Smoke from the Lake Berryessa fire rises over the eastern ridge of the Napa Valley.
Fire and Farming This morning it is evident that the fire in the eastern most part of Napa County is less contained that it was yesterday morning this time. A large plume of smoke spreads across the sky at first light. The orangish light is alarming and reminds us to think about animals and evacuation… Read more »
Organic produce at First Light Farm Store
Vote with Your Food Dollars Vote with your food dollars! Support a small farmer, a farmer whose business plan includes building soil and biodiversity. Mix stockholders and corporations into this, and the earth and biodiversity become secondary to profit. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that how we make a living is… Read more »
Quote reminder in First Light Farm Store
My farming father would have been amazed at my son Jesse and his wife Lisa, of First Light Farm! He farmed all his life and loved the land. Community was a given in small town farm life, taken for granted. But with the advent of agribusiness practices, small farms went out of business and community deteriorated …. Read more »
Replanting Biodynamic Lavender There must be a eulogy for the old lavender and a blessing for the new, as there must be a prayer for the bare earth in its liminal, in between state. This week we pulled the last of Lot Sophia lavender, 420 plants, just as the new replacements arrived from Cottage Gardens… Read more »
Farming and Politics Farmers have always been independent, grassroots kind of people, at least the farmers that I grew up with, and this meant that they were almost always Republican. It also left them wide open when Nixon’s administration pushed to cut the hedgerows, plow everything, get big. Many of the farmers I knew had… Read more »
Photo by Norma Churchill. Family walking Jesse and Lisa's First Light Farm fields. Jesse on the far right. Lisa cooking!
Evolution of Farming: Young Farmers and Community Young farmers are an evolution of the ones I grew up with, although they share that bone deep love of the earth. My father farmed; my grandfather farmed; my great grandfather, too. My brother said that once farming gets into your soul, it is there for good. Is… Read more »
When I saw the recent missed call on my cell phone, I grew worried. I had just spoken with my sister Judy several hours before. Something must have happened. I didn’t reach her until late in the afternoon. “I received the first payment,” she said. “The farm is gone.” We knew this was coming. I… Read more »
Some of the Demeter certified product which is becoming more and more available, including at Whole foods. Yesterday Donald and I attended the National Heirloom Expo at the Santa Rosa, CA, fairgrounds and sat in on two Demeter seminars. The room was packed in the seminar in which Grover Stock and Erik Ohlsen of Permaculture… Read more »
Lavender after harvest. Quail use mounds as lookouts while supervising chicks. This is Lot Natalie. After two weeks of daily distillation, Donald is weary of it! Still, we have at least three or four days to go. The oil is as intense and sweet as ever, each lot number (or location) the unique essence of… Read more »
Find your sense of place again by reading Snakes! Leaping Goat Press has just released a second edition of my first novel Snakes, originally published in 2011 by il piccolo editions, Fisher King Press. It has a new cover described in an earlier post. As I have re-edited the book, I realize how much the writing of the story has formed my writing sense of self…. Read more »
© 2024 Patricia Damery.
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