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 guild. Get our Guild Guide when you sign up!
On the road to VABF (with microgreens + kids in tow)
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Hey Reader This week, we’re heading to VABF, the Virginia Association for Biological Farming Conference, and it feels like one of those full-circle moments. We’re bringing: Winter can be quiet, but it isn’t empty. This is the season where nourishment and planning overlap, and gatherings like this remind us why growing food with care and integrity matters so much. As we travel, teach and learn this week, I also wanted to gently put something on your calendar. 🗓️ Garden Planning Your Year Ahead
No registration yet, just a save-the-date. More details soon. For now, just know we’re grateful to be growing alongside this community and cheering you on from our little corner of Virginia. Grow abundantly and keep warm, PS: Winter food still counts as real gardening. Those little trays of microgreens on our counter are feeding more than just our bodies right now. |
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 guild. Get our Guild Guide when you sign up!
Hello, Reader, We are beyond grateful that right now on our farm, we're getting the following from our garden so far: 1 lb of beans/day 5 lbs of tomatoes/day cucumbers blackberries raspberries peppers corn small Japanese tiger melons and we're spoiled for herbs on top of it. Pro-tip: Harvest tomatoes at first blush. They tend to produce more that way. I was out weighing today's tomato harvest from our research beds, where we've been comparing compost tea, organic fertilizer, and an untreated...
"If it has lived, it can live again." — Geoff Lawton, permaculturist Hello, Reader, How to Compost Correctly Last Sunday, right after liturgy, Dave and I taught a quick composting workshop for our church's volunteers ahead of our annual Middle Eastern Food Festival. I filmed it and put it on YouTube 👇, in case you'd like to sit in. Composting with Worms... and a Fly That Barely Lives a Week The company that composts our festival's waste, Future Acres Urban Farm, uses Black Soldier Fly larvae....
Hello, Reader, We have honey! The tomatoes are still green but growing really well right now. Yes, there are still things that are getting eaten by deer (like potatoes and every unprotected sunfower and zinnia on our property). But we've got beets coming in so fast we're having a beet salad every other day! This abundance is exactly the "problem" we set out to have when we started growing our own food eleven years ago. Back then, we had a tiny suburban backyard, six kids, a health crisis, and...