Fried Catfish, Jell-O Molds and a Sunset

There was a big par-tay at the farm on Saturday and all plot-owners and plot-owners' families were invited. Attendance was roughly 150!

A local catfish restaurant supplied the fried fish, chicken, beans, coleslaw and hush puppies while dessert was potluck.

Here's the thing. Despite the fact that I was born in Arkansas, have a very strong southern accent when I drink and have been known to belt out the lyrics to country music songs, I have never in my life been more southern than I was at this party.

For dessert, I brought a Jell-O mold.

In my defense, it wasn't really a mold. It was just a cake pan. But it was Jell-O. With fruit in it. And, if you took a poll of the people in attendance, they would say it was actually a "salad" and not a "dessert."

On account of the fruit, of course.

But it was good. And I don't even like Jell-O.

And farmers sure know how to party. I think we were the only people there who did not bring a cooler full of beer, wine, liquor or a mixture of the three. And that was only because we don't have a cooler.

I lamented with the man next to me about weeds - crab grass in particular. I saw some enormous hats on the more genteel-looking women. A man behind me had a corncob pipe. We talked about the bandits who had attacked some plots earlier in the week (a jar of twist ties, a watering can and our citronella candle were among the missing.)

Needless to say, Adam and I were the youngest people there by half (not counting the kids of some of the plot owners) but we had a good time.

We took a quick walking tour of the farm after the party. It is interesting to see the trends that take hold in certain sections. One section of the farm is all about black plastic as a weed deterrent. In that same section, farmers use a substance called Sevin heavily on all of their plants.

In another section, plot-owners have doubled-up on the fencing in order to make it extra high. This section is closest to the surrounding forest and, according to rumors, has a higher deer population.

And, I'm proud to say that in our section several plot-owners have used bamboo poles intermittently throughout their fence to add strength. (And, as it turns out, a roosting point for red-wing black birds.)

After the party and farm tour, we were reluctant to go back to our un-air-conditioned apartment so we went to nearby Pinnacle Mountain instead.

And got there just in time to see the sun setting over Lake Maumelle and the Ouachita Mountains.

Night Farming

Tonight we went out to the garden after work to plant garlic.

In the dark.

Luckily, planting garlic is pretty easy so we were able to complete the task without much light.

To plant the garlic, we dug a whole in the ground about 2 inches deep. We spaced the cloves about a foot apart all along the fence. We didn't even bother with fertilizer, etc.

We planted them along the fence because the smell of garlic can ward off garden raiders. Now we have more garlic planted in our garden than any other plant.

Which is a good thing, since we love it.

And if we ever fancy a vampire-hunting career we won't have much to worry about in the garlic-supply front.

Before planting, I took this photo of the sunset. If you look closely, you can see a partial outline of Pinnacle Mountain to the right.


Adam's current place of employment is relatively close to our garden plot so he likes to spend his hour-long lunches out there on some days. This afternoon, he was alone on our little 25' x 50' plot when a woman drove up and rolled down her window.

Since most community farmers seem to be very friendly and curious about other's garden plans, it isn't particularly unsusual for people to stop and chat. But this woman rolled down her window and asked, "Is this the Garden of Hope?"

Needless to say, Adam was a little dumbstruck by this question. Because, yes, to us our garden is like a garden of hope. As I've said before, this garden is a test run for our future dream farm.

So, yeah, Garden of Hope sounds about right. However, it does not serve this purpose in any official capacity so Adam was forced to admit that, no, ours isn't the Garden of Hope.

The lady continued to drive down the lane and eventually found the "official" Garden of Hope, a 4 plot site operated by a local church.

And we're okay with that. They've got the moniker and, apparently, the money.

But we've got a garlic fence.

So there.

Welcome to our blog!

Lots of things are happening in our garden plot right now so we'll have to fill you in on our background at another time.

The first tilling of our plot occurred a few days ago. One of our community farm-neighbors let us use his tiller and we were so happy for it. Up until then, we had been hoeing and shoveling by hand.

We had a basic design for our plot. We made about 5 rows in front and 8 rows in back. In the middle of the plot we designed a seating area surrounded by circular beds. All of our beds are raised to keep the moisture area high around the plant roots without actually drowning the plants.


After spending a day out at the farm, all of our hard work was washed away by one of several storms that moved through the Little Rock area. That's how it goes, I suppose.

After fixing the beds, our next project was to put up a fence. We didn't have a lot of money to put towards a fence but I wasn't about to use the ugly plastic construction fence some other community plot-ers were using. (We may be cheap but we're not tacky!)

Luckily we found a plastic material that resembles chicken-wire that was actually cheaper than the ugly construction fence! It is about 3' high so we hung string above it and tied ribbon to it to scare off any would-be garden raiders.


After the fence was complete we were ready to plant!