The running journal of the food forest and the flock — newest first.
The walking onions did their trick again — every stalk bowed over with a cluster of top-sets, some already sprouting mid-air. They're spread on screens in the barn now, curing in the breeze. Twenty-count bags will ship in time for fall planting; the store is taking orders.
Twenty-one days of candling and humidity charts, then the peeping started. The barnyard mix threw everything from chipmunk-striped to jet black, all of them loud. The best layers from this hatch stay; the genetics ride along in every dozen of hatching eggs we sell.
The Bocking 14 ring around the young apples is doing its two jobs: the flowers hum with bumblebees all morning, and one chop-and-drop pass buried each tree's root zone in green mulch. Root cuttings from the thickest crowns are potted for the store.
April marks the farm's third birthday as a Missouri company and the first anniversary of the big orchard planting. Every tree from last spring leafed out. The paperwork anniversary gets a nod; the trees get the party.
One hundred plates, two colourways each, four sizes — the Story Thyme Botanicals catalogue is finished and moving into the shop. Herbs for the kitchen wall, roosters for the mudroom, desert natives for the odd minimalist cousin.
