Green E-Market Bulletin March 8, 2019

WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK: WE ARE BOTTLE FEEDING A LAMB WHO IS GETTING INSUFFICIENT MILK FROM HER MOM. SHE IS IMPRINTING STRONGLY ON TROY.EGGS CONTINUE TO ABOUND, PLEASE ORDER

Lettuce and peas waiting for real sunlight

Grow Light Hi everyone It's Victoria here.

I returned this week from a journey back to my homeland (also, the most honorable Dolly Parton’s homeland) in East Tennessee. It’s just under thirteen hours of driving from here, so I felt like I needed to make the most of my time back, as I imagine it will be a while before I can make that drive again, especially by myself.Despite some catastrophic flooding while I was there, I managed to spend hours tooling around the local yarn and wool shop and sifting through piles of books with my grandma, Frances Fox. She’s a community fixture, working as a storyteller, tour guide, craftsperson, fiber teacher, and all-around local historian, and is my best and surest connection to the place where both of us (and Dolly) grew up. In a brief, clear, break between rain storms, we went out to her back yard and dug wildflowers, something we’ve done together since I was tiny. She sent me back with pots of Arrow-Leaf Arum, Horsetail, Lenten Rose and bluebells, and I’m doing my best to keep them alive until the ground thaws and I can find a spot on the farm to plant them. If they make it, we’ll be completing a circle of growth and propagation that crosses time and distance, surviving fire, flood, and displacement, to bloom as a delicate and ephemeral symbol of endurance and resilience. Boy, I hope we make it.On the propagation front, I also received a message this week about the Morton Seed Library, located within Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff. When I was there for a community seed swap this winter, I signed up for their Seed Steward program, where community members receive both starter seed and ongoing support and training to propagate additional seeds for the library, and for their own stock. If you are in the area and anticipate having a little extra space in your garden this year, I recommend signing up to help produce locally adapted seed strains, and so we can eat cake at the library together.This program is one tiny example of the overwhelming wealth of community possibilities I’ve blundered into since arriving in the Hudson Valley. I have to admit, I was fully prepared to spend the majority of my time here solo (and maybe was even looking forward to the idea of haunting a huge old house by myself?). So far, aside from a few lonely weeks before Troy arrived, this has not been the case. Despite the distance, our dear friends Lauren and Morgan came up from Raleigh for Valentine’s day and helped us prune our trees and berry bushes. This week, our friend Lexi came to stay and work on their children’s book, The Ship We Built, even reading with our newest baby lambs. Thanks to Nica and the Fiberhouse Collective, I’ll be in Brooklyn all next week working on a fiber residency, and I can’t wait to report back about all the weird stuff I’m going to make while I’m there. I’m already getting carried away with thoughts of springtime dyeing, basketry, and outdoor felting as soon as it’s warm enough, as well as dreaming up the massive party we’ll have to celebrate Mapquest’s birthday.Still, going home reminded me of how much I miss it, and leaving was even harder because I had to say goodbye to my baby brother. I’m not sure what this winter would have looked like without his incredible sense of humor and nonstop stream of ambient music, arcane facts, and food safety advice, and I can’t really imagine the next season without him. Given the latitude, it was almost spring in Gatlinburg while I was there, and I already miss the plants I didn’t manage to dig up and drag with me. This feeling of full-hearted nostalgia isn’t what I usually associate with the onset of early spring, which usually has all the assoc