It’s. Tomato. Season. Woooohoooo! After deer debacles of days of yore, we’re pretty darn excited around here. And the lean and lower system in the Big Tunnel is working so well that the vines are climbing for the ceiling! It made this short farmer snort in puzzled amusement as to how she was going to […]
We used the weekend’s good weather to put onions in. We planted three beds, and each bed has three rows, so about 1,125 feet of onions. About a third of the onion plants started in our basement. The rest came from Dixondale Farms in Texas. This year’s planting is a mix of red and yellow […]
This soup is so tasty, I could eat it every week … as a matter of fact, I have been eating it every week lately. It’s a meal that just makes you feel really good. The northern beans are filling, and the citrus makes it bright and refreshing. Our weather in NW Pa.’s been about […]
On a sunny, warm September evening, Silas and I rode up to the farm to pick beans. He had on his trademark look – a straw hat on a thin rope, with crimson trim and a red plastic sheriff’s badge in the center. It’s a part of his favorite outfit – his “cowboy shirt,” a […]
We’re a small, zero-spray produce farm, in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. During the growing season, look for us at the Meadville Market House farmers market on Saturday mornings. You can also find our produce at Core Goods in Oil City. At Plot Twist Farm, we grow beautiful, delicious produce without herbicides, pesticides, or chemical or synthetic […]
We have four lists hanging on our fridge. They’re lists of what we’re planning to put in the last CSA shares of the season. We’ve made these lists for eight years. In that time, we’ve packed weekly produce shares, June through October, for more than 300 households total. That’s close to 6,000 shares. After eight […]
We’re a small, zero-spray produce farm, in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. We offer an 18-week Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. During the growing season, look for us at the Meadville Market House farmers market on Saturday mornings. At Plot Twist Farm, we grow beautiful, delicious produce without herbicides, pesticides, or chemical or synthetic fertilizers. We focus […]
Last year, the farm was aesthetically pleasing for most of the season. The rows were (mostly) neat and tidy, and we were proud to show it off. This year, it’s quite aesthetically displeasing. Yet, despite the weeds, it’s been a good year so far, so we’re just not going to worry about what it looks […]
While we sat drinking tea and coffee after breakfast, Jason shared a memory that came up on his phone for today from 2019. It was the day we put up the plastic on the Big Tunnel. As Silas and I scrolled through the photos, we chimed, “There’s Angelica! There’s Garrett! There’s grandpa!” On that March […]
I was about to call it a night when Jason turned to me on the couch and said, “Want to see the baby lettuces?” Tired as I was, he looked and sounded too sweet to refuse. He has them in the basement under grow lights. Poking out of the potting soil, reaching for the light, […]
This is a year unlike any other for us, as you know. For those of you who are new, Jason no longer works off the farm. That was not the case for our previous seven seasons. And Season 8 is a milestone year for another reason. After entering this year’s CSA memberships into a spreadsheet, […]
My mother’s mother was entirely Polish; her name was Esther. Esther’s father sailed from Poland to America, where he met his future wife, who was also Polish. (My mother’s father was Lithuanian.) My grandmother could speak and read Polish. When she gave us the Polish word for something, she lowered her voice, like the sounds […]
I started drinking coffee around age 9. In my parents’ defense, they brew coffee so weak you can see through it. But ever since, I have loved – no, worshipped – coffee. My first solo outing as a kid was actually to a coffee shop. We were visiting my grandparents in Ohio, and there was […]
From my pillow, the woods behind the house is visible. In winter, my gaze threads the spaces between branches, able to dart a short distance until the lattice of limbs becomes a gray wall. But when I woke on Monday, the snow had stacked thick on the branches, halting my view at the first row […]
