Savory Winter Squash

 Hello Moon Bears,

The regular market season is over for 2013. We're taking a well earned time off. Well, at least after the green house project is completed.

Thank you dear customers. I loved meeting you and becoming friends. When I see you and we smile together I know that it is worth all the work to bring the veggies to market. 

THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

We will have holiday market at Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital

Moon Bear's Savory Squash Spectacular   

Tuesday October 29th from 11AM to 3PM

at Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital, Front Entrance. 

Many other fine farm and art vendors will be there as well as part of the Salmon Creek Farmers Market. Most booths will be inside where it is warm and dry.

We'll have Delicata, Sweet Meat, Jester Acorn, Carnival, Little Dumplings, Hubbard, Lakota and Spaghetti Squash. Also, come see the rare and coveted glass gem corn.

All at prices competitive to the super markets, yet grown with the organic process... And harvested with prayer and love.

Here's a map to the hospital: Legacy Salmon Creek Map

See you at the Market

Rick

Circle of Kindness... Thank You

Quinoa

This week we have an abundance of kale, winter squash, baby beets, a new crop of carrots, trio of sweet beans, cabbage, chard deluxe.

~~~~

A snippet from a poem by Dorianne Laux

For the Sake of Strangers *

 ...All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another- a stranger...
somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
from myself, from the thing that calls to me
as it must have called to them-
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.

Our third season at the market is winding down. It's hard to believe that the wheel of the earth is turning into Autumn. Just look at the beauty of the quinoa and you will know that time brings everything to fruition.

We've had a steep curve of learning and adaptation in the garden this year. New bugs to disentangle from the crops, challenges by voles and rabbits, finding the right balance between letting nature take its course and setting boundaries around our "product". We lost our entire tomato crop from a late blight, caused in part from the tropical like weather this year. At first I was disappointed and seriously grieving the loss. Then I prayed about it. A glimmering came back to me in the form of two questions: What are you really offering the world through the farming? And what are you receiving?

I sat with this seemingly simple questions for weeks. In those weeks I met with so many customers and offered all the produce the garden would provide. The memory of contacts I made with you at the markets brought a smile forward. The grief at the "losses" evaporated. I gave kindness and I received kindness in return. That was/is the circle of production from this farm. And you, my customers and friends make this all worthwhile... even if I have no tomatoes or potatoes to offer you.

Everything moves and changes in the seasons. Look at the beauty in the leaves and heavy heads of grain. The truth is there. I want to live in the circle of kindness and beauty in this world. I thank you, that you have allowed me to be more than just a part of the food chain, a producer of food. You have taken in the bounty of our little corner of the sacred earth. And your smiles and presence has offered so much to us in return.

Thanks,
See you at the market.
Salmon Creek Farmer's Market

Rick

* Quoted from  a wonderful book of poems called Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation, Edited by Roger Housden (c) 2003 Harmony Books, NY

Copyright Richard Sievers, September 2013, All Rights Reserved.

Beautiful Slugs

This Week We Have: Giant sea kale, curly kale, chard, trio beans, concord grapes, lemon and Armenian cucumbers, a few tomatoes, russet potatoes and fresh cut flowers.
Next Week: In addition to the above we'll have winter squash (10 varieties), beets again (yay), possibly rainbow carrots and tomatoes.

See you at Salmon Creek Farmer's Market

~~~

The rain has resurrected the slugs. My primary technique for protecting the garden from the slugs is going around the plants and hand harvesting them. I kill them with a simple set of shears. It's a little gruesome, yes. But it is more merciful and honest than poison or traps. I wrote about it this morning in my journal:

Slugs

I move, stealthy,

into the cool wet garden.

Old shears jawing 

the death song 

in my right hand.

The casual warmth

of coffee in my left.

"This is your last moment on Earth.

Thank you for your beauty."

I tell each one

as they crawl 

toward an unrequited delight.

Then I fall from their sky.

Then I cut their life force free.

Then I become an angel 

of life and death.

I become akin to the One who hovers

over me with Her shining

sharp songs, 

stealthy in Her blade.

I hear my fate in the morning clouds too.

I hear the angel's shining sword singing.

I hear that I am just another part of the garden,

beautiful too, mortal too.

"These are your sacred 

moments on Earth."

I hear the angel whisper.

"Soon you will awaken.

Soon you will open up.

Soon you will be free."

 ~~~

Blessings to you from our garden.
May you realize the beauty and love that is far beyond the ruthless mortality this world.

Rick

Copyright (c)  Rick Sievers, September 2013, All Rights Reserved

Letter to the Kale

This week we have fingerling potatoes (3 varieties), savoy cabbage, trio beans, rainbow chard deluxe, zucchini, broccoli, winter squash and kale, of course.

~~~~~~

Letter to the Kale in the Garden.

Kale,

Two crates stand empty beside your rows. You are verdant and dew draped. So beautiful. These are the last moments for your leaves to sing in sun and sprinkler.

Little bed of wonder, you have given and given. Now you will feed a hundred people. And when you grow back you will feed a hundred more. And more again.

I see you and your offering. How patient and willing you are for my hungry knife. 
Thank you for your service and your light. 
Thank you for singing praises of the earth. 
Thank you for dancing when the soft summer wind moves like a lover through your supple bodies. 
Thank you for providing us the essence of sun and storm.

Do you hear the poems of the knife blade whispering? Do you hear the happy people who will meet you today and take you home into their homes and into their bodies?

Rick

Copyright Rick Sievers, August 2013, All Rights Reserved.

Water and Sun

In our CSA Order as You Please Box the week of July 29:

rainbow chard, fresh new potatoes, lettuce, sweet beets, turnips, small cabbage, a diversity of small yellow zucchini, kale.

 ~~~~~~~

See you Salmon Creek Farmer's Markets through September.

Salmon Creek Legacy Hospital      Tuesdays  11-3

Salmon Creek Main                      Thursdays 3-7

Link to Salmon Creek Farmer's Market

 ~~~~~~~

Morning Poem:

Water

Misty Morning,

and the sprinklers are already tapping out

their waterfall songs.

The sun is coming.

So prepare ye the way with water,

cool, lovely, velvet water,

the mover and life giver,

the wonder pulsing in the heart cave,

deep below your feet

secret rivers,

secret forever.

The sun is coming!

The water rises.

The water is always here.

Rick

Poem and Photo Copyright Rick Sievers, Moon Bear Produce, July 2013.

The Moon Bear is Growing in Bounty and Beauty

This is bounty of our first weekly box.

Hello Moon Bears,

Our 2013 season is bursting open with bounty and beauty. This year we are changing our successful CSA format. So why mess with a good thing. We want to make our food even more user friendly and flexible in format.  Instead of delivering a weekly box filled to the brim whether you need it or not, we are making the weekly box an order as you go affair. 

Our first box for 2013

Here's our new format:

• I'll send a blog out on Saturday morning with a photo and listing of what we have available for the box. See the approx. box size on the left. We will have .5 to 1.2 bushels of fresh, vitalized victuals filled with only the good earth, sun and prayers.
• Delivery or pick up will be only on Mondays, with exception of pick ups at the Tuesday or Thursday Farmer's Markets.
• The price for each box or organic veggies will be as follows:

1. $20 You pick up the box at the Art Farm on Monday.
2. $25 Pick up at Millennium Bulk Materials in Longview or my Tuesday and Thursday farmer's market in July.
3. $30 I deliver to downtown Vancouver, Battle Ground area between 2 and 5PM. Possible delivery to North Portland when I am coming into town.

•  Cash payment or credit card/debit card please.
• Call me or email me on Saturday or Sunday before 6PM
• Usually only 5 slots available. First come first served.  If we are low on items one week, a smaller box with lower price will be available.

A peaceful moon over the garden.

Here's this weeks box:

Rainbow chard
Ruby chard
Lettuce: butterhead and gourmet mix
Small broccoli
Red and Walla Walla onions
Sweet spinach
Siberian and curly kale
Sweet small beets

So call me or email if you want to order. 
Thanks

Phone:
(360) nine zero four-4321
ricksfarm@yahoo.com

I will also post farm happenings and musings at the end of the grocery offerings marked with a change in sections like this:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lots of bounty buzzing around the Moon Bear this year!

 
We have doubled our crop area again this year. Now an acre+ under soulful cultivation. A 72 foot long, cathedral shaped greenhouse is going up one bag of concrete and one steel arch at a time over the already growing garden. Today we called to the compassionate spirits in all the directions and asked Creator to bless the fertile land. A hush and a vibratory light filled the arches of the greenhouse, with its roof still wide open to the sky. A moment of stillness.

We intend to give as much back as we receive from the Earth. In that light, we've analyzed our soils scientifically and spiritually, adding needed trace elements like boron, copper, manganese and calcium. The lab report came back and recommended that we do not add any more compost into the soil. They said that the soil has enough organic matter as it is for now. Can we have enough of a good thing like compost? Maybe so. Hmm.

Farmer's Markets start in July. Stay tuned.

Also, check out our new, in process, website:
http://moonbearproduce.com/

Hope to see you this year. Come and visit.

Love,
Rick

Copyright Rick Sievers and Field of Seven Houses, June 2013, All Rights Reserved.