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

11/01/2022

Weather is a real joker, so we’re having our first farm stand of the winter season in 70 degree weather.
🍂🌞💛

10/11/2022

The last of late summer’s produce in the cozy grey light of October is the part of the romance when you find out her wife is terminally ill. Tragic, yes. But the sort of chest swelling tragedy that only comes when the thing you’re mourning is existentially significant.

I’ll continue to be each Tuesday from about noon to about 2:00. I’ll have fall produce with me until I don’t and spring produce as soon as I can. (If you subscribed to a winter CSA, I’ll have produce for you all winter). Compost collection and good conversations are available to be had all winter long.

09/21/2022

Working on making dried marigold chains with for Smash the Cistem Presents: Spooky Ooky Ooky on October 22nd. If y’all are as psyched as we are for trans-centered spooky season art, has the info you need. 🍂🌼🌾

#815 ***rswhofarm

07/01/2022

Farm friends! I’m so excited to share with you that Aida is full time farming with me now! Truly the best celebration of Pride Month that I can think of!
🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈
We were talking about q***r audacity earlier today while we put up trellises, and that’s the energy we’ll be bringing the the farm this year: audacity to double down on our commitment to this land, audacity to prioritize joy and purpose in how we fill up our hours on this planet, audacity to nurture into existence the future we and our community deserve. Now, more than ever as we take this leap of faith, thank you for being audacious with us. 💚

***rfarmers

06/10/2022

Lost chicken alert! My friend and I found this baby roaming the streets in Rockford near the Alpine/State intersection (Goodwill area). Anyone have a lead on someone in that neighborhood with chickens? #815

06/07/2022

One of the coolest new things I’m doing this year is spending Tuesday afternoons at so that y’all can pick up CSA shares, swap compost bins, or snag a new to you veggie for dinner on the west side. And, honestly, so that I can sip a fancy drink in the sunshine ☀️ The Prairie Fog is the drink equivalent of running through a meadow and I’m here for it. Pairs perfectly with early season vegetable garden flowers!

#815 ***ans

06/01/2022

We just harvested these winecap mushrooms last weekend bringing us up to 4 types of cultivated mushrooms that we harvest here.

Aida inculcated a bed of wood chips with winecap spawn last summer alongside strawberries. We had held the spawn for too long and we were planting into mulch from mixed, unknown tree species. Suboptimal conditions to start with, and then we promptly got busy and neglected to water them or really remember them at all until the fall. We felt sure they had perished. But Saturday morning, while transplanting a volunteer flower into that same bed, Aida found a fruiting body- and then another, and then a whole bunch more. Many were too mature for eating, so we scattered them around in hopes of helping their spores find a home.

I’m often reminded that nature provides. She provides when my attempts at contributing are inadequate. She provides when I break my vows to her. I’m so grateful that what she provided this time was not just food and the materials to help her prepare more, but also an invitation to try again. To refocus, recommit, reprioritize.

My spiritual community sings a hymn based on a Rumi poem which includes the line “though I’ve broken my vows a thousand times, come yet again come”. Usually we, or at least I, think about it as a song about human relationships, but it was on my mind on Saturday. I wondered about what vows I make to the land I steward and how I can do a better job of upholding them. And I also thought about how this is a good reminder that when I mess up, I’ll be invited back to try again. So now whenever my winecap friends pop up, i think I’ll be reminded of mercy and the opportunity for renewal.

***rfarmer

05/26/2022

Lettuce, green onions, and arugula flowers >swipe> and the cutest baby chard (among other things) ready to make their way into your super flexible CSA shares next week! (!!)

Part of our CSA’s super flexibility is that you can sign up any time- link to our shop on GrownBy is in our bio.

05/13/2022

We don’t pull out bolting overwintered vegetable plants this time of year, and you don’t have to either! Here’s why you might choose to let them keep growing:

1. They support pollinators during a time of year when you might have relatively few flowers in your garden.
🐝🐝🐝

2. Plants that are flowering are usually still nice to eat, and sometimes even better. For example, I prefer arugula flowers to arugula greens.
🌼🌼🌼

3. Keeping the soil covered with mature plants until you are ready to plant something else/your seedlings grow up a bit helps keep weeds at bay and moderates soil temperature a little bit.
🌱🌱🌱

4. Some plants are really good self reseeders, which can save you lots of effort and a little money. For example, I planted claytonia (the plant with white flowers and bowl shaped leaves) 3 years ago and each late fall and spring I get a new, reliable crop of greens without even trying.
🥬🥬🥬

5. If you’re like me, you’ll find it cheerful!
💛☀️💛

Happy gardening, fellow land stewards! (As usual, you can find the link to subscribe to our super flexible CSA or compost collection in our bio)

05/10/2022

Seeding beans is maybe one of my favorite spring garden tasks. Bean seed is among the most beautiful seeds I know of, and the plants are resilient as heck!
☀️🐇☀️
Find out what the pods that grow from these pretty seeds look like by subscribing to our super flexible CSA at GrownBy.app. Not a bean love? No problem! Our CSA is customizable so you’ll never have to find out what these beans look like if you don’t want to 😁

04/13/2021

The flowers, raspberry canes, and pea seedlings have spoken: it’s time for some new beginnings! We’re on GrownBy.app now selling super flexible CSA shares, compost collection subscriptions and more. You can sign up now to make sure you get a share of those sugar snaps when their ready. And of course keep your eye out for more updates on what the plants have talked me into trying (they run things around here...I only pretend I’m in charge)!

04/13/2021