. I’m slowly emerging from the cocoon of exhaustion and into the light of what is sure to be an amazing year. We have a storefront; we have excited supporters and customers; we are about to have a whole room full of chicks and boxes of seeds; we have a renewed commitment to document this adventure for anyone who may be interested.

We can’t wait to share the journey, the dreams, and, most importantly, the food.

Liz is the owner of Crooked Row Farm, a certified organic vegetable, herb and egg farm in New Tripoli and Orefield. Her farm stand is located at 3245 Route 309 in Orefield. Visit http://farrmerliz.com for more info.

Craig Finn says it best, as usual:
We’re gonna build something, this summer
We’ll put it back together raise up a giant ladder
With love, and trust, and friends, and hammers, this summer.

It’s a little more than the usual Crooked Row farm season spin this time around. We’re rocking the two-day-a-week Blue Mountain Farm Market in Slatington. We’re slinging teas and herbs and eggs at Trexlertown. The CSA is 50+ strong. The chickens and the veggies in Orefield are happy, and the herbs in New Tripoli are flourishing. We hatched a chick! Heck, we even have two acres of grain to harvest, courtesy of a new friend with some antique combining equipment, for the Wayfare Baker and other interested baking parties.

Redeemer Wheat from Red Cat Farm and Danko Rye, growing growing growing in the field.

Did I mention we’re certified organic now? And we’ve picked up some killer help this year, really phenomenal humans who are self-contained and love being around the farm.

And still, that’s not the big news. Here’s the big news:

We’re opening a stand.

When I was a kid, Wehr’s on 309 in Orefield was a spot we all adored. The farm stand had excellent produce, it was right on the way to visit Dad’s shop, and they always had cool animals we could go visit in the back.

Imagine my surprise when, fast-forwarding to 2017, Dolores Wehr sold the property to my parents just as the season picked up.

Admittedly, I’ve had very little to do with the building end of this magical new project in our lives. I’ve been watching Team Clymer and Dad Wagner and all the other carpenter and door guys for weeks and months transform this barn into a store I’ve been daydreaming of now for years.

And on Saturday we throw the doors open.

It’s an aggregated farm stand, my favorite kind, one that highlights the best of what Crooked Row and all our farmer friends have to offer. We’ll have local fruits and veggies, honey, cheese, meat and eggs. We’ll have organic and conventional food, so there’s something for everyone. We’ll have Monocacy Coffee and Wayfare Baker Bread and Lehigh Valley Kombucha. We’ll have all the people I love, in a space we can share, just for you.

3245 Route 309, Orefield, PA 18066.
Weekdays – 10-6
Weekends – 10-3
(Or whenever the sign is out, for you early birds)

So come on out and see what we’ve got to offer. Come enjoy the Lehigh Valley food scene. We’ll only keep growing from here.

Oh yes. The pawpaws are sprouting. ❤

One last note: We built the Herb Labyrinth at PEX again this year, where it was well-received and full of joy and gratitude. Thanks to all who walked the path and all who helped to build it. We’re trying to bring it to Allentown in the fall, folks. Stay tuned.

Yours in Plant Magic,  Herb Labyrinths and Big Farm Dreams,

Farmer Liz

We are our only saviors. We’re gonna build something this summer.

Until I was about 23, I absolutely hated winter, it is always very cold in winter that’s why when I go out to take my baby on the jogging stroller I make sure she is warm so she doesn’t get a cold. Call it seasonal depression, all it spring fever, call it what you will, but I would skip classes, blow off work and hunker down in my bed, reading the days away and re-watching our old VHS tapes.

But in the last few years I’ve come to embrace this season of hibernation. The farm body is ready for it, and by November and the ending of the CSA season I was collapsing in my bed before dark and sleeping twelve hours a night. It was glorious. As for the cold? I want it – give me more of it. Cold and snow kill pests and disease and weed seed – snow and snow and snow, Winter. I’m ready.

So it’s been great to be enveloped out here on the western edge of the county, if only for a couple of days. I even ventured out with the dogs today – who absolutely love the snow – and they expressed my happiness with hours of crazy dog snow playing antics. Followed by big naps, of course. Did I mention I love winter now?

I’ve been able to sleep, attempt a home brew for the first time in what feels like forever, and even sit down to work on some of the fiction writing I began back in 2015 with my Francesca Lia Block writing class. Big hugs to Taylor, my excellent cousin who has been reading and editing that particular project with me. I’ve been catching a yoga class, working on my emotional and spiritual health and awareness and, of course, catching up on my beloved kid animation series.  Miyazaki, anyone? Gundam Wing?

Gundam Wing and singing bowls and dance records – this almost completely sums up November-February.

I even had the chance to road trip out to Illinois to see some of my favorite people, and unwind in a way I struggle to do when I’m in my home environment. Plus, there were great dinosaurs in Chicago. Can’t get enough of the dinosaurs.

It’s given me time to plan, as well. A few weeks ago I attended a Wholesale Success Workshop presented by Buy Fresh By Local Greater Lehigh Valley and taught by Atina Diffley – an extraordinary grower and woman who, with her husband, has run an incredible organic production since the ’70s AND won an eminent domain dispute with the Koch Brothers over her farm – and it reminded me of one very important facet of Crooked Row – the need to stay organized.

Even though I’m not producing on a wholesale scale (yet, anyway -cue the futuristic success music), the lessons Diffley shared were just as important to me as to someone producing for a grocery store – connect to your audience on an interpersonal level with your food, create beautiful, nutritious quality standards, and be consistent. Plan, plan, plan your successions and your schedules and your fields as meticulously as you can before your arms-deep in lettuce and wondering why you didn’t make a field map. Get your paperwork together. Stay organized.

Obviously, not my favorite part of farming. In fact, when I thought that becoming a grower meant I got to throw out all the stuffy, Type-A bits of my personality I felt made me a square, I railed against the organizational aspects, the specifics of planning to seed and plant and harvest.

Unfortunately, every time I work on a non-related farm task, I remember how good I am at all of those things. And, for the first time, I’m trying to embrace that.

It’s hard for me to really describe this disconnect – that I don’t deserve to spend this type of time and mental efforts on my own projects, or that I feel it’s some undesirable part of the farming field so I should disregard it. The previous distaste for ag-organization is something I’ve spent a lot of time reframing mentally mover the last few months, and I’m glad for that. I think all my projects benefit from me  thinking about them and planning for them.

One of these projects was filing some Pennsylvania Certified Organic paperwork for the first time. The paperwork was tedious, but not particularly hard, and I’ve been putting it off for years because my crowd and my customers seem to love my food whether there’s a sticker on it or not. But I am curious as to the benefits of being able to finally, legally be able to use the “O” word and, as previously stated, this allowed space for me to organize my fields and my life in a new way. A better way.

Because I want to grow the herb side of things, you see. And become a better, more responsible grower as a whole. Folks are asking for more – and I want to be able to give it to them without giving away all of myself in the process. I think I can, I think I can.

The Trexlertown Winter Market has been bustling nicely. We brave flurries and cold feet to come out there on the first and third Saturdays of the month, and the crowd seems happy to have us. This season my herbs and teas will also be available at the Macungie Farmers’ Market on Thursdays – as well as a few other places to be revealed in the near future. 😉

I’ve also been forging new relationships with some also Lehigh Valley folks. This year we’ll be offering CSA pick-up points at the Vitality Natural Healthcare Center in Emmaus and at the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in downtown Allentown. Both centers strive to offer healthy and welcoming education and care to their communities, and I couldn’t be prouder to be partnering with them.

We are also hosting a pick-up at Lit Roastery and Bakeshop in Southside Bethlehem, run by our friends at Monocacy Coffee and Made By Lino.

I’ve also been working with the Slatington Main Street Merchants Group to revitalize the town where I grew up. It’s not something that happens overnight, for sure, but the local organizations and the Greater Northern Lehigh Chamber of Commerce has been instrumental in taking these strides. The Blue Mountain Farm Market has run pop-up markets in conjunction with the area’s new First Friday initiative, and it’s been a blast to see so many people in town excited about the area again. Stay tuned for more in this department, and for some possible food collaborations with our dear Jason at Charlotte Fay’sCharlotte Fay’s Diner.

And National CSA Day is right around the corner! Get ready to check out all the amazing growers in this area and your opportunity to support their farms from the seedlings up. We’re partnered with some awesome folks again this season for share add-ons, and each year I tighten up my production a little more to grow more of what you want.

Click Here for All of the Crooked Row CSA Details!

  Egg Shares: – 22 or 11 weeks of delicious eggs from our pastured, soy-free fed, delightfully happy chickens. $105 for weekly delivery or $55 for every-other week delivery.
The Nesting Box hens live in the shadow of Hawk Mountain, so they are not pastured or they would be very often eaten, but Timi’s family grows their own non-GMO feed on site and is a spectacular chicken mom. Phil Kelly’s chickens roam free in his forested-property in Mertztown. Delicious eggs. And we hope to have our own flock at a new home in Orefield this season! Details TBA.

 Monocacy Coffee ($105) – 2lbs of locally-roasted flavors each month
https://www.facebook.com/monocacycoffeeco/

 Lehigh Valley Kombucha – (Half/$100 or $210, Full/$200 or $420) – a 750ml bottle or a gallon of local, healthy, flavored, freshly-bottled Kombucha.
https://www.facebook.com/LehighValleyKombucha/

 Cheese (Half/60 or Full/$110) 1 1⁄2 lb block from various local cheese-makers
http://kleinfarms.com/
http://www.valleymilkhouse.com/
And so many more!

 Wayfare Baker Bread (Half/$150 Full $300) 2 loaves of John’s unique and varied sourdough flavors. More can be ordered as needed via his website, to be delivered with your shares. Contact him directly for more details.
http://www.thewayfarebaker.com/

Fruit Shares and Meat Shares or a monthly meat buyer’s club from local, pastured sources are also available for CSA participants. Contact me for more info!

I hope you’ll consider joining Crooked Row’s adventure again this season.

Because that’s what our local growing scene is here for, friends – to bring healthy food from our fields to your tables. To keep our economic dollars within the Lehigh Valley. To support other like-minded businesses. And to bring you closer to the people around you.

There’s some strife in the air right now, and a fair share of worry and tension. But here, there doesn’t have to be. Here is an open space to love each other and love the food we grow and make and share.

Because one day all of this will be lettuce and carrots and food for you.

Hugs and Kale,
Farmer Liz

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?

Where to begin in all this. Hmmmmmmmm.

Well, I could talk about Slatington’s Blue Mountain Farm Market, our collaborative farm stand in the town where I was raised. A market staffed by enthusiastic food advocates, stocked by responsible, co-creating, wonderful growers and producers, supported immensely by the Borough where it lives, marketed by journalists and TV stations who have done an incredible job of spreading the word about this new and important project, and pieced together by a happily frazzled manager who keeps being visited by her former school teachers, principals, coaches, friends’ parents and old neighbors in the hours she scrambles to be present.

When I think about how lucky I am to be a part of such a welcomed endeavor, I am bowled over in gratitude. I see the rush of folks on Friday and Saturday mornings, so excited to have fresh, local, responsibly-grown vegetables and perennial flowers and all the well-sourced cheeses, honey, bread, coffee and other goods appear on our tables each weekend. These folks haven’t had a grocery store in their town for what’s approaching a year. We aren’t on that sort of scale, surely, but we’re clearly having an impact when you see how empty the tables are by the end of market day. People are listening, are learning, are making informative decisions about their diets and health and are coming to us.

In. Credible.

I could talk about the Crooked Row CSA, about my fabulous veterans who drummed up support within their own communities to fill out the delivery spots, to create new ones with a core of interested co-workers and friends, and who volunteer to pull weeds and plant tomatoes on their days off. Who make me food with what I give them each week to give back to me. Who purchased my dear friends’ bread, coffee and kombucha shares as well as my vegetables. They save me, they have limitless patience with me, and they appreciate the work I put into this project. I cannot thank you or love you enough.

I could talk about the ridiculously great network of friends I have around me this year. Today my boyfriend and his kids spent the day weeding and planting. My parents are constantly mowing, weeding, watering, and my sister even got into the strawberry picking mood when she was home last. I grill with some of the best new growers in the area, and am catching chickens in the dark with The Wayfare Baker. I catch dinner and swap cheese and herbs with The Valley Milkhouse and spend multiple days of my week stopping by Red Cat and Willow Haven as we continue our adventures in collaboration. I laugh and enjoy my time with the other vendors at The Trexlertown Farmers’ Market. I dream about fields of organic grain and hay, food forests, perennial herb beds and accessible vegetables. I dream about food hubs and farmers’ co-ops and local food networks with these friends, and they don’t all think I’m crazy.

I could talk about my foray into educator this year. It isn’t a role I’m fully comfortable with, not yet, anyway, but one I’m moving into just the same. I spoke at a Bethlehem Food Co-Op meeting earlier this year – it’s one of the first times I addressed a crowd about my farm, mission and story. And then things started to unfold. I’ll be running an herb workshop at the huge Taste event in Bethlehem on July 24^th. This Friday I’m hosting a Wild Food Walk with well-known forager Steve Hoog. I’m working on a series of DIY herb workshops with the Beleno Spiritual Healing Center, and the first is on growing your own tea herbs. I’m going to the PEX Festival with some good friends on a grant to set up an herb labyrinth and run meditative walks throughout the weekend.

Some of this is utterly terrifying if I think about it for too long. But with each impromptu interview and with each phone call, I gain a little confidence. I know my mission – it’s to feed people – and when I stick to that conviction, everyone and everything around me falls into place.

I could talk about the challenges of local food. Of the deep hope I have that all of you, in time, will come to see the necessity of stepping out of the comfort zone of the grocery store and its season-less vortex of readily-available foods. That the folks in this Valley who don’t come to markets and participate in CSAs or feel that deep, empowering need to buy local suddenly awaken to the importance of keeping their food dollars within their own community. That we as producers and growers are all so, so deeply satisfied with this part of our lives, but are still faced with the anxieties of marketing and educating and selling what we make and grow on top of our creating, and that’s where the stress kicks in.

Do you know how much we hope you come out each week? Can you feel our anticipation, our joy when you walk past our tables and ask about the season and fill your bags with what we have raised to feed your family? It’s overwhelming to think about the nitty gritty of this game of food – the nutrition you choose to put into your body is what keeps you running on the most basic, physical levels. But it’s the energy of the food around you that needs consideration as well. We have our hearts in these greens, our souls in these handpicked vegetables. Who wouldn’t want that on their plate?

I could thank you, as always, for choosing to be part of this adventure. From the bottom of my very being, I thank you.

Hugs and Kale,

Farmer Liz

First, a logo. I opened this e-mail at 5:30am a few days back and my heart soared.

It’s just one step on this crazy staircase of forward movement this season. CSA sign-ups went tremendously well. So many returners have come back for another go around, and we’ve amassed newbies from all corners of the Lehigh Valley. We even picked up a Crossfit crowd in Quakertown thanks to one of the awesome cousins, and I’m excited to meet everyone this year.

I’m sad to be pulling out of the Philly scene this year, but as I expand my world and activities here and try to be more sustainable and insular, it is the only way to make sense of my life and still get to have a life in the midst of the insanity of the farm season. But I’m still moving and shaking all around the Valley, with even more surprises on the horizon. More to come on that very soon.

It’s official! Our teas and herbs will be available at The Trexlertown Farmers’ Market this year, Saturdays 9-1 with Opening Day on May 14! We’ll be sharing a tent with Lehigh Valley Kombucha. Like the market Facebook Page to keep updated on community events and special offers throughout market season! We’ll be making an appearance with a lot of the Trexlertown team at Lehigh Valley Farm Fest this year on April 30th, too, so mark those calendars.

Projects are the name of the game at present. Delegated projects. I’ve been holding myself back by thinking I should be knee-deep in every aspect of what is going on up here. But I can still be involved and have others taking the reigns. And, for the first time, I feel comfortable and good about that.

Forrest Quay, freelance mushroom grower, will be performing some outdoor perennial mushroom culturing experiments around the field. If all goes well, by the fall (and definitely by next year), the CSA bags will have oyster mushrooms, wine caps, lion’s mane and more! He’s starting his own spawn on brown rice, and we set up teepees of inoculated logs out in the woods by my field. I don’t know much about our fungus friends (yet), but it’s going to be fun to learn.

Mom Wags has taken the helm on the bee projects. After weeks of classes, phone calls, reading and research, she found the gear she likes, the hive equipment needed, and she even convinced Glenn out to the apiary visit on our last class to see the hives that the Lehigh Valley Beekeepers Association has at LCCC. Our first package of bees arrives next month, as a nuc already happily living on some frames, and the following month a package of bees, some 10,000 in a little wooden box with a marked queen, will arrive.

It’ll take a year to get any quantity of honey, but that’s not really even the primary goal. As pollinators, they’ll help all the plants around the farm, and ecologically, it’s hopeful to try to care for these delicate creatures.

At the LVBA hive opening, we found a colony of happy bees!

Two weeks back, in a surge of momentum, Gary, our semi-intern Alex (who is looking for work, folks!), and I hammered in ground sleeves, bolstered hoops and ran the purlin on our mini tunnel. Glenn (my dad, for newbies who don’t know the man, myth and legend), came home later that day and put on the finishing touches of the frame.

At Keith’s farm I had the chance to see how happy some of our Zone’s more delicate perennials could be living in a high tunnel. I’m looking forward to planting our years’ worth of rosemary pots and some of the more tropical herbs in this permanent structure.

Now, if only I can figure out how to build the roll-up sides.

Easter was lovely, full of my family and their own awesome projects. We’ve always been a creative bunch. One cousin showed us around his wood shop, where he is now making custom guitars, and we awaited the arrival of one of his daughters and her return from France. One was in the corner reading a Francesca Lia Block book (and my heart burst), and others offered us some business advice as we munched on the lingering lunch snacks.

And, of course, family time means Jess Wagner time. My favorite. Whether it’s a phone call to commiserate on the challenges of self-employment or to celebrate an awesome step in the right direction, my sister has become a constant collaborator, mentor and friend on this crazy we road we’re on. I’ve gushed about her before, so I’ll hold back here, but if you’re looking for some philanthropic-based, delightful running apparel, check out her company Run Life Co.

What a cutie.

As for our darling Crooked Row itself – the farm is growing along. The perennial herbs are up and looking beautiful. The greenhouse is almost tipsed, and I’ve got brassicas who are looking very forward to this cold week passing quickly so they can be planted. We are building our raised bed system 100-row feet at a time, which is slow going, but it feels so good be to setting up these permanent systems.

Our Happy Camper Hens are back, and everyone is so excited. Including them! These girls run toward my truck when I pull up to feed them, eat right out of my hands, and are happy to be out in the fields.

And yesterday Gary and I took a little trip over to a tractor supply store, where he began a new journey of his own.

When people you love gets ducklings, everybody wins. If you follow @thefarmerliz, stay tuned for piles of heart-melting, fuzzy joy.

And if you’re in the CSA this year, stay tuned for an e-mail this week! We’ll be offering some fun add-ons for your viewing, chewing and brewing pleasure for the upcoming season.

Stay warm out there today, friends. It’s a wild world we’re living in.

Hugs and Broccoli Starts and Little-Billed Peepers,

Liz