*photo credit to the lovely Hannah Sherk, one of my new housemates!
It's Tuesday night, and I'm in Greensboro, in my new house! For the next year, I'll be living here with some delightful ladyfriends: Hannah, Molly, Melissa, & Sasha. The latter 3 ladies have yet to arrive, but our friend Grace has been staying here and the interim. She's fantastic ~ smart, elegant, creative, and a VERY talented pastry chef with an easy, room filling laugh. I've been here for the past 2 days, finally having some much needed time for rest and relaxation, and even though I've been utterly exhausted from a long and rather hard week last week, I'm also filled with love for these wonderful women in my life.
Here are some farm updates:
- it's crazy to be writing this, but the summer growing season is coming to a close. Planning, implementing, tending, and harvesting from these gardens of mine have been the primary occupation of my past 6 months, and the prime of their glory and growth is coming to a gentle halt. Tomatoes are done, eggplant is continuing to produce but is waning (the orange eggplant are almost completely done, having succumb to a blight to which the others seem to be immune), sunflowers are fading from fullness, and the watermelon have almost completely finished yielding their sweet fruit. Some crops are still coming in strongly, like zinnias, okra, peppers, and beans. Last week was our first week of edimame, and it. is. FANTASTIC!
I'm quite behind on pictures of these lovely crops (my camera battery died a few weeks ago and I've yet to find a moment to reboot it), but I've taken a good number that I hope to post within the next few days.
Also.... it's time for our fall garden!
I'm so completely delighted about this. We're planning to grow: radishes, beets, spinach, kale, collards, chard, carrots, fall blooming flowers, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, snap peas, onions, and more. I've ordered a delightful assortment of seeds from some companies that I'm completely infatuated with, and in the upcoming days I'll also post links to pictures of these delicious crops and their growing information.
To conclude for the moment, I'd like to share that I recently got accepted into an Americorps program that will begin in September and continue for an entire year! The project is called the "Partnership to End Homelessness," and I'll spend 20 hours a week working for an organization called the Barnabas Network in Greensboro, which focuses on connecting with local faith organizations in order to provide furniture and bedding to families who lack these basic assets. I'm completely stoked. This also basically means that after I plant the fall garden, I'll be moving to one day a week at the farm.
In some ways I'm really devastated about this, but the choice was mine, really. The decision was based on the fact that I'm still SO unsure of what I want to do in this life, and, having just graduated from college, I feel like I need to seize every opportunity to explore my options.
We'll see though... the plan for next year's gardens at Cane Creek is to downsize CONSIDERABLY. I'm going to try and enforce Eliza's plan to have one, small garden to provide for her family and to allow for a beautiful display at market. In essence.... I think we're all really starting to move forward in a way that is both terrifying, and utterly beautiful in its vulnerable newness.
Sweet dreams, dear ones. I wish for us all open hearts and eyes this week, as we delve further and further into the month of August, and our own, unique, and gorgeous journeys.
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