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Mayflower Dry Bean   What a gorgeous little dry bean! The burgundy color on one side fading to cream on the other is at once rustic and cosmic. Named such because it arrived in the Americas on the Mayflower in the 1620s, this bean also goes by the names 'Red Nightfall', 'Cutshort', and 'Cornfield'.   This pole bean did well in my field and was quite productive. The main downside to this variety is its lateness; the 110 days I had this in the ground were not enough for the whole crop to dry down. We have dry enough falls...

Do you find yourself looking out at grass where you would love to see fresh tomatoes and lettuce growing, pollinators flying, and your children picking peas?  Clueless as to where to begin in achieving that dream though?  Turning sod or neglected soil into a thriving vegetable garden can seem intimidating, but with one weekend's work you can be well on your way to that garden of your dreams! Before we bought our farm, we cut our teeth in part by gardening in yards and on vacant lots- really anywhere we were allowed.  I have transitioned lawns, weed patches, and super-compacted-clay-dust-bowls...

New to gardening and don’t know where to begin? Here are 5 easy crops to start with: 1. Lettuce: When you first start a garden, especially if you have only a small space, you want to grow those foods that taste DRASTICALLY better from your garden than from the store. Because it doesn’t store very long or travel very well, there is just nothing quite like lettuce straight from the garden. It’s also pretty hard to mess up. Plant it densely and you get to harvest baby lettuce. Give it more space and you get whole heads. Take a few...

Winter squash is our favorite thing to grow!  Our next crop of Lofthouse Landrace Moschata Butternut Squash was under the cover as well, and is ready to harvest.  How do you know when to harvest winter squash?  Look for these 3 things: 1.  The skin has hardened to the point that you can't dent it with your fingernail. 2.  The stem that attaches the squash to the plant is more than 50 percent dried/brown.  It starts out green and gradually hardens and turns brown as the squash ripens. 3.  The squash is fully the color you expect.  For these LL Moschata Butternut Squash-...

We grow and sell a number of landrace crops.  But what the heck is a landrace?   A landrace crop is one containing a lot of genetic diversity that is adapted to thrive in a specific region and climate, typically under low-input systems.  This diversity manifests phenotypically (characteristics we can see, taste, and smell) as a wide array of shapes, sizes, colors, tastes, and growth habits.  Though these traits can be all over the map, what is consistent with the plant members of a landrace is their ability to thrive in the bioregion is was bred in. For perspective landrace is a...