Let the Branding Begin

Dearest friends--what a hectic winter! I lost my digital camera. . .but just got a new one from my dad, so will be regaling you all with farm pics again soon.

First of all, I want folks to know that this is the first season I have continued to sell at the winter Farmers Market--and now that we are in our gorgeous building, and the Railrunner comes right into the Market, it is a very happening Saturday morning winter event. Come see me and the other hearty, creative vendors every Saturday from 9am to 1pm.

Second of all, last summer I worked on a business plan, then this fall received a business loan from Accion New Mexico, and as of this week, I am very excited to say that I will be working with local Michelle Moser, of Grace Communications, to update the "branding" of my business, which will include a new logo, a new line of custom soap mold designs, and new packaging that will ready my product to go out to stores, boutiques, spas, and knitting shops nation-wide!

I am very excited to work with Michelle, as she is not merely a graphic designer, but a marketer that has specialized in green businesses for over a decade. You can visit her website at gracecom.ws. Her principles are already grounded in the revolutionary ideas of such design leaders as William McDonough ("Cradle to Cradle"--see blog post, March 19, 2008). Check this out (from Michelle's website):

"We believe at its core, marketing is People-Centered, not market-driven. Our philosophy flows from the idea that employees are the source of your company's inspiration, and customers the source of infinite possibilities. By linking people--inside and out-- you inspire deeply authentic brand design and advertising language, that communicates who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. . .creating sustainable business communities with customers shopping for integrity."

Wow, what a good partnership for my business! Too good to be true! Stay tuned for more updates on my "branding journey"!

Fall is in full swing at the Farmers Market. My daughter Roan is displaying that emblem of fall harvest: a pumpkin. As a family, we are anticipating Halloween, ordering wood for winter, and inviting a handsome buck to come and visit the "girls." We are also in transition, with our house for sale, thinking about moving into town (and yes, the goats will come with), and planning for a new future, while honoring our past 13 years here in Glorieta.

My new business plans are coming along great! Soon, customers will be able to buy my custom-soaps with sweet and pleasing designs including a heart with baby goats, a sunflower & bee, a new kind of cat soap, and more. Can't wait to share these with my loyal customers and new friends!

Happy Fall, all, and Happy Harvest!

My Goat Had Her Portrait Painted!

Painter Miranda Gray came out to my little farm earlier this summer and took some photos for her lovely Farm Project--and made a gorgeous portrait of my goat Sula! Here is an excerpt of a recent article about this project, from Edible Santa Fe:

"One of the tenants of permaculture is that everything is connected. Six years ago, Miranda Gray moved with her husband into a small adobe house in the middle of an aging orchard in the Pojoaque Valley. She knew nothing of permaculture, or fruit trees, and only had an inkling of an idea about what her art making was going to be like in her new home. This chapter in her life started with the need to find a painting medium that was free of toxic fumes and plastics, safe to use in her small living room/studio. She also needed some way to figure out what to do with all those trees. Through the trees she found local teachers and community. Through her painting constraints, she discovered the relatively obscure technique of egg tempera, which is one of the oldest painting mediums there is. It uses ground, powdered pigments mixed with water and the yolk of chicken eggs.

"But egg tempera is somewhat persnickety. Commercial eggs fall apart when one tries to separate out the yolk from the egg. This led Miranda to the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market where the eggs she found made her very happy. The yolks were bright in color and stood up to being handled. For a while, as she learned her new craft, she painted portraits of things and people she loved. She painted her dogs, her childhood toys, and her friends. But she was running out of toys to paint. And who would want to buy portraits of dogs they didn’t know? She’d painted a couple of paintings about the bee crisis, but she didn’t feel that she could sustain the idea to a third painting. One evening last Autumn, while she was reading through the Fall issue of this magazine, she came across a beautiful photograph of two young farmers, brothers Kosma and Teague, with their hands dirtied holding huge arm loads of just picked carrots. She said, 'I had an epiphany looking at that picture. I could see a series of paintings that could go on and on for years. I had to paint the farmers! I found something that I loved, that I could paint about. And I found a topic that I believe in, local farming and sustainability. I found a way to blend my art and my politics. I was so excited that I could hardly sleep that night, thinking about all the possibilities, all the connections.'

"The first painting Miranda did was of another neighbor of hers, Natasya Gundersen of Mr.G’s Organic Farm. She road her bicycle down the road and found Gary and Natasya in their field picking white turnips for the market the next day. The morning light was exquisite, and Natasya’s hands were beautiful, with the requisite dirt that Miranda was looking for. From there Miranda went on to photograph Stanley Crawford on his garlic farm in Dixon, on the morning of his first garlic harvest. She helped bring in the harvest, which thrilled her to no end. She visited Daven Lee and her "girls,” goats who supply her with the milk she makes her soap from. She spent one morning tromping around Pollo Real with Tom Delehanty, while he showed her his operation, and talked with her of sustainability. He pointed out plants in his field that in her yard, had seemed like weeds, but now she knew to be nitrogen fixers and chicken food. Not only was she finding subject matter for her work, but also she was seeing first hand where her food was coming from. She was learning from the farmers, hearing their stories, and loving even more her own work.

"Miranda says that she still feels the voyeur. She is not the farmer, like Phil, who stood on his portal this spring and watched while a ten-minute hailstorm ruined his lettuce crop. She doesn’t have to get up before dawn, and put the sleepy kids in the car to drive two hours to market like Tom and Tracy do each week. She is hoping that her paintings will work as prayers for these farmers; that through the hours she sits painting, thinking of them and the good they bring, that somehow she can work a bit of magic into this amazing life, as these farmers do.

Miranda Gray’s paintings may be viewed at Selby Fleetwood Gallery, 600 Canyon Road, Santa Fe. 505-992-8877. Her show opens on Friday October 3rd from 5:00 to 7:30,and Saturday October 4th from 1:00 to 5:00. This time on Saturday was chosen so that the farmers may attend the opening after their Saturday market.

We're in our new home!

Here we are inside our gorgeous new, spacious, light, clean, and LEED Certified Farmers Market Pavillion! I can't tell you how palpable the excitement was as we opened the market in our new location this week. Now, I am inside (and happy to be there), but there is a full and bustling market outside as well--so festive. There was a sense of deep ownership, both from the venders and farmers, as well as from our local, regular customers: This is OUR Farmers Market. The grand opening events for the entire Railyard will be this coming weekend, 9-5 both Saturday and Sunday. I will be away, sadly, at an ice skating competition in Colorado, but Jackie and Maya will be running my booth. And by the way, my booth will be getting more and more spruced up, now that I have a permanent spot, and am indoors, not having to brave the elements. Look for festive lights, beautiful cabinets for storage, new pictures and signage. . . Yipee!!

Tranquility in the Bee Yard

Beekeeping has become so popular--it is a special way to be a part of nature's vital cycles of reproduction, food growing, and of course results in this incredible liquid gold called honey--that cannot be reproduced artificially by humans, no matter how hard we try. Beehives can be kept within city limits, in small back yards, so it is a simple, pleasing way to bring wildness, agriculture, and nature into almost any living space (roof gardens in NY have beehives, too). And, let's face it, it's incredibly cool to be able to tolerate large clusters of buzzing, flying, stinging insects with tranquility--or at least pretending to tolerate them with tranquility--as opposed to running, screaming, as far away as possible at the mere site of one on a close-by flower.

I have to say, up until this year (I guess this is my fourth season beekeeping), I got very tense out at the apiary. These stinging insects made me mighty nervous. As I would work deeper into the hive, their buzzing would increase in volume--obviously a bad sign, and the guard bees (yes, that's really their job, and yes, they are female too, like the workers), would start buzzing in front of my face (veiled), trying to find a way in. Every once in a while I would feel an intense vibration on my hand, through my gloves, and I would look down to see a bee curling its body tightly trying to sting me. I had to take frequent calm-down breaks, walking several yards away, farther if necessary, until the last guard bee took off. Then back in. Yikes, they made me nervous. The bars full of comb and bees were heavy, and if it was hot out (and it always was--you harvest in summer, of course), trying to get the bees off the combs (great fun--they love it too--you brush them with a special brush, causing them to swarm all around your head and buzz louder), and get the comb, clean, over a bowl to cut off the comb, BEFORE IT BROKE OFF, was mighty stressful. There's nothing so aggravating as having a comb full of honey and watching it suddenly break off the bar, and fall, oozing honey and covered with bees, to the ground. Damn. Then there's trying to progress through the hive, manipulating the bars, and discovering that some combs are formed all crazy--vertically across a couple of bars, or attached at the bottom, so that as you gently try to shift one bar, it suddenly rips off, and, again, an entire comb full of honey and/or brood, and covered in bees, collapses to the bottom of the hive--AND I HAVE TO SCOOP OUT HONEY AND SQUISHED BEES RIGHT FROM THE HIVE, WHERE ALL THE BEES ARE JUST GOING CRAZY. Whew.

Well the point of all this is to say that this year, I have been all business in the hive. Sure, they started buzzing around me, I had some clean up to do, I had to brush bees off to clean the combs, but I just ignored the bees--I just didn't even notice their buzzing, or their kamikaze missions around my head. Now it's not that I'm some kind of mean giant who just comes through and bullies her way through the hive. I just was able to stay focused and calm, and get the work done. I even got half a bee sting--and this did not phase me. Yay!

So what you see in this picture from early in the season, is myself and 13 year old Maya. Maya, who helps her grandmother Jackie in my booth, has become enamored of bees. In preparation for getting her own hive (at this writing, the bees have already been established at her home), I gave her a tour of mine. Such fun.

Honey Honey Honey

Is there anything more emblematic of the abundance and sensuality of summer, than a hive overflowing with honey?

This past week I went into the hive for the first time in a month. In June I was going in pretty much every week, and there was very little progress on the honey-making, although everyone seemed very busy and happy in the hive. But we have gotten so much rain in July, everything is just growing like crazy. I saw the bees buzzing at the top of my golden rain tree, among the yellow flowers there, on the sunflowers, in the clover--just everywhere. Sure enough when I went to open the hive, they had filled every bar with comb--the hive was bursting at the seams! I had some messes to clean up--combs formed slightly diagonally between two bars, or one comb that had a little hole in the top, and the neighboring comb had a little extension that fit right into that hole, like an architectural puzzle. Very pleasing. I cut off enough honey-filled comb to fill three large bowls on the counter of my kitchen--luscious, light-colored and warm, straight from the hive. Hopefully I've given the bees some more space to make more comb and honey, and this time, I'll check in on them sooner!

Spabox and More

Whooo, it's been some time since I've updated my blog. One reason, well, Mercury retrograde. This is a very Santa Fe "excuse"--and it goes something like this: When Mercury is in retrograde, the lore goes, mechanical, technical stuff just goes all wrong. Normally I ignore this and think nothing of it. But here is what happened to me, and now I am a true believer.

1) I decided to clean my beautiful, 1-year-old, just-paid-off Macbook. I lovingly did so, and thereafter three or four different keys on the keyboard stopped working. Stopped working. That's like a $200 repair job now. But my keyboard is really really clean.

2) Turned on the toaster oven, and all the lights in our house suddenly dimmed. Then they came back up again. Then they dimmed again. And so on. Called the electric company. No, of course it wasn't happening on their end. So now we are renting a Ditch-witch, digging a new trench and laying an entirely new electrical line (250 ft) from the pole to our house. Yeehaw.

3) Well, I'm going to be a single woman again. This is hard, but actually good news, as my husband and I go off to fully pursue our life and dreams while still staying a family with our sweet and perfect children.
Oh and it was a full moon, and the solstice. . .

Ok, back to soap stuff.

One of the great things to come out of the great publicity from the Localflavor article is several wonderful women-run businesses around New Mexico are going to be carrying my products.

The first one is Spabox Organic Apothecary, owned by Cherilyn Swenson. Those of you out in cyberspace can experience her lovely gift-oriented, luxurious store through her website, spabox.com, or if you're lucky enough to live in Santa Fe, visit her cozy little boutique downtown at at 211 Galisteo St. See the photos for a glimpse of her shop.

Gaia Garments in Corrales, NM is in the process of placing their first order with me. Founders Pamela Bauer and Darci Knobel have just opened this organic/sustainable clothing and shoe store and I’m excited to be a part of it. I’ve never been to Corrales, so this may be my motivation to go!

In the meantime, the bees are making honey, and the goats are always hungry.
I was comparing beekeeping notes with my nextdoor neighbor who has a hive as well, and he agreed that the bees seem much calmer this season than last. Maybe they’re looking forward to having presumptive-President Obama at the helm, looking out for their interests with some serious action on alternative energy and environmental protections. . .

Till next time. . .