Well, hello Sun...

We flowers and vegetables sure are thankful for all the rain but it's nice to see you again!

Eden Creek Farm.

Early morning rose over Blooming Grove, TX, population 833. The overcast sky, much welcomed in Texas after a scorching summer, created a canopy of coziness over our entire hour drive from Dallas deeper and deeper into the country. We wound our way through the downtown center of Blooming Grove.  About 5 miles down the road, we saw a white pickup truck in the distance. It was Steve Orth, proprietor of Eden Creek Farm, ready to greet and usher us onto his property. He gave us a hearty wave and we entered the gate before him. The dirt road wound through evergreens and mesquite trees, and unsure of what would await us around the next turn, we began to feel that we were entering some kind of fairtytale land.  Finally, the road opened into a clearing where there stood not a wide-porched farmhouse, but a huge grey Adobe home – totally unexpected!

the orth's home

We were instantly greeted by the jovial married couple, Steve and Kristine Orth, who owns and runs Eden Creek Farms. They are clearly in love with each other and their work. Everything from the care of their home to the care of their fields was beautiful.

They offered us steaming cups of fine South Pacific coffee as we sat in their warm living room filled with the scent of incense.  The cozy wood stove and earthy colors were the perfect backdrop to the overcast morning.

We then began a tour of their farm so we could see all the amazing produce grown there, including the cleared land that is ready for new fall crops to be planted.  In our Crocs, boots, and tennis shoes, we began traipsing through the forest, led by Maya, the German Shepherd.  But Maya was only the first of the characters...we were soon introduced to Squeaky the pet squirrel. Kristine Orth rescued him as a baby, and he now lives in a spacious cage with his stuffed animals under a horse apple (bodark) tree.  He also enjoys belly rubs.

squeaky

We continued our walk, pausing to stoop down and pick some tart wild plums or sweet wild persimmons. A master gardener specializing in edible landscaping, Steve Orth would tear leaves off various plants, hand them to us, and say, “Here taste it! What does it taste like?” as he awaited our answer in childlike expectation. Just some of the goodies we sampled: lemon mint, edible hibiscus that tasted like fresh oranges, purple basil, gourmet cucumber, and gourmet salad greens.

wild plum

As we walked on through the forest, something amazing happened when we rounded a bend.  All of a sudden, four beautiful horses emerged gently from amidst the trees, as if from a scene out of Lord of the Rings.  They were just grazing there naturally.  Oh, how I love horses.  They are such frightening yet gentle creatures.  The horses hoped we had snacks for them, but we gave them some love instead.

steve orth with the horses

i'm a natural, don't you think?

Everything on their farm is grown 100% organically and never touched by chemicals.

kristine orth in one of the fields

Along the tour, Steve and Kristine gathered a variety of items for us to take home and enjoy, including a squash that was so long it could wrap around your shoulder like a boa constrictor!

One of the great things about working with a local farm is the close relationship we can develop with the farmers.  Eden Creek is going to be growing some items especially for our co-op!  We can't wait to start sharing their farm-fresh bounty with our community!

gigantic zucchini, Torch of Tuscany squash, lemon cucumbers, onions, purple basil

Patch of beauty.

This is an ode to my garden and all the beauty she brought into our lives this spring and summer.



Oh, she had some shining moments. After four years of laboring and learning, we can celebrate all the food produced by the work of our hands and the blessings of earth, wind and rain: bulging tomatoes, foot-long squash, peppery lettuce, savory and sweet herbs, fuzzy okra, shiny green bell peppers, and spiny canning cucumbers that were crunchier than any I've tasted before. And then the wildflowers...it seemed that new ones sprouted up each morning - a different variety, a different shade. The whole place hummed with color and life. A haven in our own backyard.

There was much hard work and struggle. We composted, dug, planted, weeded, pruned, prayed for rain, and had a moment of silence for our beloved pole beans that shriveled up and died a few weeks after the first harvest. But as the metaphor always is with growing things, with the struggle, there has been beauty. And community, too, as we got to share our garden bounty and discoveries with so many others {photo of me and Mary in the garden one June evening}.

And then, a recent discovery: with the sweltering, uncomfortable weather that can be so burdensome in Texas, there's a unexpected gift on the flip-side: a second growing season! When everyone else is retiring their gardens for the fall, we haul out more compost, turn the soil again, and replant a bunch of seeds for a second harvest! Fall is coming. I can feel it - beneath the heat that has finally begun to relent, a subtle breeze and coolness is rising. Perhaps this fall, our pole beans will be successful...

For now, we will keep doing our part: tending our garden, feeding people, using the ability given by our Creator to go on creating. We'll keep cultivating our own little patch of beauty nestled behind our home and between three fenced walls. Here, we grow things and in our own little way, take part in redeeming the earth.

Life is indescribably beautiful.
Enjoy it today, and say thank you.

First tomatoes!

I'm happy to present our first three tomatoes of the season! These are "sweet babies" and boy, were they sweet - they tasted like candy!

This morning...

I sure do enjoy mornings now, when these are the first sights I get to see...something new to discover every day.

Spring harvest.

"In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it."
~Frank McKinney Hubbard

This quote is becoming truer everyday, as we find ourselves less and less at the grocery store, and shopping more and more at local farms, or eating produce from our own back yard. But I'm finding that the joy that comes from harvesting enough vegetables to make an entire crunchy, colorful salad, from our very own back yard, is worth every bit of work. We spend every day doing some life-giving work in the garden - removing the endless sprigs of grass from our raised beds of lettuce, or untangling English ivy that loves to twine itself around every square inch of the yellow trellis. And I have found that the care we put into it only makes the arugula taste spicier, the tiny pole beans sweeter.

Here are two of our largest "harvests" so far...what delicious salads they made!

i spy 2 basil leaves and 2 pea pods!
and a variety of lettuce - "craquerelle du midi" romaine
and a cook's mesclun mix - mmm!

more lettuce including a cute baby romaine
and our first 3 squash,
which we actually sliced with a mandolin
and ate raw in a salad


a closer look at the red orach

For a garden-fresh salad, all you need to "dress" them is a simple vinaigrette:
3 tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
1-2 tbs. vinegar (my favorites are Sherry Vinegar & Apple Cider Vinegar)
A small dollop of Dijon mustard, if you prefer a creamier dressing
Sea salt & black pepper to taste

Whisk it all together, or shake in a glass mason jar, and pour over the fresh greens. Delightful!

Barbie-sized things.

One of my absolute favorite things about growing up is how much my mother humored me and fostered my crazy imagination. I'm sure every day was something new for her - "Oh dear, what has Christine come up with now?"

"Hello, Dawn," I would say as I descended the stairwell into the dining room. That was how my mom knew that I was no longer Christine but my imaginary alter-ego named "Kim." She would carry on a conversation with Kim as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. Mysteriously, Kim would always ask questions about me such as, "So, Dawn...how has Christine been doing on her chores? Has she been good lately?" and then disappear before my mom could lift her head up from the vegetables she was slicing for dinner.

This explains a lot.

There was also the instrument I invented called the "Konoto," which was really just a hardcover "I Can Read" book with "strings" drawn on the cover and then held in my arms like an autoharp. {Do you remember "I Can Read" books? Oh how I loved Frog And Toad!}

But some of my most memorable "toys" were all the everyday items that were "Barbie-sized." That means they were just the right dimension to be life-sized in Barbie world. For example, the little plastic white stand that sat in the middle of a hot cheesy pizza from Rocco's. These, of course, became Barbie end tables for my living room setup where a hot pink and black zebra-print scarf was the rug. And how about the wooden toothpicks with red, yellow, green, or blue fuzzy tips that held sandwiches together at 42 Main Delicatessen? Barbie torches, or sparklers for a 4th of July celebration, of course.

Now, as a grown-up, I'm proud to announce that I have Barbie-sized produce in my garden! Teeny inch-long squash, and baby green tomatoes that will soon be juicy and bright red and difficult to hold in one palm. My favorite of all has to be the baby pea pods. You can stare and stare at the vine for several minutes before you see them, and then all of a sudden your eyes adjust, and you realize that adorable mini pea pods are hanging everywhere! We are definitely going to get more than a single cucumber this year; in fact I'll soon show you what we've already harvested. In the meantime, I'm enjoying each and every stage of growing things.

It's not easy to tell in the photos, but not a single one of these veggies is more than an inch long...

yellow squash - if you click to enlarge it, you can see that the surface is fuzzy!

zucchini

pea pod

tomato

cucumber

green bell pepper

sweet peas - these aren't technically veggies but they remind me of four little girls in dresses on their way to kindergarten

On with the imagination! We are never too old, I say.