Peach-like, pineapple-colored, purple, nearing to black, golden, vermilion, cherry-red and hues of green; round, pear-shaped, striped, smooth; small as pearls and as large as grapefruits, tomatoes make our mouths water and our hearts beat faster.
It’s time to plant them.
Plant heirloom tomatoes. These seeds have been saved and passed down for generations. Preserving genetic diversity in [...]
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FARM STAND MARFA APRIL NEWSLETTER
Let’s Start A Farmers’ Market!
As Farm Stand Marfa gets underway for the new season and this newsletter embarks on its fourth year, I want to celebrate the family of growers and craft-makers and community builders who comprise the market. Beyond the producers and the visitors who show up every [...]
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Posted in Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter on Mar 27th, 2010
FARM STAND MARFA IS OPEN!
Farm Stand Marfa has re-opened after its long winter nap. The first Saturday we were open a horizontal snow pelted the few huddled together under the market pavilion. The second Saturday forecast sixty mile an hour winds. We tucked into a still hour and a half window before the wind began [...]
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PART II TIME OF THE MONARCH
Señora Rocío Treviño, founder of Mexico’s Monarch migration-tracking program, Correo Real, is thrilling butterfly trackers with her recent report of October 20 from Saltillo, Coahuila:
Today monarch butterflies adorned the sky and fields across Coahuila like we haven’t seen for years. From Cuatro Cienegas to Saltillo people reported thousands of butterflies. [...]
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FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER OCT 24
MARFA GARDEN DIARIES
Bee Journal Sept 19
The September day was sunny and warm. The West Texas sky wrapped around us. Clouds loped through the blue canopy. I was riding in the honey truck with Wilborn Elliott, the local beekeeper. We were headed to his new bee yard, one he had just [...]
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Farm Stand Marfa Newsletter Oct 10
CHASING MONARCHS
The sun had not risen yet when I staggered sleepily out to Jim’s car in the early morning dark. My friends, both named Jim, were birders and well-equipped with binoculars and reference books to capture any animal or plant we might encounter during our adventure at Balmorhea Lake.
An irrigation [...]
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FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 26
A September Blow and Balls of Bees
This morning a blow is coming from the northeast that makes me feel like I’m in Maine. Every so often here in the desert a sea wind seems to blow fresh and fierce across the struggling grasslands. The sea- like wind holds a prehistoric [...]
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CACTUS LOVE
A few weeks ago I went searching for the pitaya, the strawberry cactus, in the Terlingua Ranch area, southeast of Marfa, with a band of modern age friends and the botanist, Patty Manning from nearby Alpine. The pitaya produces truly the most delicious fruit you can imagine. The apricot- sized fruit when ripe tastes [...]
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FARM STAND MARFA NEWSLETTER JULY 25
THE SKY IS FALLING and THIS WEEK IN THE GARDEN
High on the Marfa Plateau in the Chihuahuan Desert gardeners rarely find themselves working in wet gardens. But this week’s almost daily rains have transformed our vegetable plots and flowerbeds into dripping, humid habitats suited for mushrooms and orchids. So far [...]
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TREE DREAMERS
As a gardener I can’t imagine living in a tree. I like to feel the earth in my hands and under my feet. But when I hear of young activists living in trees to save forests from being cut down, I admire their outrage and the extreme form of their protest. I imagine them [...]
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