Owl's Roost Farm

06/04/2024

The other day my dear colleague in healing our ecological relationships- -asked me what I think the proliferation of thistle in the garden we co-tend at .rising is trying to tell us. A wonderful question that I’ve been thinking about ever since. My initial response was that possibly there’s a deep compaction issue- plants with robust taproots often show up to help us with this. But tonight I was pulling some thistle at my home farm and I had a slightly different thought. Maybe thistle shows up like a friend who knows how to ask the probing, thorny questions when you’re making sus choices. Not to tell you that you’ve done something wrong or to fix things for you, just to ask the questions you maybe haven’t been so diligent about asking yourself. Not “Your soil’s compacted again 🙄” or “Here. Let me fix your compacted soil.”, but more like “Are you sure what you’ve been doing hasn’t compacted the soil?”

In both gardens, the thistle is showing up after a period significant (thoughtful !) disturbance. Disturbance isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there can be negative consequences, like compaction, depending which methods are used. I know that the methods I used were unlikely to cause compaction, but the thistle didn’t. All she knew is that she’d been dormant in the seed bank and now she wasn’t. Cause for concern. So she raised the question.

This evening as the sun set in a stormy sky and the first fireflies of the season flickered nearby I tested out how difficult it’d be to hand pull the thistle in an area I’m prepping for sweet potatoes- my tentative response to the thistle’s question. Most slipped easily from the ground, hardly leaving a sign they had been there at all. Even the tougher ones weren’t a struggle. The thistle in this picture has a taproot about 18” long. I pulled it with a single hand that was already holding three other pulled thistle plants. We’re doing a-okay compaction-wise over here, but I’m glad I took the question seriously anyway. I think the thistle feels respected now.

06/02/2024

Thanks .liam.foundation for letting us take your Pride Parade float straw to turn into mushrooms. The q***rest possible reuse for float straw (iykyk) 🍄🔥💛

Happy Pride to all y’all fellow q***r farm and food people out there!

***rfarmers ***rfarmer

02/16/2024

Compost still lifes, February 2024

Big news in the world of convenient composting options for Rockfordians: if you are in the 61107, 61108, or 61114 zip codes, we now offer compost pickup at your place! Head over to GrownBy (link in bio) to see all of the options we offer for convenient composting and be in touch if you’ve got questions!

Thanks to all of the folks who encouraged me to offer this option and to charge a sustainable amount for it. Especially and

#815

10/20/2023

I’m in Ohio caring for my family off-schedule this month, so I’ll see you folks next month! Enjoy this toad giving us all some side eye in the mean time. 💚

08/29/2023

Sometimes I have extra time at and I end up making unnecessarily fussy bouquets of exclusively yarrow and grass. There are, like 30 stems in there, guys.

#815

08/26/2023

I have a fuzzy, fond memory of sitting on a sunny hillside in Ohio snapping beans with my grandma and mom one summer when I was about 7 years old. I felt so big being invited into that work. It didn’t even much matter that I didn’t really care for green beans, especially not after that winter when we ate them, freezer burnt and far too often. It was important work getting those stem ends and strings separated from bite sized pieces, and I was important because I was included. The one way I remember loving to eat green beans was when grandma cooked them to near mush with a ham hock- a recipe I recently learned, many years after the last time I ate it, is identified with Appalachian culture. By the time I was cooking for myself, no one in my family made it anymore and so I never learned to cook it.

When I started farming, I planted a lot of green beans. Big gardens have a lot of beans, I knew from my formative years in the farthest reaches of the Appalachian foothills. That first summer, I grew far too many bush beans and spent far too many hours picking them. What I didn’t sell, I snapped and froze. I didn’t like them any better than I did when I was 7. In the years since I’ve changed up what I grow. If you’ve talked to me in August during the last few years you’ve probably heard me say sweet things about Dragons Tongue or Romano. Neither is the bean of my childhood, though.

This year I’m growing Red Noodle beans, part of a family of legumes originally cultivated in Asia called long beans. I was drawn to this variety for the same reason I assume many white folks are drawn to it: it’s impressive length is a novelty to those of us who grew up eating European varieties of beans. But for folks who grew up practicing an Asian foodway, these beans are no novelty. They’re the beans of their childhoods.

I’m grateful to be meeting this new-to-me garden pal. I’ve been wowed by the beauty of the flowers and by the flavor of the beans and I expect to grow them again next year. And I’m especially grateful for their humbling call to come back into relationship with the beans of my childhood. Next summer I’ll learn how to prepare Appalachian green beans 💚

08/17/2023

We want you to come join us for some community joy and rest tomorrow 💚 Make medicine with us in the form of elderberry harvest and take medicine with us in the form of resting under the oak trees.

Note that Guilford is still under construction so to drive onto the farm you have to come from the west (Alpine). Directions for parking on farm or in the neighborhood are in our saved stories.

#815

08/03/2023

Our hazelnut hedge has a few fruits for the first time 💚 Hazelnuts are native to our region, but I hadn’t seen a hazelnut on the plant before and I’m really taken with the frilly husk. I think it looks like a dumpling, and Aida thinks it looks like a mermaid purse- what d y’all think?

07/23/2023

Q***r farmer problems and solutions:
1. Grow really pretty flowers
2. Be too butch to feel great wearing them in your hair
3. Live vicariously by putting them in your wife’s hair
4. Enjoy that you nailed both farming and marrying a cute witch
5. Go to the Q***r AF show closing at that said cute witch showed in ✨

***rfarmers ***rasfolk ***raf

07/19/2023

This week it’s Friday on the Farm again!

Directions for getting here and parking are in our saved stories. NOTE: our section of Guilford is currently closed to through traffic. You can drive around the barricade to get to our driveway but only from the Alpine side.

06/12/2023

This is a selfie for 10 year old me. The kid who found an issue of some local gardening magazine that was all about strawberries and spent the summer reading and rereading it.

I laid on my stomach with my head hanging over the edge of my bed and the magazine open on the floor and scrutinized Bob from Belleville’s advice about pest management and the editor’s favorite freezer jam recipe. And I daydreamed about having my own strawberry patch one day. I’m not sure why I became so obsessed with that magazine- maybe early signs of my interest in farming, or my neurodivergence, or my latent cottagecore le***an identity. In any case, the memory of how I felt flipping through those pages is on my mind a lot this time of year and maybe especially this year as I take in my first significant harvest from my first strawberry patch of my own.

Our strawberries are doing great, kiddo, and we’re doing pretty great too. ❤️

***rfarmers

06/05/2023

Garden friend 💚👐🏻

05/23/2023

Exciting news: spring has sufficiently sprung and we will start having some veggies available for day-of purchase at our and farm stands each week. And as always, you can sign up for our super flexible CSA to get produce every week. 💚🌱

05/09/2023

Tulips from the ever talented and lovely , green garlic courtesy of my imperfect harvesting last year, nettles abundantly gifted by this land. Big love to all the sources of beauty and nourishment in my life 💚

***rfarming

04/20/2023

Folks, we’ve got a lot going on this weekend and we want you to come join us!

Got questions? Ask away! I’ll do my best to check frequently :)



.zerowaste

04/14/2023

Look at this green garlic! This is a new-to-us crop in the past year that makes use of bulbs that got overlooked during harvest or that we’re harvested but not appropriate for storing and eating. It’s got a strong garlic flavor that can hold up to cooking better than a green onion, and it’s also great raw or minimally cooked. Overall, one of my personal favorite local, seasonal foods for early spring!

As always, if you’re interested in eating more local food through all of our northern Illinois seasons. we’d love to have you join our super flexible vegetable subscription program (like a CSA, but with more flexibility). The summer season starts the first week of June!

03/24/2023

03/10/2023

I’m not much of a spring person- but I’m trying to love it better as part of my practice of being in relationship with the land I steward. And these late winter/early spring snows- so heavy that they pull high branches to the ground and so fluffy that it feels like walking in a cloud- are a joyful and beautiful place to start! I’m grateful to watch the seasons turn here under this oak tree.

Spring lovers- what are your favorite things about the shift from winter into spring?

***rfarmers