Market is here again! We've had a busy week on the farm and after some much-needed rain, the garden is looking lush and green. The Swiss chard leaves are bigger than my face, the cucumbers are in full flower (and climbing up their trellises apace), and our spearmint bed has really shot up! We'll be bringing a plethora of fresh-cut dill and flat-leaf parsley to the market, along with the usual suspects like rosemary, chives, and so on. The herbs and greens are really lovely right now, so enjoy this bounty while it lasts!

This is the last week for green garlic--we'll have only a few bunches, so come early for those--because the garlic is almost ready to harvest as bulbs! Those of you who know me will also know that garlic harvesting is both really exciting and really stressful for me, so if you see me at the market and I look a little crazed, you'll know why.

April showers have certainly yielded May flowers, and we'll have a number of absolutely gorgeous bouquets available tomorrow. Even without formal art training, my mom has one of the best innate color senses I've ever encountered and she's put together some beautiful arrangements to grace your table. And since we can't do anything without incorporating herbs in some way, if you look closely you'll catch sight of some mugwort, marshmallow, and lavender mixed in with the snapdragons and Asian lilies!

I know I sound like a broken record player at this point (and yes, I do know what a record player is!), but the CFSA Upstate Farm Tour on June 2nd and 3rd is just around the corner. This will be our third year on the tour, and it's going to be bigger and better than ever. We're going to be a "dessert stop" this year, which means that a local chef--Lisa Marvel of Marvelous Pies--will be selling her delectable desserts at the farm during the tour. (Don't worry, we'll still have herbal snow-cones for sale!) You won't want to miss it, so swing by our booth to buy your button (your button is your ticket!) and grab a tour directory.

For those service-minded individuals, please consider volunteering to help during the tour. Volunteers are needed at every farm to check guests in, sell buttons, and direct guests to activites and facilities. A volunteer shift runs from 12:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on one day of the farm tour, and you'll receive a free pass so that you can go on the tour yourself the other day! Volunteers will also receive a CFSA branded gift, courtsey of Whole Foods. You can visit the tour's page on VolunteerSpot to sign up: http://www.volunteerspot.com/login/entry/842345634773586031. This is a great way to help out both the CFSA and local farms on the tour, so I hope you'll consider participating!

Here's what we'll have at the market in the morning:

Fresh-Cut Herbs:
Oregano, savory, chives, peppermint, spearmint, dill, flat-leaf parsley, rosemary

Baked Goods & Herbal Products:
Lavender-mint shortbread, herbed focaccia bread, "Farm Hands" herbal salve

Produce:
Swiss chard, "Red Russian" kale, "Toscano" kale, "Vates" kale, "Mantovano" bulb fennel, green garlic, garlic scapes (only a few bundles of the green garlic and scapes, so stop by early to snag them!)

Plants:
Lovage, lemon balm, "Genovese" basil, "Dark Opal" basil, "Thai Magic" basil, "Greco" basil, sage, lemongrass

Flowers:
Fresh-cut bouquets

Hope to see you in the morning!

Meredith Mizell
Farm Manager
Red Fern Farm

It seems like this past week has flown by! Last Saturday, y'all were instrumental in helping us have our best market day ever, and we're so thankful for your support. Of note this week: we've got lots more basil plants ready to go, including a really beautiful purple variety, and the first of the fennel, so be sure to stop by and check it out. Maybe we can even top last week!

We didn't get much rain from the systems moving through last week, but we got just enough to keep the garden happy. And as much as we need a really good, soaking day (or three) of rain, we were fortunate that the light precipitation didn't interfere with shearing day yesterday. Shearing day is probably the most stressful day of the year for us, but it went off without a hitch thanks to the Hearnes, our amazing shearers. They sheared all 77 of our Tunis sheep in just under three hours: no small feat! Now it falls to us to skirt the wool and send it off to be processed--into roving for handspinning, and into blankets that you'll be seeing later this year at the market. It's a (really) dirty job, but somebody's got to do it!

With shearing behind us, the next big event is the CFSA Upstate Farm Tour on June 2nd and 3rd. This will be our third year on the tour, and it's going to be bigger and better than ever. We're going to be a "dessert stop" this year, which means that a local chef--Lisa Marvel of Marvelous Pies--will be selling her delectable desserts at the farm during the tour. (Don't worry, we'll still have herbal snow-cones for sale!) You won't want to miss it, so swing by our booth to buy your button (your button is your ticket!) and grab a tour directory.

For those service-minded individuals, please consider volunteering to help during the tour. Volunteers are needed at every farm to check guests in, sell buttons, and direct guests to activites and facilities. A volunteer shift runs from 12:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on one day of the farm tour, and you'll receive a free pass so that you can go on the tour yourself the other day! Volunteers will also receive a CFSA branded gift, courtsey of Whole Foods. You can visit the tour's page on VolunteerSpot to sign up: http://www.volunteerspot.com/login/entry/842345634773586031. This is a great way to help out both the CFSA and local farms on the tour, so I hope you'll consider participating!

Here's what we'll have at the market in the morning:

Fresh-Cut Herbs:
Oregano, savory, thyme, chives, sorrel, peppermint, spearmint, dill, lovage

Baked Goods & Herbal Products:
Lavender-mint shortbread, herbed focaccia bread, "Farm Hands" herbal salve

Produce:
Swiss chard, "Red Russian" kale, "Toscano" kale, "Mantevano" bulb fennel, green garlic, garlic scapes (only a few bundles right now, so stop by early to snag them!)

Plants:
Comfrey (Russian), gotu kola, lovage, lemon balm, "Genovese" basil, "Dark Opal" basil, "Thai Magic" basil, "Greco" basil

Hope to see you in the morning!

Meredith Mizell
Farm Manager
Red Fern Farm

Well, this is it: the beginning of another market season! With such a warm winter and spring, it feels as if no time has passed since the market wrapped up last fall. On one hand, the mild winter was a boon, giving us the chance to complete construction projects--a new germination chamber, aka the "seed house," and our new approved kitchen, finally--and get lots of new perennial plantings in during the early spring (nettles!). On the other hand, such a busy off-season wasn't very restful, so there are certain things I didn't quite get to--like a new HTML mailing list format, so we're stuck with plain text for a while longer! Regardless, we're back in the swing of things and looking forward to a great season. I might even find some time to work in those "winter" to-do's on really hot days when we're stuck inside!

Tomorrow marks the beginning of our fourth year at the TD Saturday Market in downtown Greenville. If you're new to our list (and welcome!), you can find us on Main St. between Court and Washington from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. every Saturday from May through October. We're really excited about the new products we'll be bringing to the market this year, thanks to the approved kitchen: herbal baked goods, salves, teas, dried herbs, and more. We're starting off with just a couple of value-added herbal products to test the waters, and if they do well, you can expect to see many more!

We're going to be working hard this year to transition to doing more with herbs and less with vegetables, though we are still growing a bunch of old favorites like kale and chard, Asian cucumbers, San Marzano tomatoes, and more. What can I say: I just really love the herbs, and want to be working with them the majority of the time!

Another new addition to our booth for the month of May: we'll be one of four vendors at the market selling buttons (which serve as tickets) for the CFSA Upstate Farm Tour on June 2nd and 3rd! This will be our third year on the tour, and it's going to be bigger and better than ever. We're going to be a "dessert stop" this year, which means that a local chef--Lisa Marvel of Marvelous Pies--will be selling her delectable desserts at the farm during the tour. (Don't worry, we'll still have herbal snow-cones for sale!) You won't want to miss it, so swing by the booth to buy your button and grab a tour directory.

There are so many other things I could talk about, but we'd be here all day, so without further ado this is what we'll have at the market in the morning:

Fresh-Cut Herbs:
Oregano, savory, thyme, chives, sorrel, peppermint, spearmint, dill, lovage

Baked Goods & Herbal Products:
Lavender-mint shortbread, herbed focaccia bread, "Farm Hands" herbal salve

Produce:
Swiss chard, "Red Russian" kale, "Toscano" kale, "Vates" kale, green garlic

Plants:
Comfrey (Russian), gotu kola, lovage, thyme, Egyptian walking onions, heirloom tomatoes (my mother has twisted my arm and insisted we bring some this week only--warning, these guys are going to be huge and need to be planted ASAP!)

Hope to see you in the morning!

Meredith Mizell
Farm Manager
Red Fern Farm

Meredith Mizell
Farm Manager
Red Fern Farm

When you study design, sometimes your brain gets rusted out by the formal discussion of it. Once you learn the "rules" of composition and color theory, you're trapped: suddenly, picking the right shade of green--just the right shade that will convey "freshness" and "nature" without edging too far into "clinical" and "antiseptic" and "mint ice cream"--is an agonizing process. And forget pairing that green with a secondary color for a pop of visual interest; it's all doubt and second-guessing and downhill from there. Before long you find yourself up to your elbows in Pantone chips and Johannes Itten and wondering why every color combination looks just plain wrong.

I've been there before--that's what happens when you try to choose colors in a vacuum and your experience level is next to nil. But at some point in my schooling, I realized something that should have been obvious from the start: for the best color combinations, look no further than nature. Nowhere else are the colors more vivid, more alive, and more unlikely. And if it works in nature, you can make it work on paper too. It might sound insane at first--unthinkable that the acid yellow and electric blue of a tropical fish would ever work outside of that context--but give it enough white space and in the correct proportion, it will. Somewhere deep in our brains, we recognize the color combinations that we find in nature as, well, natural. It's the best and simplest trick you could ever hope to learn as a designer or artist.

When I harvested chive blossoms and calendula flowers the other night, I looked down to find a nice surprise: a crazy, out-there color combination in the harvest basket that was like a revelation. Orange and purple are complementary colors, so on a rational level, color theory tells me it should work. But I never would have guessed violent orange and pale purple together would be so gorgeous.

Then I started thinking about the colors those flowers would lend to their destined menstruums--oil for the calendula and vinegar for the chives. Calendula oil assumes a golden-orange hue, like liquid sun, while chive blossom vinegar turns a resplendent pink-purple as all the color leaches from those tiny florets. In the midst of a sea of processed food packed with artificial colorings and flavorings, these natural dyes are magic: real and good for you. No need for Yellow #5 or Red Lake #40 around here. The flowers have already got it covered.

The best thing about perennials is that you plant them once and you're (mostly) done. They're tenacious, enduring temperature and rainfall extremes at times, and with a bare minimum of care and a decent situation they persist. There are few things more exciting than watching a perennial emerge again in the spring, violently green and right where you left it. (More or less--sometimes that new growth is somewhere you didn't expect, but that's another beauty of perennials: sometimes they propagate themselves!)

Pop quiz: can you name the common perennial herbs in the photo above, and can you identify the odd man out--the biennial herb often grown as an annual?

I love the look of solar-infused oils. Mason jars full of dried herbs and oil, glass soaking up the sun and warm to the touch. The original pale yellow-green of the olive oil is long gone now: it's given way to the sunshine orange of calendula blossoms and the spicy red of cayenne peppers. These oils are young yet, so they'll only continue to deepen in color over the next few weeks. And after that...well, it'll be time to make some salves!

And a good thing too, because I'm going through calendula salve like it's going out of style--my own time in the sun has been giving me some ferocious heat rashes this week.

     + Cooking with Herbs 101, Spice of Life Food & Fitness Fest
     + Earth Beads (Fiber Arts Demo), The Children's Museum of the Upstate
     + Herbs: A Sensory Experience, The Children's Museum of the Upstate
     + Herbal First Aid in the Garden, GOFO Farm Work Day
     + Growing Your Own: Seed Starting from A to Z, Sharon Rose Farm
     + and more!

If you're interested in working with us on a presentation for your group, please contact us!

Are you a restauranteur or retailer interested in carrying our products? Read on to find out what local means to us.

Defining "Local" Food
One of our core values is participation in the re-establishment of our local food economy. Ask ten different people what "local" food means to them and you'll likely get ten different answers, but here's ours: our products are local to all points within an 85-mile radius of the farm. So if your establishment falls within the green circle on the map above, we would love to hear from you about how we might form a partnership.

Products Available for Wholesale
Because we are committed to growing in accordance with natural cycles, the availability of the following products will vary based on the time of year. If you're interested in carrying our products, please get in touch for more information about what's in season.

     + Fresh-cut herbs
     + Cut flowers
     + Grass-fed Tunis lamb
     + Herbal salves
     + Herbal baked goods
     + Herbal tea blends
     + Herb crafts
     + Wool goods: woven blankets, yarn, roving, felt, and fleeces

Grass-Fed Lamb
A special note about our grass-fed lamb: since it is processed in an SCDA-inspected facility versus a USDA-inspected facility, we cannot deliver or ship our lamb across state lines. However, out-of-state customers are welcome to visit the farm to purchase lamb.

We've found that few things are more enjoyable during the dark days of winter than curling up with a locally grown wool blanket.

The Benefits of Wool
Wool is a 100% natural fiber that has been used by humans for thousands of years, and it has some remarkable benefits that can't be claimed by the synthetic fibers that are prevalent in modern textile manufacturing. Wool regulates body temperature in both cool and warm weather--in the winter, it insulates the body without overheating, while in the summer it wicks body moisture away and cools the skin. We sleep with our wool blankets on the bed year round, and our interior house temperature is often around 80 degrees during the height of summer! Wool is hypoallergenic, so it resists mold, mildew, and dust mites that can cause allergic reactions. It's also flame-resistant, so it's an especially safe choice for children and the elderly--if synthetic blankets catch fire, they can melt to the skin and cause serious burns.

From an environmental perspective, wool is a much more eco-friendly fiber than processed synthetics that will never break down or return to the earth. It is an extraordinarily renewable resource--sheep grow a new fleece each year--and though the shearing process may look like it's uncomfortable for the sheep, it's actually safe and humane. Wool is also hard-wearing and long-lasting; with the proper care, a wool blanket will last a lifetime. So while the initial cost of a wool blanket is somewhat higher than a cheap acrylic blanket at a big box store, it will more than pay for itself over time.

Heirloom Quality & Detailing
All of our blankets are made with wool from our own Tunis sheep, and are woven for us by MacAusland's Woolen Mill, which has been producing high-quality woolen blankets on Prince Edward Island since 1932. After shearing in the spring, we skirt the raw fleeces here on the farm, removing any debris or low-quality fiber. Then we send the fleeces off to the mill, where they wash and card the wool, spin it into yarn, and weave these beautiful blankets in one of four sizes. The woven fabric is a twill, and the raw edges are blanket-stitched with extra yarn. Our blankets are undyed in order to showcase the lovely, natural cream color of the Tunis wool.

Caring for Your Blanket
Contrary to popular belief, wool blankets are quite easy to care for; they can be washed in cold water with just a few drops of a mild liquid soap like Dawn on the delicate/handwash cycle of your washing machine and then laid flat to dry. Of course, you should never put wool in the dryer unless you are deliberately trying to felt it! If you prefer to store your blanket during the summer months, simply wash it according to the instructions above and then store it in a zippered garment bag with a lavender sachet or a bar of your favorite soap.

Sizes & Pricing
We offer four blanket sizes at the following prices:

Lap blanket (48" x 60"): $75 each (Sold out until Fall 2012!)
Single (60" x 90"): $150 each
Double (72" x 90"): $175 each
Queen (76" x 104"): $200 each

We can deliver blankets to Greenville, Spartanburg, and other points in Upstate SC, or you're welcome to schedule a visit to the farm to pick up your purchase. We can accept cash, check, and credit card for both delivery and farm pickup.

To inquire about availabilities, please send an email to contact@redfernfarms.com with the subject line "Wool Blankets."