New faces alert!! We recently took in 25 retired breeding chickens, and 15 of them are hens in need of names! 

Will you help us name them? For a donation of $75, you can name one of our beautiful new hen friends, and you can even let us know if there is a specific breed of hen you would like to name! Your donation will help us get these girls set up for long and healthy lives with the rest of our main flock!  

The best time to garden

Happy October! As the leaves turn vibrant shades and the air becomes crisp, it's the perfect time to enjoy the beauty of fall in our gardens. Here’s what you can focus on this month to keep your garden thriving and get prepared for winter.

Pumpkins, gourds, and apples are everywhere we look in October. Sunflowers, coneflowers, roses, and chrysanthemums are in their glory. It's time to cozy up and start to really prepare for the colder months. But there is still so much more gardening to enjoy before that happens!

Is there such a thing as a sustainable Halloween?

Halloween can be surprisingly wasteful due to the sheer volume of single-use items and disposable products associated with the holiday. Many costumes are made from synthetic materials that contribute to landfill waste, while plastic decorations and disposable tableware add to the environmental burden. The candy industry often relies on excessive packaging, generating significant plastic waste, and many carved pumpkins end up in the trash instead of being composted. Additionally, the energy consumption from elaborate light displays can contribute to a larger carbon footprint. All of these factors combined make Halloween one of the more wasteful holidays if sustainable practices aren’t considered.

What is Underconsumption?

As summer waves goodbye and autumn begins to make its presence known, September is a pivotal month for gardeners. It’s a time to transition, reflect, and prepare your garden for the cooler months ahead. Here’s your guide to making the most out of your garden this September!

This is the best part of summer! Unlimited tomato sandwiches, fresh salads every night, and we're all at our absolute healthiest! Lots of veggies slow way down in the heat of July and August, but those are exactly the ones you should start growing now!

Food waste not only squanders resources but also contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. By taking steps to reduce food waste, you can make a substantial impact on both the environment and your budget.

Meet Khalil, Zulu, and Vesta!

So. Much. Zucchini.

It's that time of year. Gardeners everywhere are sneaking zucchini into every meal, baked good, and probably onto neighbors' porches as they sleep! Ever wonder if there is a better way to handle all of July's riches? Read on!

This is our favorite time of year! Fresh flowers in our houses, homegrown salads every night, all the greens, veggies, berries we can eat. But what if you didn't grow your own garden?? Well there are lots of ways you can still enjoy nutritious, local produce and at the same time reduce your carbon footprint! 

The mad dash to get things planted has ended. Can you sit back and rest on your laurels now? Well guess what! You can do anything you want! You can let your garden just do its thing until harvest time and hope for the best. 

But do you want to get more out of your garden? There are a few things you can do to make sure that you have a great harvest!

Brekland is an emerging innovator in the agricultural tech landscape, developing a pioneering technology to shield crops from the devastating effects of spring frost. This technology represents a crucial intervention in the fight to improve agriculture’s resilience to extreme weather and decrease economic loss. The challenge of spring frost has long plagued farmers, causing up to 95% loss in perennial crops (e.g., grapes, fruit and nut trees, coffee). 

As summer approaches, it's the perfect time to bask in the sun, enjoy the outdoors, and embrace all that nature has to offer. However, it's also essential to remember our responsibility to protect the environment and promote sustainability in everything we do. With that in mind, here are some tips for having a sustainable summer:

"Fast fashion" is a term applied to inexpensive clothing that is generally of poor quality, manufactured quickly, and with the intention of being disposed of and replaced when the next trend surfaces. Fast fashion thrives on a business model built around speed and disposability. It churns out new styles at breakneck speed, encouraging consumers to constantly update their wardrobes with the latest trends. This relentless cycle of production and consumption comes at a significant cost to the environment.

Why do we choose to grow heirlooms?: flavor, nutrition, biodiversity, history.
The USDA changed growing zones - have you checked your new zone?
Garden starting - what to look for when buying starts for your garden.
What we are planting in May in zone 6 (our new zone!).

Welcome S’mores the llama!

S'mores is an almost-14-yr-old llama who had been living on a local farm, but was suffering from an excruciating infection in her jaw that would have turned fatal...if our supporters hadn't come through for her. 

2024's Earth Day Focus is Plastic Pollution

So what's the big deal about plastic?

As plastics break down into microplastics, they release toxic chemicals into our food and water sources and circulate through the air we breathe. Plastic production now has grown to more than 380 million tons per year. More plastic has been produced in the last ten years than in the entire 20th century, and the industry plans to grow explosively for the indefinite future. Click here to learn more about plastics and Earth Day!

Where to start?

So many people want to grow their own food and just don't know where to start. There are so many sources of information now, so many seeds, so many gardening supplies...it can indeed be quite overwhelming. So where do you start?

The factory farming of animals is one of the greatest threats to our planet. Animal agriculture generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all transportation combined and is a major driver of deforestation and waterway pollution. Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories. Our current food system is unsustainable and needs a rapid, radical change.

The air is just starting to warm up, birds are returning, and we are all wanting to throw open our windows and get to our spring cleaning! Is it the nip in the air that is stopping us, or is it that we wondering whether our cleaning products are actually cleaning or polluting?

Earth Day is a month from today, and 2024's focus is on plastic pollution. We are learning more and more every day about how microplastics are making their way into everything, and it's so scary! But we can do something about it!