Winter Wishes

Now we're into the down season for gardening. Although, having said that I've already ordered starter plants and seeds for next spring.

Next, I‘ll work on orders for tags and pots and soil. So even though the calendar says winter, I'm thinking spring. I'll start my first batch of seeds in early January. All this spring oriented work helps me survive the cold weather. There‘s something magical about seeing baby seedlings growing inside in the depths of winter.

The eternal promise of spring never fails to inspire. I must say though, that I kind of enjoy the forced slowdown winter brings. l think it‘s Mother Nature's way of telling us to slow down and enjoy a break, There are also cold weather pleasures of brewing herbal tea and baking bread from scratch.

A great winter pleasure is curling up with perhaps, a cup of that herbal tea, and browsing through seed catalogs. If you haven't received any yet, they'll be arriving soon. The beautiful pictures and glowing descriptions always have me longing for spring. I get ideas for new plants to add to our inventory from several places- customer requests, reading reference books and perusing seed catalogs. Nearly every year, I find something to try in a catalog. Either a picture attracts me or the write-up sounds so good or they throw in that foolproof word for me-fragrant-and I'm ready to try it.

We still have some copies of the 2911 herbal calendar for sale.
Beautiful prints, herbal tips and recipes, too.

If you suffer from dry skin in the winter, here's some products to try:
Goat's milk lotion-very moisturizing and helps your shin retain moisture
Solid lotion bars-Fragrant, moisturizing, but not gloopy
Whipped shea butter-super moisturizing for your face

The farm is closed beginning Dec 24 for the holidays. The shop reopens Jan. 6 and will be open Thursday-Saturday 9am-5pm.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Thanks to All!

Thanks to everyone who came out to our recent holiday open house.
We had a great turnout both days and everyone was so nice with their comments. One regular customer came with her two teenagers and they said visiting us was on their list of fun things to do. With so much competition for people's time and attention, we appreciate the fact that everyone made the effort to stop by. Also, congratulations to our open house prize Winners. Megan Sweigart won the gift certificate and Rick Hamm won the soap sampler.

We have live myrtle and rosemary topiaries in the greenhouse and a selection of potted culinary herbs-basil, thyme, parsley, chives, etc. These will be available through December 25 during our regular hours~Tuesday-Saturday §am-5pm. lf you need something green and growing and fragrant to get through the winter, stop by. After Christmas, we shut down the greenhouses and will not have plants available until the greenhouse reopens in April.

New that we've had a hard freeze, the growing season is done for another year. But this year, I had roses, Jupiter's beard, snaps and calendula blooming at the beginning of December. That's even a little later than last year. <<< The poor calendula finally gave up the ghost after our last hard freeze.

I've been happily going through Tina Sam's new book, By the Hearth.
It‘s a compilation of the best from the first five years of her Essential Herbal magazine. I've gone through it several times, picking out articles here and there to read. New I'm focused on the kitchen section. Let me tell you, there are some great recipes in there. I've already marked some to try after the holidays.
It's a great gift idea for the herbies in your life.

It's been so cold these last few mornings that even Lucy doesn't dawdle to our walks. I'm glad she doesn’t want to stop and smell individual blades of grass!

Thoughts on a late fall day

If you have rosemary planted in the garden, you still have plenty of time to enjoy and harvest it. Although not reliably winter hardy here, it will tolerate quite a hit of frost. Mine is almost always productive until Christmas, at least. Since it gets fairly big even in one season, it seems to take an extended period of cold to kill off the roots. This generally happens during a cold snap after the new year. Maybe the Winter will he mild enough so it will survive. If you‘re trying to overwinter rosemary in the house, choose a bright, cool location away from heat sources. If it dries out inside, it usually dies.

I'm enjoying Tina Sams' new book, "By the Hearth," along with her previous book, "Under the Sun," it's a compilation of the best of the first five years of The Essential Herbal, the bimonthly magazine she publishes. Whether your interest in herbs is gardening, cooking fragrance or medicinal, this book has something for you. Similar articles are grouped together, but you can also just open the book to any page and read an interesting article. Lots of recipes too, which l love. Makes a great gift for you or an herb lover you know. We have both books available in the shop

Lucy celebrates her fourth birthday in December. We've had her three years, as we got her from the Humane League when she was a year old. If you‘re considering a pet, please, please consider a dog or cat from a shelter or rescue organization. These are wonderful animals who desperately need a loving home. You don‘t need a purebred dog to get all the breed‘s good traits. Lucy's a black lab mix, but she has the sweet, friendly temperament of a lab. She is the sweetest dog and there are lots more like her waiting for a good home. Think about a black dog or cat. They are the last to be adopted!

Now that the leaves are off the trees, I'm seeing bird's nests up close. The mockingbird's is rather random, very angular and twiggy. The robin's is much more finished, almost woven. Later in the season a robin took over an abandoned mockingbird‘s nest and remodelled it-weaving over the twiggy base. A tiny woven nest in the magnolia must have belonged to a sparrow or wren. And I can see a couple leafy squirrel nests at the top of the tallest trees.

Settling in for Winter

I noticed the other day how the farm is looking all settled in for winter. It starts in September when we take the shade cloth off the greenhouses. After seeing it with its dark covering for months, it looks strange to see the clear plastic and to be able to see inside the greenhouse from outside. The skids which hold all the outside plants in the spring are also put away. The gardens are cleaned up (for the most part) and even the garden signs are put away. Perennial stock plants are buried in rows in the vegetable garden to protect their roots over the winter.

Most of the leaves are off the trees, too. I didn't think the fall leaf show was spectacular this year~perhaps due to the dry summer. But I did admire the scarlet maple with its brilliant foliage- it's hard to beat maples for fall color. When we moved here, there was one tree in the yard-a large white pine. I wanted trees in the back corner so I joined the Arbor Day Foundation. The welcome gift was 10 tree saplings. They arrived in the mail in a plastic bag. John really laughed about these so-called "trees." We heeled them into the garden for a year or two to take hold and then planted them. Not all survived, but about 8 did. The scarlet maple is now about 20-25' tall, beautifully shaped and brilliant in the fall. All in about ten years time-so "ha" back on John for laughing at my trees.

Open house is approaching-Dec. 3 & 4 from 9am to 5pm. We have about half a dozen varieties of potted culinary herbs in the greenhouse, along with live topiaries. And the shop is brimming with all kinds of fragrant gift ideas and natural holiday decorations. We‘ll have specials in the shop, herbal refreshments and prize drawings.

My Italian parsley is just beautiful! All the fall rain produced a bumper crop of lush, dark green foliage. I'm adding parsley to almost every savory dish, and also drying alot.I put it on a cookie sheet, put it in the oven, close the door and just turn on the light. It takes awhile-about 24 hours-but it holds its color well and dries thoroughly. Just remove it before you preheat the oven!

Time Flies. Open House coming up!

I swear the older I get the faster time goes by. Summer seems like yesterday and the spring season seems like a month or two ago. Now all my work centers around holiday preparations. I‘ve been working on filling and stocking the shop. We'll have all our popular favorites plus a few new additions - a new soap scent from the sisters, some new gift items and lots of interesting holiday decorations I've found. Last year I seemed to have trouble finding things that were suitably rustic , handmade or herbal. This year, my timing must have been better and I wound up with a good supply. I usually wait until Thanksgiving week to put up the tree in the shop and bring out the holiday arrangements and decorations. I hate to rush things too much. Christmas decorations before Halloween seems too early to me.

The fall newsletter is out. We send a paper or e-mail copy depending on your preference. If you don't receive our newsletter (we also have a spring edition) just give us your name and address or e-mail address and we’ll be happy to send you one.

We also have a small selection of basic culinary potted herbs in the greenhouse from about mid-November through Christmas, along with live topiaries for holiday decorating or gift-giving. If you want plants for the kitchen windowsill to get you through the winter months, this is the time. We do shut the greenhouses down at the end of December and don’t start them up again till March due to the cost of heating them. We usually get a few people asking for plants during the winter, but after the holidays we'll have no plants until spring.

Our holiday open house will be held Friday and Saturday December 3 & 4 from 9am to 5pm. We'll have plants and topiaries available in the greenhouse and open house specials, herbal refreshments and prize drawings in the shop. We know what a busy time this is and how many special activities occur each weekend, so we greatly appreciate everyone that takes time to cone out and visit with us. I do think we have a great selection of interesting, handmade herbal gifts.

Frost and a Trip Down Memory Lane

We finally had a frost that knocked out most annuals in the garden We had several light frosts previously, but they did little except stick to the grass, and cause some spotting on the basils. This last blast blackened all my basils and killed off most annuals, except some cold tolerant ones like calendula which are still blooming. So we‘re removing those and doing some fall clean-up.

What about perennials? It usually takes a hard freeze to kill off the herbaceous (those that die down in the fall) perennials. My fall perennial clean-up is more selective. I've cut back top growth on tarragon, lemon balm, wormwood and oregano. This older growth was unsightly and there's fresh growth in a rosette at the base if I need any fresh. I'll continue around, doing the same for mints, catmint, feverfew, etc. Some things I just leave alone in the fall-

• Woody-stemmed herbs like thyme, sage, lavender. No cutting allows foliage to provide some protection for the crown of the plant since it doesn't die back to the ground

• Coneflower and other plants that provide seed for birds over the winter

• Cold tolerant plants that look good and continue to produce - snaps are blooming again, parsley and sorrel look great and continue to provide harvest fresh or for drying, chives and burnet which will eventually freeze but often provide green foliage throughout the winter (sometimes even under snow)

My two sisters who live out of town visited recently. We had a good time. They like to go to the Mt. Joy Gift & Thrift shop and we visited the new thrift store in E-town. It too was very nice although their inventory was smaller since they had just opened the week we visited.

The best trip was a visit to Mt. Gretna where we grew up. We walked all the paths we used every day and it amazed me how things had grown up. Places I remember being fairly clear were quite overgrown. Some paths were narrow and looked unused. I guess even in Mt. Gretna people drive everywhere.

Animal Sightings

Had two interesting animal sightings lately. Lucy‘s favorite place to explore is the back corner of our property - the wilderness area. It‘s wet ~ after the heavy rains it‘s actually swampy. It's full of grasses and wildflowers and wild plants. Good cover for animals and it has homes for field mice and other small critters for the larger ones to hunt. We get deer that come through from the woods and cornfields behind us. When we first moved here, there were often pheasants in the fall, although I haven‘t heard them for a few years now.

One day we walked around the corner and I thought what is that big, gray blob? Then I saw the long neck and the head and realized it was a blue heron. I was surprised - although it‘s wet, there's no pond and definitely no fish. It moved from the open area to the back of the high plants, so you really couldn't see it unless you were looking. It stayed for a few hours and we were getting concerned that it might be hurt. But it flew away quite effortlessly, so I guess it was just hanging out and resting. I've never been so close to a heron before - it was HUGE!

Lucy would like to go out in the morning when it's still dark, but I make her wait until it’s at least brightening. One morning when we rounded the corner I saw a red fox trotting through the grassy open area to the back, thick area which leads to the woods. I heard a fox passing through the yard one morning when it was still dark-it sounded like a high-pitched dog bark. It must have been moving fast because I heard one loud bark and then two, getting fainter as it was moving off. It certainly woke up Lucy and I put her out in the yard with the light on, but it was long gone by then. It does explain why we're seeing very few rabbits in the last month or so.

One year a red fox had babies underneath our shed. Boy, were they cute! They'd come out at dusk and play, chasing each other and wrestling - just like a litter of puppies. Maybe this one is the offspring of one of those pups.