Farmer's Market Finds!

In the thirteen short minutes I had with my two hot, tired, hungry children (:-) we managed to flesh out this year's garden with plants AND buy some cool new glasses made from recycled wine bottles.

First, for all of you brown thumbs with a big heart like out there, perhaps our tale will inspire.

My five year old and I have been feeling rather discouraged from our attempts at growing seeds beginning inside in March. The first time I forgot to water them for over 24 hours (ironically enough around Earth Day - so many events, so little time for tending). Apologies and copious watering efforts proved futile.

We tried again - this time about half of those survived, so we bravely placed the thriving (ok maybe that's a strong word) plants onto the screened in porch before make the colossal jump to the garden. At which point half of those plants died. Our THIRD attempt we planted the seeds straight into the Earth. A whole new appreciation for farming has emerged, as have three lettuce plants, three pea plants, two beets and two cucumber plants (if we can't grow cucumbers, we might as well pack it in right now!) Good news: they look great, but lonely. So today we headed to the farmer's market today to fill in the gaps.

We chose our plants from Radical Roots - a community farm based in the Shenandoah Valley who grows high quality ecologically grown vegetables using permaculture principles. I found out about them from Christine Gyovai's class at Gaia. I am excited: we've got mini-watermelons, canteloup, sweet red pepper, brandywine and cherry tomatoes.

We hereby resolve to be mindful of watering our plants EVERYDAY with our cool new rainbarrel. And this year we aren't taking any chances with the deer. We took bamboo stalks and limbs from our pin oak and built a fence of deer-proof (we hope) netting; we plan on using St. Gabriel's deer repellant; hanging human hair from the posts from boy haircuts; and we're encouraging "camping" - (our family euphemism for permission to urinate outdoors). Stay tuned in later blogs for our imminent success.

The SECOND sweet farmer's market find was the four cool drinking glasses we bought from local industrial designer Jose R Rodriquez Bosch shown above. I got a chance to talk to him briefly about his creative designs, but look forward to a more in-depth interview. His current work includes glasses of all sizes made from beer bottles and wine glasses from Horton and Barboursville. As well as ultra cool toys: fanciful wands made of reclaimed wood dyed naturally, funky pull toys, and swords are on the way (my boys' eyes lit up).

Betty hopes to join the famer's market in the non-profit area with the help of volunteers (inquire at betty@betterworldbetty.org).

See you there,
BWB