Attn: Lovely ladies of Lexington, and beyond

I’m just going to throw another odd bone out there and see what bites. I’ve got an idea, first aimed at my fellow massage school mates, but actually I’d love to share it with others. I notice that while I am FAR from mature-perfected-confident in any massage modalities, I do have strong body mechanics and I fully attribute them to my long-gone belly dancing days.

I never was or will be some flowing, undulating dance goddess, by a long shot, but six years of dancing did teach me a lot. It took me a very long time to find my core/stance/base/what-have-you in bellydance, but once I did I was entirely changed; physically and mentally I became far more solid, as well as movable (like bone and muscle!) Once I had that tool I was able to progress as a dancer without pain. I hear too often that massage therapists (though it can be any profession really) quit after just a few years due to overwork and/or bodily injury. I imagine much of this is not overworking our bodies but misusing our bodies. Of course they are teaching us to use our bodies correctly in school, which is wonderful, but I have an idea to start a bit of a group anyhow. I am not a teacher or master at bellydance, (or nutrition or farming for that matter!) but just someone with some experience I’d love to share to anyone who’s interested. I have no ego or issues about what LHAA is teaching us, just throwing out there that if anyone wants to spend some more time working on their core, and have fun learning some dance moves and stretches, maybe we should get together! Art, dance, massage, cooking, they are all so similar-we can be given the toolbox, but what we will actually create with them is by far the most challenging, and most rewarding point in the journey of our various practices. I don’t intend to teach anyone to bellydance, but I can teach what I have learned from my years dancing about how to hold the body correctly, and move. Just as Anne keeps telling us-massage is a practice, not a perfection, and while I can find my core I need practice staying in it while focusing on someone else’s body.

This is not some kind of selfless act or anything, don’t get me wrong. As winter approaches and I no longer live on a farm, my days are spent more and more indoors and in cars and not moving my body. It’s so silly how much time we spend finding ways to “justify” our greatest passions because we don’t have time and obviously can live without them. The excuses get me through the days, and life is truly wonderful right now, but priorities are in constant flux, and movement is high on the list again. It may be nuts to try to add this to my week, but heck, I loved to dance once, surely the time I make for it will in fact increase the beauty of my days, which is a desire far greater than to have more hours. I, not unlike most people, find it’s much easier to get motivated for an exercise class, even if I already know what it entails, than to do it alone at home.

My house would be a great place to start as there are two large un-rented rooms. Some mirrors would help, but we can certainly work without them. Since this is geared towards my classmates I’d say getting sweaty before a Fundamentals class would be less than ideal, and we have a test to cram for for nearly every Anatomy class, so maybe before any “other” classes, like Ethics? I’m generally off work at 3 weekdays, so a 4-5 sort of thing may work, or even 4:30-5:30. Weekends are a possibility too, though I’m guessing anyone from out of town isn’t going to make an extra trip. I also have the totally geeky ulterior motive of using this as a study opportunity! Maybe it’s a long shot, but I’m sure we can talk in muscles, bones and movements when describing stretches and dance moves.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m writing this to women only, not to be exclusive, but to respect a rare space for us. I’ve taught and attended classes both ways and it’s truly remarkable how differently women behave and feel with merely one man in the room versus none. While we all enjoy the bountiful holiday meals and family time, mull over this and maybe we can kick off the new year with some dance!

belated updating

I know, I know, it’s been forever again since I’ve written. But I am keeping busy. Sadly the UK CSA season is over and I spend most days indoors, fast becoming a pansy in the cold. It’s one of the most difficult adjustments, though there are many, this whole being indoors all the time thing. It feels so unnatural, so small. My eyes haven’t had to see beyond the distance of a few blocks in far too long. I miss the space on a farm, and being able to see such great distances, across the landscape during the day, into the sky at night. But, complaints aside, “home” is the often intangible, but very real place I have built with Josh, and the infrastructure grows more solid by the day. Ever tried to put a nail into an old barn door? Very difficult, that’s the strength I’m talking about. Forgive the ogling, I’m just so freaking happy with him.

Though we have left the country, we have not left our homesteading education and continue to practice every day; for the health of our bodies and the savings in our pocket books. We’ve begun getting real milk again and are turning a gallon a week into butter, yogurt, cheese, and maybe a cup or two of cocoa. I’m trying to move away from refined sugars and gluten, but that’s a story for later. Our greatest success lately has been an incredible batch of super spicy kimchi and a very beety batch of sauerkraut from produce from the farm. I absolutely love making this stuff, and raving about its healing properties, but I’m preaching to myself as much as anyone because I have such a difficult time eating it. The kimchi is too spicy for me to eat, just a sniff makes me cough, and though kraut makes me feel amazing, it’s still such a foreign taste! My days of living solely off of mac n cheese, cheerios and bread are long gone, but that comfort with blandness still defines so many of my food preferences (I have found home style mac n cheese to be a great canvas for the sauerkraut, by the way) I’m just a ways behind Josh, who will eat any fermented product alone by the forkful. He started another three crocks of much milder kraut the other day, just for me, so I’ll have to get into that soon.

The majority of my time is not spent in our kitchen, but at school and work. For the few that don’t know, I’m studying to be a Licensed Massage Therapist at LHAA. And I’m very much enjoying it! I’ll have to write more on it another time, but I will say it’s amazing how something I had no plans for turned out to work so well for me. As for work, well yes I do have a town job, no need to run on about how it’s going; once you’ve worked for yourself anything less is pretty disappointing. While chatting with my mom awhile back about said job and its annoyances I told her it was like she raised us kids to be continuously discontent, and she said, “Well, yea!” And, realizing it was silly to complain about having the ability to understand you’re worth something, I had to thank her. She expressed similar feelings about her job before starting her own business, and has since turned into a serial entrepreneur, as well as “totally unemployable” Ha, so great, I’ve got this wellspring of pride and desire to do great things, just not the cash flow to get them started. Well, hopefully it’s only a year until I can really get some big bites taken out of my loan debt. Josh and I are tracking our income and expenses religiously, with the guidance of Your Money or Your Life. We stay afloat and keep up, but getting ahead-actually towards something (land!)-will take time and greater income. So I am very much looking forward to being an LMT. Graduation is December 2012, inshallah, so we will be living in Lexington at least until then.

This blog will go back to being written from my perspective, not from our business, but a word on Josh now anyhow. He’s is doing very well too! He has been hired on for research work in the six high tunnels at the same farm as the UK CSA. He’s also in the process of applying for the Teach Kentucky program, which is majorly exciting, and so fitting.

That’s all the blathering I can muster for today, maybe I’ll update again soon, maybe not. I hope you all are well, enjoyed Thanksgiving and look forward to more holidays.

Josh & Bri's Veggies CSA Newsletter; Final Issue

Naturally grown food for those dear

Potting On

Dear friends, family, customers, and supporters,

“Potting on” is the term gardeners use when moving a small transplant to a bigger container. “Transplanting” is moving from a container to the ground, a most exciting event. Potting on can be tedious and seemingly without purpose; why would you want to move to another temporary, limited container, when you could move into the ground? Where you can expand your roots to your heart’s content, meet others, find companions that help you ward off pests, and fulfill your greatest aspirations? To grow up, produce flowers, get pollinated, produce seeds and pass on your snazzy genetics, then die peacefully on the ground, your decaying body providing rich and necessary nutriment for your children and the whole of your community. Yes, plants are amazing.

I may take this metaphor too far, but yes, potting on is what Josh and I are doing. Moving from one temporary situation to another, to fill out that space, and grow ready for the great leap onto real, solid ground. Ground which will be, to people anyway, our own. We have realized this over the past months; while our CSA totally kicks ass, living in a tipi is fun, and working in exchange for rent is alright, this is not the way to get where we really want to be. There are many paths you can take to become a farmer, and at the beginning of this year I believed I could do it by part-time farming, part-time sucky town job. And now I realize that is not the way I want to become a farmer. Another way is to not farm for awhile, but work and save money until you have enough to begin. It’s the advice we have been given by every farmer we actually look up to (Wendell Berry, Susana Lein, Carl Benson, to name a few), but somehow always thought we could do it without that seemingly lame work.

We’ve got the experience, we know that we want to produce food and how, we just need the funds to begin. And there is work out there that we enjoy that isn’t farming and that we could maintain even after we begin the simple life again in the country. Quite randomly, and without knowing I’d just lost (thankfully) my waitressing job, and on my birthday, a good friend of ours who manages the huge UK Certified Organic CSA in Lexington, offered both Josh and I jobs. Spending all day with friends and getting paid to farm? Heck ya! So apparently we can keep our hands in the ground while making money. This job only runs until mid, November, but with other opportunities in Lexington, we’ve decided to move there for at least the next few months.

Unfortunately, though we had planned to begin this venture after completing our CSA season, circumstances have changed and we have departed much sooner. Our last week of distribution was this past one, 15 amazing weeks, and we are so thankful for everyone we have come to know through it. Since our housing situation is in flux, we may not be back in Corinth for Kokofriendzy, but we aren’t far! We may have departed the farm, but we aren’t departing the relationships we’ve made. We hope you all are well into your fall plantings, enjoying freshly dug potatoes, dry beans and just dying for the sunflowers to mature up those seeds, we certainly are! We are ever grateful for our customers and their excitement about their diverse baskets, as well as their patience with our shortcomings (like paste tomatoes) as well as our annoying abundances (like cucumbers). We are heartbroken to leave our beautiful garden, but know the next one will be even better (and hopefully permanent!) Since we’ll be living in a city again, we have no “no reception” excuse and even Josh will be available via cell. On the same note, if you happen to have any wicked cheap housing connections in Lexington let us know (we are in a sweet, but temporary situation now, and are on a ridged search for something longer term)!

This will be the last installment of our CSA newsletter, but you can keep updated via my blog, and email me if you’d like to receive personal updates we might send out as well.

Much love and huge hugs to you all,

Bri & Josh

Josh & Bri's Veggies CSA Newsletter; Volume 1 Issue 7

August 2, 2011
Naturally grown food for those dear

Kokofriendzy!

Hello sweaty fellows. We have been enjoying a significant siesta most days, while the garden either flourishes or founders in this heat. Squash bugs, vine borers, cabbage worms and flea beetles have certainly won many battles, but due to our diversity we still have a garden. Borers are the worst by far; taking entire squash plants, including my beloved Blue Hubbards. After a glorious three-day weekend in Louisville to visit Josh’s parents and many friends, the garden was a bit depressing. The summer squash, despite all our surgical efforts to save it, still wants to consume paths and scratch our legs up, some vermin of the night has been stealing our most perfect tomatoes and leaving them half-eaten in the path.
Just as I was plotting my late-night ambush of said suspected vermin, Josh arrived from the island garden with the sweet scent of our first melon. Beautiful, deep orange flesh, and superbly sweet. As if that weren’t enough to brighten my day, we decided to grabble potatoes. A few minutes later we un-hayed a nice harvest of Chieftan (pink) and Purple Viking new potatoes. Sautéed to a crisp in lard, mm, nothing like it. Not only cheering me in the taste category, the garden has amazed me in her ability to face other pests, weather and other difficulties of summer. The cucumber plants look sad, but still produce enough to fill a four gallon crock of pickles twice per week (if we had the space to make that many), the tomatillos have split branches due to our insufficient trellising, but are still laden with deep purple fruit, and the parsnips act as if it weren’t 40degrees above their most tolerable climate. And I could never walk into a garden with towering sunflowers and not smile. If this is to be the worst month of the season, I’ll still take it.
Before I lose your attention I better explain the headline, Kokofriendzy! The farm we live on, Kokovoko, is owned by Leslie Bebensee and Kokofriendzy is her annual farm party. This year is extra special as it is also her mortgage burning party! This is her 22nd year here, and Josh and my’s 1st, but we still hope to have a few of you over to celebrate as well. This will be neither tame nor uptight, so don’t come if you’re either. Anyone planning on drinking is welcome (or forced) to camp out. BYOB, a dish to share, something to sleep on or in, a water bottle, and of course, RSVP beforehand. This will be a good time for those that haven’t to see the garden, but you are also welcome any other time too. We are hoping for a special CSA’s end harvest get-together in October-ish (?) as well, but I’ll send more info on that as the season winds down.
Now onto tangible goodies, for those near, we do have plenty of pickles available, $5 a pint. Let us know what kind you like as we have both mild and sour batches. Another round of sauerkraut is in the crock now and it’s $7 a pint. We have also been trying our hands at pesto - not a lacto fermented product, but certainly delicious, available for $7 a half pint. The pesto ingredients are as follows: homegrown basil, homegrown garlic, olive oil, parmesan, walnuts. We make it fresh and then freeze it so it will be good thawed in the fridge for a week or two (though no good pesto should be left uneaten for more than a day-it’s too delicious to resist!) We enjoy it tossed on pasta or on bread with fresh tomato, tossed with roasted new potatoes, it’s pretty much like butter, just put it on anything. And don’t forget you get $1 off your next jar of anything if you bring your old jar back. Also on the inventory – beef! Today we had a beautiful Jersey steer slaughtered on the farm, and in two weeks we will have far more meat than we can fit in our freezer. He was grass fed here at Kokovoko, and even the butcher assures us Jersey meat is the most flavorful, even when compared to traditional beef breeds. The price will be determined after he is hung, but if you are interested in a half or any particular cuts, please let us know!

That’s all I’ve got for now, hoping for a cool week!

Josh & Bri's Veggies CSA Newsletter; Volume 1 Issue 6

July 11, 2011

Naturally grown food for those dear

Fermentation edition!

Before I get around to all the exciting live cultures getting jiggy in our crocks, some CSA news. The baskets are growing every week and we hope you’re all enjoying your vegetables. This week will include your first share of Benning’s Green Tint Patty Pan Squash and Romanesco Zucchini. The Mexican Sour Gherkin or Mouse Melon is also catching up to the cucumbers and ready for harvest. They look exactly like a watermelon for the mouse household but taste like a slightly sour cucumber. Broccoli is coming along nicely despite the heat. You may have noticed that the broccoli looks a bit different from what you’re used to! This is intentional. The variety is Piricicaba and is bred to produce many small, tender shoots. The standard supermarket broccoli head is bred for that one ginormous cutting. We have ceased including herbs such as dill and mint; we still have them available but will put them in baskets by request only. We also have horse radish available upon request.

Since I’ve gotten inquiries I’d like to let everyone know we have one available share left for the season. Distribution would begin the week of July 17^th and run 14 weeks; at $25 per week that will make a total of $350. Let us know if you’re interested!

And now, onto fermentation! The pickles that we put in the CSA baskets last week were our first fermented food of the season. Fermented foods are basically any food that is flavored and preserved by some microorganism- in the case of our pickles, its mostly Lacto Bacillus, the same bacteria that makes yogurt out of milk. These bacteria are present everywhere; all you have to do is give them the right conditions, and they will culture the vegetables on their own.

Sandor Ellix Katz, who wrote our book on fermentation and live-cultured foods, says:

“Sauerkraut, kimchi, and pickles will not cure every ailment, but they will contribute to overall well-being. Whether you are the healthiest person in the world, are facing a life-threatening health crisis, are living with a chronic disease, or are just aging like everyone else, live culture (unpasteurized) fermented foods improve digestion, absorption of nutrients (especially minerals), and immune function. Fermenting vegetables preserves them with their nutrients intact, “predigests” those nutrients into more accessible forms, and generates additional nutrients, both vitamins and obscure micronutrients only just beginning to be identified and understood.

Live ferments also contain lactobacilli and other related bacteria, which repopulate and diversify the intestinal microflora. . . Bacteria are not our enemies; however, our culture has declared a foolish all-out war on them, overdeploying antibiotic drugs, chlorinated water and antibacterial cleaning products. The war on bacteria is like the war on terror or the war on drugs: an unwinnable exercise in futility. . . Medical science has documented the healing power of live cultures in hundreds of controlled studies, and today probiotics are among the fastest-growing segments of the nutritional supplement market. But any nutrient you can obtain in a pill or a powder you can get better from a whole food. Fermenting with spontaneously occurring local organisms integrates us into the web of life of our environment and adapts us to the local microbial ecology.”

Rather than continuing to quote the whole book I’ll just highly recommend that you read both Wild Fermentation; The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved; Inside America’s Underground Food Movements because they are both invaluable to any conscious person. To sum it up; fermentation kicks ass! A process which transforms raw foods not only into something more delicious, but more nutritious! I tried my hands at sauerkraut for the first time last year, primarily because we had nearly 400 feet of cabbage ready to rot in the field and in desperate need of a cool shelf, or better yet, a salty crock. Long story short, with a mess of other veggies, we made some big crocks of beautiful lacto fermented sauerkraut, much to the appeal of the house and our market customers (my kraut actually got Josh and I lots of free chocolate and a joy ride on a small plane-no joke). This year we could hardly wait. Cabbages were literally the first seeds my hands put in the ground of Kentucky. That was in February, and two weeks ago I was finally able to get my hands tamping again. This first gorgeous batch is out and delectable. We have a limited supply – ten pints – since cabbage worms took their own CSA share. We’ll have a mid-summer kraut as well, but the real treat will be winter kraut and kimchi. After a few frosts we’ll be harvesting much happier cabbage, carrots, radishes and the like for slower, sweeter ferments.

And then we tried pickles. I, unfortunately, hate pickles. Dill makes me want to run, and pickles just make me want to run faster. However, I do love to make pickles, and Josh loves them enough for the both of us. Our first vat of these lovelies came out last week and were eaten up in no time. We held out enough to give all our CSA customers a jar to sample, and thus far the response has been wonderful. Josh filled a crock today with just three day’s worth of cucumbers so I can assure you there will be plenty available to purchase. Pickles are $5 a pint, sauerkraut, due to limited supply, is $7 a pint. $1 off your next pint of either if you bring your jar back!

There is no vinegar, sugar, pasteurization or adulterants in these products! Just organically grown produce, time and wild lacto bacilli came together to create these delicious and nutritious ferments. Sugar free, gluten free, worry free.

The ingredients are as follows:

Sour Pickles

Home grown ingredients: cucumbers, dill, garlic, wild grape leaves

Bought ingredients: kosher salt, black peppercorns

Sauerkraut

Home grown ingredients: cabbage, carrots, garlic, onions, radish pods, beets

Bought ingredients: caraway seed, celery seed, kosher salt, dried red pepper

Bri & Josh

Josh & Bri's Veggies CSA Newsletter; Volume 1 Issue 5

June 26, 2011

Naturally grown food for those dear

Happy belated Summer Solstice everyone!

We celebrated the solstice by bringing my dear grandparents down and up windy, narrow roads and into the far hills of Berea to one of the most important farms, as far as I’m concerned, in the country. Susana Lein and her home atop a beautiful mountain, Salamander Springs Farm, is where you can see much of what Josh and I aspire to. She had a wonderful summer solstice party, a gathering of hippies from my grandparents view, a gathering of really great people whose primary concern is for the health of the land. It was grand fun to show my grandparents around to what our weedy mess of mulch and vegetables can become after ten years.

After delicious food, grand music and dear company we turned the grandparents home and headed to Lexington for continued socializing (quite the rarity for us). Some fellow farmers and CFA (Community Farm Alliance) have organized an “Ag Legacy Group” of sorts and had a little concert benefit. I love my life out in the country more than a calf loves milk, but it’s easy to neglect your social life. Through this group we have met awesome fellow farmers, our age, who are doing it! Living this “back t the land” dream by actually trying it out. It’s always a breath of fresh air to be around them, and gives us new ideas to try out when we return home.

After some relaxing, however, we spent much of the longest day of the year thinking about the shortest. Why were we bothering ourselves with the dark and gloomy prospect of winter? Well because you have to plan your meals months in advance if you want to grow them yourself! In January I dreamed of pesto and so drew basil in the garden plan; I now enjoy it at least twice per week. Now we dream of good eats through fall, winter, and the coming spring and so plan and plant accordingly. Our fall seed order with Fedco arrived yesterday, today half of it was put in plug trays. Mmm endive. And hmm, scorzonera?

While the garden is growing wonderfully, and our many trials and experiments are proving fruitful, what is even more exciting is how exponentially better we can do it next year. Being the plan and diagram master, I am stoked to be able to plan and diagram for this land after having gotten to know it for a season. We will be able to winter over many vegetables, giving us an early start next year (meaning, food to you sooner!) and we will know how to place, grow and care for each and every vegetable next year as a result of this year’s garden. Oh experiential learning! There is no greater teacher.

But back to the present, where we all are no matter how often we try to live in the future. The garden is glistening. A sea of green my camera cannot do justice. High currents of sunflower, wide waves of zucchini, a consistent undercurrent of lettuce, splashes of color from the many many blossoms of various upcoming vegetables. Cucumbers have quickly overcome their trellis and we’ve been picking and enjoying the new fruit, you should expect them in your basket week after next. Zuchinni and tomatoes are not too far behind, potatoes have flowered, beans are podding, cabbage is heading, yada yada. Lettuce continues to amaze us and we think we’ll be able to keep arugula and spinach going longer next year in the same way. The only pest issues as of yet have been cabbage worms, pod borers on my beloved chickpeas and some slimy nasty buggers on the tomatillos. But all have been manageable and far preferable to the alternative. As my grandmother says, it’s delightful to find a squirming worm as you pull back the husk from a fresh ear of corn because you know it must not have been poisoned. Though Josh’s broccoli and cabbage worm sauté was a tad unnerving the other day, I’m still happy it’s organic (please note; it was only one worm and we tend to was your vegetables far more thoroughly than our own!)

Boy if I don’t wrap this up soon Josh is likely to dehydrate himself weeding so I best get back out and join him. I hope your gardens, meals, health and happiness are all whole and well. Enjoy our continued beautifully mild weather!

Bri & Josh

Josh & Bri's Veggies CSA Newsletter; Volume 1 Issue 4

June 9, 2011

Naturally grown food for those dear

Hello again everyone!

Goodness, all that rain and now it feels like August. The days of mild or predictable seasons are well over. Thankfully the thick layer of mulch all over the garden keeps the plants cool, moist and well drained, ie., all around adaptable to whatever weather hits them. Well maybe not the most severe, but you get my point.

In this heat tomato, tomatillo and cucumber blossoms are forming, chickpeas are blooming and podding, beans, squash and potatoes are just shooting up to the sky and spinach has bid us farewell until fall. Due to a lack of security a pony got his happy belly in one of our gardens and ate every last sweet corn stalk : ( Heartbreaking, yes, but thankful he did not make it to the far more nutritionally valuable sweet potatoes, cowpeas and winter squash also flourishing in that garden. We do have a small stand of baby corn (which doubles as popcorn if left to dry) in another garden, so you may get to eat some grass this season after all! Speaking of a lack of sweets, I made a huge mistake in my excited, though apparently partially blind, plan to have tons of sugar snap peas this season. We got one small packet of some really exciting sounding sugar snaps, way back in the winter, which I promptly planted, but thinking it wasn’t near enough I planted a good five times that in leftover Dwarf Grey Sugar seed. This is a variety we grew last year for shoots, but for some reason I disregarded that thought and assumed they were sugar snaps due to “sugar” being in their title. Silly me, they are a snow pea. While a letdown, they are decidedly delicious steamed, stir-fried, or fresh (depending on your tastes) and are abundant as can be. Our few actual Sugar Snap Pea plants are not the best producers, and in this heat have already gotten too starchy, so we may be without that crop until next season. While spinach has dropped out lettuce is still going strong thanks to our cucumber trellis which shades them from the intense “spring” heat. New in your baskets this week are dill and basil, expect lots more!

By my grandma’s request I’ve begun organizing photos by month, rather than one huge folder, so please enjoy May here: and June here:

That’s all I’ve got for this week, both my ma and my grandparents will be out here from California later this week so I’ve got some tidying up to do (I think they might appreciate a path to the tipi and a cleaner Bri and Josh to hug). As always, enjoy your veggies and let us know what you’re doing with them!

I leave you with a passage I love from Ruth Stout about the “completely reliable mystery involved” in the garden

And if “enchantment” sounds a little farfetched you have not yet opened your eyes and heart to the unassuming miracle of the performance of a tiny seed as insignificant-looking as a fleck of dust. If you put a tomato seed, for instance, into the earth, and barely cover it, it will send a tender green shoot up through the soil. . . Then this little, live thing keeps getting bigger and greener and more and more surprising. It covers itself with green leaves and later with yellow blossoms. Did you ever stop to wonder how it decided always to have them yellow?

Soon the blossoms fall off and, amazingly enough, tiny green balls appear. These keep getting bigger and fatter.

Now, the next step wuld be hard to believe if you hadn’t been taking it for granted all your life. These balls, having reached their full size, look abut them, see that green is the predominant color in their environment and decide to break the monotony. They begin to experiment, try a touch of white, then greenish-yellow, then pink, and finally a bright, gay red.

At last these pretty balls have reached maturity; they are satisfied with what they have achieved and relax. They wait for the kind person who gave that tiny seed an opportunity to fulfill its greatest possibilities to come and eat them. . .

To me it is almost awesome to look at a tiny tomato seed and then at a large, healthy plant, heavy with green, pink and red tomatoes, and think of the completely reliable mystery involved.

Have a wonderful week,

Bri & Josh