Nicky and Dave Schauder are passionate about helping families grow their food, and medicine and find God in the garden. Learn how to build your own permaculture garden Get our Guild Guide when you sign up!
Take time to draw your garden
Take time to draw your gardenInspired by Lara Call Gastinger's "Perpetual Journal Practice" and the works of Roger Tory Peterson, I started capturing my garden in this way. And I hope that despite the heat, and perhaps the mosquitoes this summer, we can all still find time to observe nature and perhaps draw it. Drawing forces you to truly look at something. And in a world of digital distraction, may very well be the last bastion of focus. That and prayer, I suppose. And there are similarities between the two practices. That kind of observation is the same instinct behind succession planting, honestly. You can't tell when a bed is ready to turn over unless you're paying close enough attention to notice it's slowing down. Summer Planting & Planning Ahead for the FallIf you missed our webinar on Succession Planting in Summer, or want to sit with it again, we turned it into a full written guide with our actual raised beds, what's planted in each one, and what to plant next as the season moves towards fall. The replay is there too, if you'd rather watch Dave walk through it live.
or watch the replay Grow abundantly! PS. I'm so curious to know what's growing in your garden this time of year, Reader? Send us photos or better yet, drawings of what you see! |
Dave & Nicky Schauder
Nicky and Dave Schauder are passionate about helping families grow their food, and medicine and find God in the garden. Learn how to build your own permaculture garden Get our Guild Guide when you sign up!
Last Friday, Dave and I welcomed something new to Bethany Farm. A robot. When Dave powered "Gather," the robot, up for the first time, the chickens were curious. Why a Farm Robot? Most agricultural technology is built for large commercial operations. Very little of it is designed for small farms like ours. When Suma Reddy and her team reached out about piloting the robot she’s been building, I asked her why this project mattered to her. Her answer: She wants to make farming possible for...
Dear Reader Why We Grow You may already know what first got us into growing food. Our first two children were born with food allergies. Ethan, our second, had eczema so severe we could see it on his face after every meal. 2 year old Ethan with eczema Dave and I started questioning everything. What was in the food we were buying? What were we actually feeding our children? We wanted to know where our food was coming from. And we wanted to be the ones growing it. We switched to organic. At the...
Dear Reader, Last February, one of the growers we mentor, Lindsey knocked her curtain rod loose in her kitchen. The rod that held her seedling trays in place. Every seedling she had started, lettuces, microgreens, pepper, went flying. Soil on the walls. Trays on the floor. An hour of cleanup. She could have cried. She almost did. But she didn't quit. By March she was filling raised beds with cardboard, straw, old leaves, and half-finished compost from a bin that had spent the winter getting —...