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!
Winter is for learning and planning
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Hey Reader (Note: This email is brought to you today by 12-year-old, Simon Schauder) Last week we finished our trip to VABF (the Virginia Biological Farming Conference). It really showed a whole new side of farming and taught us so much. If you didn't know, VABF is a weekend conference that consists of different talks regarding a new subject, strategy, or tip to turn your farm into a sustainable one without using toxic chemicals or pesticides. During that time, we hosted two talks ourselves, "How to grow a profitable microgreens business" and "Multi-harvest crop plans." We've had such an incredible time sharing our work with others while getting in touch with other farmers. Want a sneak-peek of what that VABF conference was like? Our Garden Planning Your Year Ahead workshop next Tuesday, January 20th aims to do exactly that. 🗓️ Garden Planning Your Year Ahead
This year, our entire family attended different talks on topics such as, agroforestry, soil bacteria, and even biodynamics for your own garden. Here are some photos from the event: Grow abundantly and keep warm, |
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...