If you want your dream to be

Take your time, go slowly

Do few things but do them well

Heartfelt work grows purely

If you want to live life free

Take your time, go slowly

Do few things but do them well

Heartfelt work grows purely

Day by day, stone by stone

Build your secret slowly

Day by day, you’ll grow too You’ll know heaven’s glory

-Donovan- The little Church- from the movie “Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Creating a farm that is permaculturally designed and organic is taking lots of work.  And lots of patience. We (Norm and Ellen) have worked for a year and a half to remove the hay fields and lots and lots of weeds.  We won’t use chemicals to change the landscape. We are patiently using cover crops, tilling with a tractor and digging with a shovel.  We have used buckwheat to smother out the hayfield.  It works really well but takes lots of time.  Now, we are creating the permanent beds and landscape that will require no further tilling. We want to encourage the earthworms, beneficial microbes, and other helpful critters to live on the land with us. We want to create a food forest where wildlife can flourish here at Eaglemount Farms.

Part of the garden is circular.  It is designed to redirect a natural spring that floods the lower fields in the winter and spring.  The ever larger parts of the circle are being used to organize culinary and medicinal herbs and other food plants like chard and kale. Small toads have already moved into the garden.  They hide under the straw mulch we put down. They are much welcomed.  They eat slugs.

Digging raspberry beds

We have begun to create the permanent berry fields. We have lots of berry varieties stored in gallon pots ready to go in the ground.  We have blueberries, huckleberries, raspberries, gooseberries and our much cherished Marshall Strawberries.  We will plant other varieties of strawberries too. We want to be able to harvest them throughout the season.

In the last week we planted 200 raspberry plants.  We double dug the beds to raise them up.  The ground water is only one foot down in the winter.  The soil is dark and fertile and slightly acid, just the way berries like it.

Lucy Rags – the happy dog

We have a new dog.  Her name is Lucy Rags.  She is a Tri-colored Australian Shepard.  Like a border Collie she needs to have something to do all day.  Daily she runs the length of the farm looking for some work to do.

She discovered the toads that moved into the circle garden and now tries to herd them out.  She is not successful.  The toads just burrow into the mulch.  She helps us plant by stealing the newly planted potatoes and makes us chase her to get them back.  She is a good dog and a great companion for our old dog Dixie.  Dixie is almost 17 years old and can barely move.  But somehow they explore the property together looking for work.

The work here is sometimes very strenuous.  We are both getting stronger.  Every morning Ellen stretches out with yoga.  By the end of the season we should both be in great shape.

There is a great beauty and peacefulness to be found here on the farm.  The birds are incredibly beautiful here.  The songs of the Robins, Red-winged blackbirds, geese and swallows and so many more flying ones,  create a symphony of birds.  We are serenaded during our work.  And the music makes the work go peacefully.

Norm is busy building two low hoop houses that we can use to extend the season and ripen tomatoes, peppers and basil.  We will publish pictures later.

The native plant project is coming along.  Ellen foraged for plant cuttings last winter and has a nice assortment of native willows and other shrubs.  The blue elderberries are now transplanted to gallon pots and are ready to be sold. The native lupine seeds have been planted and we should have plants to sell next spring. Many other native plant seeds have been planted too:  Oregon Grape, foxglove, St. Johns Wort, and many more.

Ellen hoeing garlic – Spring 2015

We have a fabulous crop of garlic maturing at breakneck speed. We planted it last fall and now have both hardneck and softneck garlic as well as elephant garlic to sell this summer.

We still have hundreds of bedding plants left to sell. We have broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers and other veggie starts.  We have some fabulous culinary and medicinal herb plants to sell.  We would like to thank all the people who showed up to purchase our plants.  Some people even stayed around to help with the work. The money we made so far has helped us to pay for fertilizer and materials we need to build infrastructure and fences- lots of fences to keep the deer out. We encourage people to raise their own food, herbs and medicine that is why we sell the plants too.  We will bring them to the Chimacum farmers market on June 7^th. 

See you there.