NEWS

Michael's Magnificent Mushrooms

The logs Michael inoculated with shitake spawn last autumn have blossomed.  A few weeks ago we soaked the logs for twenty-four hours in our pond, then returned them to their cozy spot in our woods.  

Last week we were the proud harvesters of three and a half pounds of beautiful shitake mushrooms.

We sold out of them within the first two hours of the Charlottesville City Market on Saturday; get there early if you'd like to try this latest offering from Ted's Last Stand!  

Flushed with this success, we inoculated logs with oyster spawn, and more shitake spawn.  

Reminders 

• We now accept credit cards at Charlottesville City Market and Farmers in the Park.
• Ted's Last Stand t-shirts are for sale on our website and at the City Market ($15.00) -- wear your Ted's Last Stand t-shirt to either market and get 15% off of your purchase.

EVENTS

Get your Flower Fix at Meade Park

Farmer's in the Park opened for the season this Wednesday!  There was a wonderful variety of vendors and the weather was perfect!  We'll be there every Wednesday (from 3-7PM) through September, and hope to see you there.  Check our face book page to see what new additions we'll have each week.

NEWS

We'll bring the flowers to you --

Ted's Last Stand Delivers!  From the "Products/Services" tab on our website, choose "Deliveries" to see the current week's offerings.  For first time deliveries, call or email Audrey; repeat deliveries can simply be ordered by using the "Contact Ted's" button on the right side menu.  You can pay using paypal or credit card online, or by cash, check, or credit card upon delivery.  We will always consider special requests, so call us if you need a flower order requiring a specific date, time, or arrangement.

Do we take credit cards?  YES!

Starting this season, Ted's Last Stand accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover cards using Square, a secure mobile card reader.

Ted's Last Stand T-Shirts

Printed right here in Charlottesville by the good people of Blue Ridge Graphics.  We have them in Men's and Women's styles and sizes. Not only a cutting edge fashion statement, wear your Ted's Last Stand T-shirt to the Charlottesville City Market, or Farmer's in the Park, and receive a 15% discount at our stand!

EVENTS

The Charlottesville City Market opens the Saturday before Easter, April 7!  Head over to the top of 1st street to get all the flowers and Easter basket treats you'll need to celebrate Easter.  We also have our handmade Garden Flags in stock to help motivate you as you get your garden started -- and if you are working on that garden, or getting patio plants potted up, don't forget the essential ingredient for growing thriving plants -- Rico and Ferdie's Llamanure!

The rain which sighs and feels so cold has dampened withered roots.

What sort of man at such a time would come to visit the teacher?

As this is not a time for flowers, I find I've come alone."

-  Su Shi, Visiting the Temple of Auspicious Fortune Alone on the Winter Solstice 

It’s time to get those spring flowers started!  In an effort to have more varieties of flowers available this spring, I’m trying several flowers I haven’t grown before.  Yesterday I seeded a tray of Camelot Digitalis.  Digitalis (Foxglove) produces tall (24-30”) flower spikes surrounded by horizontally held bell-shaped flowers with spotted throats. 

Quite striking!

Digitalis has been used in herbal remedies as a cure for “dropsy” (a circulatory ailment) for centuries, and today glycosides derived from digitalis are used in many pharmaceutical heart medicines.  However, ingesting any part or portion of the plant in its natural form is toxic.

Last season I grew Matthiola (Stock) for the first time and loved it.  So this season, I am trying a couple of different varieties.  For those of you who bought spring flowers from me, you might remember the stock for it’s fantastic spicy-sweet scent.  Stock is a cool season, old-fashioned, english cottage garden flower.  I’ve seeded a full tray with six different colors and can’t wait to see how they turn out!

In addition to seedlings, I’ve got some different varieties of bulb flowers planted for bloom this spring.  Early on (March, April) expect to see anemones, followed by early dutch iris, ranunculus (buttercups), and freesia.  I haven’t grown any of these before, so it’s an exciting adventure.  All of these early flowers will be produced in our unheated high-tunnel, or hoop house, to protect them from killing frosts and inclement weather.

Audrey designs bouquets for a local wedding.

This year, we've begun growing flowers for weddings.  Turns out that brides are now looking for more authenticity in their weddings.  They're catering more local foods and keeping their weddings limited to a smaller group of family and friends.  They're also realizing that having fresh-cut, local flowers really adds something more comfortable to the ceremony. 

We've had several this year and we can work with brides and grooms anyway they want.  Some happy couples just order buckets of flowers,Bouquets awaiting a bride. we deliver them on the day of the wedding or the day before, and they design bouquets themselves.  Others ask us to design for them.  That, of course, is a bit more expensive as we add our own artistic touch to the event. 

You can stop by our booth at the City Market on Saturdays and see what kind of designs we're dreaming up - there's always something new.  If you get in touch with us at least six months before your wedding, we can even grow flowers of your specification as we did this year for a bride who requested all white and yellow flowers.  Keep in mind that we do grow outside and can't guarantee you'll get every single type you're hoping for.  But that's part of the fun and surprise of the wedding day, right?

No, it's not a funeral parlor. These bouquets are too happy for that!

Pea Seedlings at Ted's Last Stand

 

Putting in the Seed   by Robert Frost

You come to fetch me from my work tonight

When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see

If I can leave off burying the white

Soft petals fallen from the apple tree

(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)

And go along with you ere you lose sight

Of what you came for and become like me,

Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.

How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

On through the watching for that early birth

When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

 

 

 

Rico & Ferdie’s Llamanure

all natural fertilizer and soil amendment 

• Llamanure can be added directly to your garden without composting and will not burn your plants.
• Llamanure has a high nutrient content, approximately 1.5-0.2-1.1 (N-P-K).
• Llamanure improves soil texture and water retention.
• Llamanure has very little odor, perfect for use in container/patio gardening.
• By using Llamanure you are supporting environmentally sustainable growing methods. 

This product is produced exclusively by Enrico and Ferdinand at Ted's Last Stand Farm and Gardens, Gordonsville, VA.

 Five pounds of Llamanure goes a long way!

How to make Llamanure Tea:

Place one cup of llamanure in a 1 gallon container and let it sit for a day or two.  The liquid should turn a brownish “tea” color, and the llama pellets should disintegrate. Use the “tea” to water your plants.  Keep adding water as you use the “tea” until the the color of the liquid becomes noticeably paler, indicating that the solution is weak. Use the sludge from the bottom of your container in your compost, or mix directly into your garden soil.  One cup of llamanure will make about 8-10 gallons of “tea.”

This is an excellent way to provide all-natural fertilizer for the vegetables, herbs, and flowers in your patio or container garden.

The hoop house is finally complete.  We bought it from our friend Harold Plasterer at Clifton Farm (who also helped us put it up, along with Bill Vinett - thanks guys!).  It's 30 ft x 50 ft and when the sun's out, it's so toasty in there that we can work in short sleeves.  It's not a heated greenhouse.  It's basically to extend our growing season several months, especially in the Spring.  Before, we were only able to have a full selection of flowers starting in June.  This year, we'll have much more available from the very first market on the first weekend of April.

Audrey has started hundreds of flowers and herbs inside under florescent lights and on top of heating pads. Her goal this year is to have a full selection of flowers for the two markets that we do (City Market and Meade Park in Charlottesville) from beginning to end.  This will be our fourth year selling at farmer's markets and you can't believe what a challenge it is to plan out when everything will be blooming so that you have a full selection for the entire season.  Each year, we get a little closer.

We've now built the five raised beds in the hoop house and I'm working on incorporating aged manure into each and then topping with an inch or so of organic compost that we had delivered.  We've planted golden beets and bunching onions in the first row already.  Audrey will put in some more beets, broccoli rabe and snapdragons in the second row this week.  As you can tell, we're adding a selection of specialty vegetables so that we have more to compliment the tulips, daffodils and other early flowers this year.  But once it gets warmer, we'll stick mostly to the flowers.

 Finally, we've received some advance finished copies of our book, The Joy of Hobby Farming.  It's available for preorder now from any bookseller and will be in stores in March.  We've also scheduled several book events that we'll alert you to again later, but in case you want to mark your calendar, we'll be at:

-New Dominion Bookshop, Charlottesville, VA - March 31st

-Politics & Prose Bookstore, Washington, DC - May 5th

-Smithsonian Garden Fest, Washington, DC - May 7th

Tippy was top dog in the pack.  He was our best guard dog.  His deep, sonorous bark seemed like it was coming from a dog twice his size.  But he was the gentlest dog we had, never snapping at a person or even children that loved to pull on his long, soft ears.  Tippy was our first dog.  He survived being hit by a car up on the highway.  Although it fractured his pelvis, he made it a good 200 yards back to our field where he waited for us to find him. 

When Tippy went, we knew Jack wouldn't be far behind.  Jack idolized Tippy and exercised his herding instincts (he was a Blue Healer) ruthlessly on the ever-patient Tippy.  Without his friend to herd, and since he was already at least 12-years-old, Jack seemed to lose interest in living.  Earlier this week, he wouldn't get up in the morning and had trouble standing or walking.  We found he had two tumors on his spleen and elected not to operate.  As those of you who met him knew, Jack was an amazing dog.  The story is so incredible of how he ended up with us, it's only rightly told in a separate post.  You can read the story of Jack here.

Both dogs were put down peacefully and quietly by our amazingly compassionate vet, Dr. Theresa Olivo.  We're fortunate to have her as she's a house-call vet that comes out to take care of all our dogs and cats.  Both Tippy and Jack are buried next to each other in front of the house, where they loved to sit and watch for trouble.  They're survived by their two buddies, Tess and Casey.

Tippy

Jack

What is hobby farming?  Hobby farming is any small farm enterprise that is mostly sustained economically by an off-farm job.  There are countless stories of well-intentioned people moving to the country, buying a flock of sheep, building a large vegetable garden and investing in all kinds of farm equipment, only to soon become completely overwhelmed, both physically and economically.  We advocate, in our book and in our everyday lives, finding a balance that will allow your farm to grow organically without putting you into long-term debt. Yes, you will use your farm to make money.  But you can grow a farm business sustainably by starting small and growing slowl -- or slow farming. 

In our book, we offer advice from finding the right farm to purchasing tractors and other equipment.  We show you in full-color, step-by-step photographs many farm skills like felling a tree, splitting firewood and hooking a farm implement up to a tractor.  We offer advice on raising animals, especially those animals that are low-maintenance, like donkeys, llamas and bees.  "Low-maintenance" is the key to all our hobby farming advice.  It's not realistic to believe you can hold a full-time, off-farm job while caring for a bunch of lactating goats that need to be milked every day.  Finally, using our own experience growing and selling cut flowers and drawing on our other farmer friend's experiences selling a variety of other products from grass-fed beef to tomatoes, we show you how to create a farm business and sell your goods locally and at farmer's markets.

We like to think that we've provided a modern compliment to the philosophy of Helen and Scott Nearing's classic back-to-the-land book, The Good Life, crossed with the best how-to guides on country living.  And one of the things our book has to offer that other farm-living books lack is original, full-color photography so you can see exactly how we've done it and you can dream how you'd like to do it yourself.  The book comes in April and is already available for pre-order on our book page - The Joy of Hobby Farming.