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Friendly Farm

providing pesticide free fresh local produce for over 30 years Fresh local produce grown within Iowa City limits.
(16)

You may place an order by phone or email and pick up by appt. We will try to have farm stand on Fridays in pm, also will be at most Saturday Farmer's Markets in Iowa City. Our produce is sold at New Pioneer and featured at Waterfront Hyvee. However we sell to various local markets and restaurants throughout the season depending on what we have available and what is needed.

06/24/2024

First bouquets of the season off to New Pioneer in Iowa City and our krispy kale off to both Iowa City and Coralville. Enjoy this hot June day!
More Than Enough - Marge Piercy

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.

All over the sand road where we walk

multiflora rose climbs trees cascading

white or pink blossoms, simple, intense

the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy

clumps of flower and the blackberries

are blooming in the thickets. Season of

joy for the bee. The green will never

again be so green, so purely and lushly

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads

into the wind. Rich fresh wine

of June, we stagger into you smeared

with pollen, overcome as the turtle

laying her eggs in roadside sand.

06/22/2024

It is officially summer... we can all feel it ...hot and humid. But we got the deliveries out yesterday of boxes and boxes of kale and romaine to New Pioneer in Coralville and Iowa City. Rain was coming down in torrents when we left Coralville and dry as a bone when we delivered in Iowa City. Gotta love summer rain storms! We will have flower and herb bouquets ready for delivery next week. Enjoy your weekend!

The Sun - Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

☀️☀️☀️☔️☔️☔️

06/19/2024

therapy from the garden :: glenn morazzini

Panic attacks your pain-porous skin?
Imagine the layers of onion, Sufi-circling
and circling until there is no tear-making body.
If the issue is anorexia, taking starvation’s
dark spirit-flight, or anhedonia, running from
the skin’s having fun, consider the mushroom’s
fleshy er****on, and the pumpkins, earth goddesses
and rotund Buddhas sprawled by compost’s funky aerosol.
For social phobia, desensitize among the rows
of corn’s parade, ticker tape leaves and Rasta tassels
that wind-strut and bring on the crows’ hop and rap.
Too much affect: meditate on potatoes, taciturn
as overturned stones. Too little: visualize the hanging
tomatoes’ insides, the soft hearts, sentimental ornaments.
From the lettuce there is common sense for narcissism:
acceptance as side dish, garnish for a meaty sandwich.
If that leaf isn’t the dose, there’s always the soil
people shovel and level, rake and make wishful with seed,
feed leftovers from the compost’s vegan sewer,
the soil that wants for nothing and yields and yields.

06/17/2024

Everywhere in the world, both historically and in contemporary cuisines, the use of flowers in food has been special and exceptional and the flowers themselves have always been included with intent and care, never accidentally or without purpose. Flowers are used in food by someone who cares about you, and who cares about the beauty of what you are about to eat.
Constance Kirker, Edible Flowers: A Global History

06/15/2024

Life has a way of getting in the way of .... well you know... we all are busy... but we didn't forget we did deliver to New Pioneer in Iowa City and Coralville our robust romaine and our all hail kale! Just a reminder to get yours. Life is busy but try to greet the day!

Naomi Shihab Nye: "Fresh"

To move
cleanly.
Needing to be
nowhere else.
Wanting nothing
from any store.
To lift something
you already had
and set it down in
a new place.
Awakened eye
seeing freshly.
What does that do to
the old blood moving through
its channels?

06/08/2024

Just in case you are out and about today we wanted to let you know fresh lettuces along with kale bunches, were delivered yesterday afternoon to New Pioneer in Iowa City and Coralville. Enjoy your weekend and as always we appreciate your business!

Beannacht (Blessing)

On the day when

the weight deadens

on your shoulders

and you stumble,

may the clay dance

to balance you.

And when your eyes

freeze behind

the grey window

and the ghost of loss

gets in to you,

may a flock of colours,

indigo, red, green,

and azure blue

come to awaken in you

a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

in the currach of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,

may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

wind work these words

of love around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life.

~ John O'Donohue

06/04/2024

When it is hot outside is there nothing better than a cool crispy salad for dinner ... I personally think not. We delivered the salad fixings for your next salad today at New Pioneer in Iowa City and Coralville.

cook :: jane hirshfield

Each night you come home with five continents on your hands:
garlic, olive oil, saffron, anise, coriander, tea,
your fingernails blackened with marjoram and thyme.
Sometimes the zucchini’s flesh seems like a fish-steak,
cut into neat filets, or the salt-rubbed eggplant
yields not bitter water, but dark mystery.
You cut everything into bits.
No core, no kernel, no seed is sacred: you cut
onions for hours and do not cry,
cut them to thin transparencies, the red ones
spreading before you like fallen flowers;
you cut scallions from white to green, you cut
radishes, apples, broccoli, you cut oranges, watercress,
romaine, you cut your fingers, you cut and cut
beyond the heart of things, where
nothing remains, and you cut that too, scoring coup
on the butcherblock, leaving your mark,
when you go
your feet are as pounded as brioche dough.

05/31/2024

Remember that old song that Simon and Garfunkel sang : " Slow down don't move too fast . Got to make the morning last..." This time of year all who grow food feel like we can't move fast enough . So much to do and not enough time to do it. Sometimes our minds get ahead of our bodies and we are feeling stressed and exhausted. But if we can slow down and appreciate what is around us and the visions both physically and spiritually it can help. So you all slow down and appreciate you and yours. Deliveries of lettuce made today to New Pioneer in Coralville and Iowa City.

Danna Faulds: "Walk Slowly"

It only takes a reminder to breathe,

a moment to be still and just like that,

something in me settles, softens,

makes space for imperfection. The harsh

voice of judgment drops to a whisper

and I remember again that life isn’t a relay race;

that we will all cross the finish line;

that waking up to life is what we were born for.

As many times as I forget, catch myself charging forward

without even knowing where I am going,

that many times I can make the choice

to stop, to breathe, to be and walk

slowly into the mystery.

♥️

05/27/2024

Hey just giving a heads up we are delivering HEADS today ! We are delivering heads of romaine and green and red leaf lettuce to New Pioneer in Iowa City and Coralville later today. Enjoy the day and have a salad! We think they taste pretty good! Hope you do too!

Thinnings of the rows,
Chinese cabbage, lettuce, sorrel,
cress; nipped ends of herbs
returning, mint and thyme;
violet leaves poking up in clusters like armies
of teddy bears emerging
ears first from the earth;
the Egyptian onions that multiply
underground; the spears
of garlic shoots. The mixture
huddles, skimpy in the bowl.
The salad explodes in the mouth,
green romancandles.
It is succulent, dainty,
intense. It is crisp
as new money.
It lights up my blood
and urges fur from
the backs of my hands.
I want to roll in leaves
that are still lumps
on twigs. First salad
strong and fierce and plaintive:
love at age five. Spring
makes new the taste of lettuce
fresh as a tear.
from The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing
First Salad of March by Marge Piercy

05/21/2024

Meaning

When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
- And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?
- Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

05/17/2024

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases, it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
~ John Keats, from: 'Endymion'

05/16/2024

[but what is stronger] :: rupi kaur

but what is stronger
than the human heart
which shatters over and over
and lives

💔

05/14/2024

The Action of the Beautiful - May Sarton

I move through my world like a stranger
Where multiple images collide and fall,
Fragments of lakes, eyes.......or a mirror.
How to include, make peace with them all?
Only your face (is this too illusion?)
So poised between silence and speech
Suggests that at the center of confusion
An inward music is just within reach.
Can so much be spoken by an eyelid,
or the bent forehead so much light distill?
Here all is secret and yet nothing hid,
That tenderness, those deep reserves of will.
There is no future, past, only pure presence.
The moment of a glance is brimmed so full
It fuses consciousness to a new balance -
This is the action of the beautiful.
Lakes, mirrors, every broken radiance
Shine whole again in your reflective face,
And I, the stranger, centered in your presence,
Come home and walk into the heart of peace.

05/13/2024

The Wild Iris

by Louise Gluck

At the end of my suffering
there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:

from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure sea water.

05/09/2024

The Momentum Of Existence
by Eric Nixon
Sometimes you don’t get a chance
To pause and rest
Even to just take it all in
Sometimes life just goes too fast
And if you halt, even for a moment
You could get rolled over
By the momentum of existence
So, push yourself and keep going
Because once you stop
You may not get started again
And if you need a breather
Do it after the big stuff is done –
I guarantee you the view
Will be a whole lot better

05/03/2024

IN THE TRANCE
by Brenda Hillman

A pretty anarchist said to me
It’s not that great love happens
What happened became your great love

Her echo had an ancient glow & so
proved buoyant for my little craft

I left the world & felt a world

The bee loading its gloves with powder
The albatross wanting one thing from the sea

Nothing can wreck our boat said she

& when the water felt the glacier
The future held a present tense
The present held a future without cease.

04/29/2024

Fact is, silence is the perfect water:
unlike rain it falls from no clouds
to wash our minds, to ease our tired eyes,
to give heart to the thin blades of grass
fighting through the concrete for even air
dirtied by our endless stream of words.

— Philip Levine, from “He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do,” The Mercy.

04/24/2024

Variation On A Theme By Rilke by Denise Levertov
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

04/23/2024

Meaning by Czesław Miłosz

When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.

And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?

Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.

04/20/2024

A daffodil pushing up through the dark earth to the spring, knowing somehow deep in its roots that spring and light and sunshine will come, has more courage and more knowledge of the value of life than any human being I’ve met.

– Madeleine L’Engle

04/20/2024

Haiku - Matsuo Basho

Blossom time
suddenly everything
ablaze with light

🔥

04/18/2024

The Opening Out

The opening out and out,
body yielding body:
the breaking
through which the new
comes, perching
above its shadow
on the piling up
darkened broken old
husks of itself:
bud opening to flower
opening to fruit opening
to the sweet marrow
of the seed -
taken
from what was, from
what could have been.
What is left
is what is.
~ Wendell Berry

04/16/2024

"We are all bound together in a tapestry that like the sea gives the impression of movement towards something but is actually just a maternal body of material...

The flowers buzz when the vibration of the bees stimulates their pistons and their molecules swell and their petals hum like cellos. Rocks are alive, the firstborn of the natural world, somber without will.

There is no freedom from this universe we were born into, because it is our vague source of sensation, our soul, the container of our guilt.

Skins liquefy in heat. And when a bald baby swallow dies on your palm, you feel warmth pouring over your skin, a kind of burning fountain that scalds you like pepper spray.

Do you think this is a sign of the spirit ripping its energy into you to carry to the other side? I do. There are no actual objects over there, no materials but unformed steaming clouds, colors that harmonize musically, no gravity exists but elasticity composed of invisible images."
- F***y Howe
from 'The Child's Child

04/12/2024

any time :: w.s. merwin

How long ago the day is
when at last I look at it
with the time it has taken
to be there still in it
now in the transparent light
with the flight in the voices
the beginning in the leaves
everything I remember
and before it before me
present at the speed of light
in the distance that I am
who keep reaching out to it
seeing all the time faster
where it has never stirred from
before there is anything
the darkness thinking the light

04/09/2024

Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
Hans Christian Anderson

04/08/2024

[S]he had always the power of suggesting things much lovelier than herself, as the perfume of a single flower may call up the whole sweetness of spring.

Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

04/06/2024

In Perpetual Spring

Gardens are also good places
to sulk. You pass beds of
spiky voodoo lilies
and trip over the roots
of a sweet gum tree,
in search of medieval
plants whose leaves,
when they drop off
turn into birds
if they fall on land,
and colored carp if they
plop into water.

Suddenly the archetypal
human desire for peace
with every other species
wells up in you. The lion
and the lamb cuddling up.
The snake and the snail, kissing.
Even the prick of the thistle,
queen of the weeds, revives
your secret belief
in perpetual spring,
your faith that for every hurt
there is a leaf to cure it.

~ Amy Gerstler, b. 1956, American poet

04/04/2024

The World Once Green Again

That tree from its dense wooden trunk
surprises into leaf
as my tight-fibered heart leafs out
in unexpected speech.

I know that trunk, so thick, so slow,
its heartwood core so like my own.
Yet here I celebrate that we
can take leave of our density
to dance the wind and sing the sun.

Our words, like leaves, in season spring
and then in season fall,
but at their rise they prove a power
that gentle conquers all.

As shriveled leaves return to earth
to nourish roots of leaves unstrung,
so dry words fall back to the heart
to decompose into their parts
and feed the roots of worlds unsung.

And when speech fails, the dark trunk stands
'til most surprising spring
wells up the voice that ever speaks
the world once green again.

Parker Palmer

04/01/2024

What in your life is calling you,
when all the noise is silenced,
the meetings adjourned,
the lists laid aside,
and the wild iris blooms by itself
in the dark forest,
what still pulls on your soul?
-Rumi

Address

2040 Waterfront Drive
Iowa City, IA
52240

Telephone

+13196215462

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