Bake at 90 degrees for 6 days

Summer has officially finally started, as Jerry said it would. The robins in the nest behind the Hornet's Nest have fledged and the creek, while still flowing steadily, is no longer the raging torrent it was only a couple of weeks ago. With just the tiniest amount of smoke in the air from the 1000-plus wildfires elsewhere in Northern California, our days are clear and hot with a few clouds and promise of a thunderstorm or two, and our nights have been more mild, with a beautiful river of silver above our heads made visible by the quiet of the waning crescent moon. The corn has been weeded, and it's time to water, fertilize, and let nature do its part. Thanks, Nature, for doing your part!!!

The WWOOFers are still busy. The following movie, taken by Jon, looks like it is speeded up, but it is actually done in real time. I think they respond positively to organic food and ice cream!

Fort Bidwell National Tomato Labs

There are plenty of hard work and exciting, inspired projects going on at the farm these days. Above, Laura prepares the holes for the 8 gazillion tomatoes and 500 peppers that they planted today in different environments (with and without cages, in different watering environments, with different plant partners) to see how these guys are going to get along. Our dear WWOOFers will be gone by the time the experiment concludes, but we have promised to keep accurate records for the researchers. Below, Quinn expresses the thrill experienced when muscle and shovels triumph over concrete and rebar as the ditch opens up to refill Pollywog Pond. These warm days, the challenge will be to see if we can get more water flowing into the pond than sinks in or evaporates before flowing back into the creek. Constantly changing parameters and relationships are the order of the season, and in fact one of the main characteristics of life at LoveJoyPeace (and beyond).

Hoes and Hoedowns

Things are good on the farm. The WWOOFers are settling in (above, Julia, Brigitte, and Laura troubleshoot a sprinkler nozzle), and the neighbors have mostly met these mysterious beings from afar who have come to help the garden grow. Yesterday was another Farmers' Market, and pies, dumplings, and spinach were the order of the day. As well as spinach, of course! We had a solstice meet-and-greet with the neighbors as well - below you can see (clockwise from 7:00) Quinn, Laura, Julia, Derk, Mike, Lindy, Sequoia, Roxanne, Jon, and Brigitte on the deck of the Hornet's Nest, enjoying the passing thunderstorms and the fine fare. Where is Angelina? She joined us, but these days she is very busy with piemaking, farming, haying, and being a groovy young person in Fort Bidwell, and she just happened to be out of the photo. The next few days promise to be sunny and warm, and the farm is going to love it. The squash, melons, and beans we planted only a week ago are jumping out of the ground, the corn is happy to have attention, and everything is growing nicely. It's a good summery time to be at LoveJoyPeace. If you'd like to see Locavore Farms from a WWOOFer's perspective (and follow the further adventures of one of our intrepid workers), you can take a look at Jon's blog.

Welcome WWOOFers!

Our first group of workers has arrived! They are mad weeders and fun people. Above is a picture of Quinn and Angelina enjoying a leisurely float in the SS Minnow. Yesterday included a tour of LoveJoyPeace and Jerry's garden and a soak under the full moon in the hot springs. Our days are warm and somewhat breezy, and the farm is loving it. Jerry brought the tractor out and cultivated, and with the help of Jon, Laura, Quinn, Julia, and Brigitte, some significant progress was made for the bok choy and cabbage. Today we'll do more weeding and irrigating, and get the ditch to Pollywog pond flowing. It's going to be an awesome day!

WWOOFer Hollow Awaits!

A brief break from farming news: Angelina and our first semi-WWOOFer, Pinney, helped to set up the tents in the beautiful camping spot by the creek yesterday afternoon. They look great, and we were tempted to name each tent, but we decided to let our WWOOFers name them as they pleased. Our first group arrives tomorrow, and we have high hopes for a fantastic experience for them. Don't worry, WWOOFers, we'll save you some weeds!

A Post from Our New Blogger, Angelina!

Note: Li Tong has decided on her American name. Welcome to Angelina Lee! Here's a post about the first Farmer's Market on Saturday:
Hello! Everybody! I am Angelina Lee, I am very glad to have a new English name!And I first time went to Farmer's Market! I took some good pictures!
Ok, I want to talk about our at Farmer's Market, We sold lot's things:Chinese Dumplings、T-shirts、Spinach、Jadeplants、rhubarb、Eggs and rhubarb and strawberry pies. I made the pies, I made seven pies, felt so tired! At night I went to bed sleep, My arms so hurt! But we got beautiful pies for sale!





This is my pie, good looking?









We are at Farmer's Market, the Chinese Dumpling sale so good, people love to eat them, we sold 50 cents each, I think it is cheap , next week I will sell 75 sents each, because the Dumpling have lot's meat in them, you know making Dumpling is so hard and now the meat and vegetables are very expensive! If you try our Dumplings, you will love them!






Look the big silver pot ,The Dumpling in it, so nice!HoHo :)






At the Farmer's Market, I don't know who was singing some good songs all the Farmer's Market. When the Farmer's Market stopped, The singers stopped! You know who it is?







That's ME! GOOD LOOKING? The singer is in the back!












We have lot's spinach , If now you want to eat SPINACH, you need to hurry! Now the weather turn warm , the spinach can't live long time! right now, take your phone call us and get SPINACH






That is Mama、Jerry、and Me! Happy familly! Laurie went to Reno, so wasn't together with us, so sad! I realy want Laurie to come with us, because if Laurie come with us, will be have lot's funny conversations!




At 12 o'clock, the Farmer's Market ended，we felt so tired, and went back home to sleep! That day we made lots of money, we are very happy, you konw why we could make lots of money?Because I am a good seller!

Got 'er done!

The entire acre is now planted, after adding potatoes, squash, punkins, melons, beans, and all kinds of seeds. Luckily we finally got some water up to the field - the work that was done on the dam created only turbulent spots from which to draw the water to irrigate, and the air bubbles kept the pump from getting a good suck. We have a stopgap, thanks to Jerry's hard work and ingenuity and a neighbor's gas-powered Honda pump. Now everything is on its way - our job is to keep watering and to start weeding, since it seems that the weeds are so much happier to establish themselves than the crops. Why is that?

A Chilly Hello for the Kandy King!

The first corn plants are making their presence known. Sure, they're only an inch or so tall now, but in a couple of months we will have an impressive corn forest. Given the late spring we're having, there's probably not much chance it will be as high as an elephant's eye by the 4th of July. We'll have to see what animal's eye the corn is as high as in a month - any bets?


After a blustery and sometimes rainy, but often beautiful, day yesterday, this morning early we actually got a few minutes of snow on the ground! The picture above, showing the view enjoyed by one lucky red cabbage, reveals a dusting of snow on Mount Bidwell. Guess the cabbage is glad it lives at sunny Locavore Farms instead of up there!

Speaking of Locavore Farms, our new web site is officially up. Hurrah! Buy a T-Shirt!

Welcome to Onionville

Walla Wallas, red ones, yellow ones, ones that last a year in storage, Chinese leeks - what's your preference? We've got onions! A fun planting party of 6 finished planting mostly all the starts we have - besides the straggler tomato plants and a few random strays, the only thing that remains is planting the seed, and we need a couple of days for the soil to dry out for that. The corn has possibly started to poke its heads out, but we accidentally planted in cold, wet soil, so the seeds' viability may be affected. In other words, I hope all that expensive organic seed didn't rot in the week of rain that we had! C'mon, Kandy King corn, show your stuff!