Beach Patterns

Chris is always exploring the details of patterns found in nature. Here are some shots from one of the Pacific Ocean beaches at Olympic National Park, Washington.

What's For Sale?

Chris still has a few slots open for those who want to sign up to buy vegetables from now, through fall and winter.

Call him at 221-0430 or email 90acres@whidbey.com.

The two regular pick-up days are:
Thursdays from 4 – 6 pm
Saturdays from 10 am – 12 pm

If you cannot come on one of those two days, Chris can make other arrangements with you. He can schedule a pick-up on another day, or orient you to the garden so you can come and harvest your own food, and note what you picked on a ledger pad he will keep in the shed. You can pay in advance and buy down your credit, or note what you take and he will invoice you at the end of the month.

Here is is current list of fantastic organic/biodynamic veggies: 

Lettuce

Lettuce Mix

Diakon radish

Mustard

Spinach - is going crazy!

Snow Peas

Sugar snap Peas

Carrots - (let me know if you want some, I have them at my home garden)

Kale (three different varieties)

Swiss Chard

Bok Choy

Potatoes

Patty Pan Squash

Zucchini

Parsley

Cutting Celery

CeleryKohlrabi

Cauliflowers, Broccoli & Cabbages in the next week or so.

Gardening Class: Demystifying Biodynamic Gardening

Sunday, September 16
From 12 – 2pm

Where:
Market Garden at the Anderson Farm, the corner of Fairgrounds Road and Al Anderson Avenue (next to the Langley Community Garden P-patch)

Most gardening and farming practices use material inputs (npk) when trying to improve plant health. Biodynamic farming and gardening takes into consideration the interconnectedness of all life in and around the farm and garden, with the understanding that we are looking for living nutrients when we want to grow nutritional food for people.

Chris Korrow will explore these relationships and how they make a difference in plant health and soil fertility. Topics such as companion planting, plant spacing, micronutrients, planting though the seasons, biodynamic compost, how to deal with early bolting, and the connection between water, soil and temperature will also be discussed.

$15 includes biodynamic preparations that you can take home and use in your own garden!

For more information email 90acres@whidbey.com or call 221-0430.

Preregistration requested, there is room for a limited number of participants.

Chris is developing a membership garden for those who want to buy produce from now through winter (he will focus on fall and winter production). More info will be available, or you can sign up at the event. Vegetables will be available for sale at the class.

Biodynamic Preps and Giant Potato Plants

—Christy Korrow

Chris is charged up about his market garden. He is on track to have crops for sale beginning in early October, and hopes to supply customers through the winter. His plan is to create a membership garden—somewhere between a farm stand and a CSA.

He likes the idea of people becoming members at a $50 fee. It gives him the security of knowing he has a dedicated customer base. It will also give the customers more flexibility than a CSA—more choice of variety, how much they want to spend, and flexibility time-wise. He hopes he can orient people to the garden to the point where they can even go in and harvest on their own, and write down what they take in a note book, using an honor-based credit system.

He has a few members already and the space is limited, so email him if you’re interested!

He can’t believe how well the vegetables are doing. The potato plants are the biggest he’s ever grown—waist-high. He planted a local variety that our friend has been growing on the Chinook land for many years. Squash and eggplants are also bigger than we've ever seen. Healthy, too!

The peas are harvested, shelled and in the freezer!

Chris feels that the plot is performing so well in large part due to the amount of biodynamic preparations he has used—particularly the Pfeiffer Compost Starter and its effects on the horse manure he used. We have also done two sprayings of horn manure, one barrel compost, and we used compost preparations in the pile. Chris also did some spraying of fermented horse tail tea that we made last fall, as a preventative for mold.

I am behind on spraying silica, but am committed to doing at least two in August and early September. I just purchased a unit of BD #501 gold, this is horn silica with potentized gold mixed in! I also have my own homemade silica prep, made from the crystals on our farm back in Kentucky.

Our horns are still buried in the garden. I need to check those in the next day or so. Normally one would dig them up in early June, but with the cool Northwest spring, they were still green inside. I wrote to Hugh Courtney, my friend and colleague from the Josephine Porter Institute and asked his thoughts on leaving the horns in the ground. He replied, “Remember that Steiner says of the BD #500 (horn manure) that they can be left in the ground until you are ready to use them. (Not so for BD #501 (horn silica), because leaving them in over the winter totally changes the forces picture in a Sensitive Crystallization test as Harvey Lisle demonstrated to both of us once upon a time.) So summer forces do not affect BD #500, and the daily in breath of the Earth is akin to the winter forces needed to transform BD #500.”

Chris is planning to do a class soon. Email him if you want to be notified when one is scheduled!

Upper Langley Co-Housing Neighborhood Site Plan

 Our site plan is well underway and heading toward finalization.

Learn more about this project to create a green, affordable co-housing neighborhood in Langley, Washington that will be accessible to low-income residents.

Chris Sells Vegetables in Langley!

Chris planted quite a few trials this summer, testing varieties in preparation for a commercial scale market garden that will serve neighborhood customers beginning in early October, continuing through the winter.

He had enough excess cauliflower and cabbage to set up a table yesterday at the Second Street Market in downtown Langley.

It was a great chance for Chris to begin to share the news of the new Market Garden at the Anderson Farm, located at the corner of Al Anderson Ave and Fairgrounds Road.

 His plan is to create a membership-based garden, somewhere in between retail sales and a CSA. He is looking for a committed group of about 25 customers who will join the garden for a one-time fee, this will entitle members to purchase produce during regular weekly hours, or they can come and harvest on an honor-based system, once oriented to the garden.

Only organic and biodynamic agricultural practices are used.

If you would like more information, please call 221-0430 or email Chris at 90acres@whidbey.com.

Solstice Honey Bees Part Two: Chris tries out his new lens

Photos by Chris Korrow, June 20, 2012. Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS with a 2X teleconverter.

Solstice Bees

Photos courtesy of Cary Peterson

After work on the day of the Summer Solstice, Chris innocently stopped to say hello to our friend Cary. She is the head gardener and volunteer coordinator at the Good Cheer Food Bank Garden.

She pointed out that a huge swarm of honey bees had just landed in a nearby tree.

Chris was able to throw together a bee suit, and Cary had a spare hive body.

Once the branch was cut and the bees laid in the box, the rest of the swarm slowly made their way into the hive.

Friends patiently made sure each bee was safely inside. No one was stung!

After the bees were safely captured, Chris made sure he got some close-up footage. Take a look at his pictures here.

The bees were driven to their new home at the Langley Community Garden on the Anderson Farm.

The Organic Bug Book...coming soon!

Update, April 2013--the book is at the printer and will be available in early May!

Chris is putting the finishing touches on his full color children's book, The Organic Bug Book (forthcoming from SteinerBooks). The book is based on his documentary Garden Insects and it is the story of his relationship with bugs interspersed with facts about insects.

The text has been through a final edit, and the last images are being converted to CMYK!

We will keep you posted as to the exact date of publication!

Chris's New Farming Adventure!

—Christy Korrow

Exciting news from Chris! After relocating from Kentucky, our home for the last 20 years, we have been warmly welcomed by the wonderful community of Langley, on south Whidbey Island, Washington. We had not planned to farm commercially here on Whidbey, though we knew we would still be growing a large family garden.

After being here just a short time, Chris had three people offer him farmland where he could develop a market garden. The offer was too good to pass by! In December, we bought him a one-way ticket to Kentucky, where he rented a large Budget rental truck, loaded up our tractor, bush hog, front end loader and Italian spading machine, braved the icy mountain roads, hauling the equipment back to Whidbey.

Fast forward to the first day of spring...

A hot box is now built up against the rental house where we live, filled with seed flats-- flowers, brassicas, early tomatoes and herbs.


Chris will be developing a 1/3 acre market garden in the city limits of Langley, on the property of the Anderson Family Farm. Dorothy is the third generation to tend this family farm. The farm is home to the Langely Community Garden, beginning its third year. Twenty families/individuals each tend an 18 x 18 foot plot. There is also a group who manages a small herd of milk goats, another group who raises chickens and there is a heifer and a young steer being raised for beef. Compared to running our own farm, it is a welcome change, and such an honor to have the opportunity to participate in this kind of community run farm, where many hands make light work.

The ground is about turned, and I just sprayed the first barrel compost on the soil, to celebrate the first day of spring and to welcome in Persephone's return.


The field is a sandy loam, with predominantly rhizome grass, which will be determined to keep growing, even after it has been plowed up. Chris is going to plant cover crops this spring, and plans to get the vegetables going later in the summer. The growing season is quite long here, and though the winters are quite dark, the temperatures remain mild, making it easy to grow into an extended summer season, fall and on into winter time. Our spinach patch thrived uncovered all winter, as did our cabbages. The vegetables don't grow much during the winter, but they hold well. It seems similar to what we are used to with our winter growing in Kentucky.

The land is on the corner of two somewhat well-traveled roads. Chris is planning to keep marketing simple, and by word of mouth, people will know that he is there in the field on certain days of the week. Maybe we'll try an honor system farm stand as well.

I honestly have to say I have mixed feelings about selling food again after so many years. On one hand, I am firmly committed to local food security, I believe it is one of the most important necessary social deeds for our time. I am also keenly aware of the continuing price disparity between what we pay for food on the grocery store shelves, and what kind of price a farmer can ask for vegetables so that he or she can actually come close to making a living wage. The joy of knowing we will be producing food for the community, the excitement of experimenting in a new climate where daylight goes on until after 9pm in the summer, to grow food in the city limits of a town, and be part of such an active community farm are the thoughts I am holding onto for now....

Chris to Read His Children's Story at South Whidbey Libraries

Come and hear Chris read from his adventurous children's story, "A Dragon Rose," the tale of a fearless knight who, while on a quest to slay a dragon, happens upon someone, both strange and unexpected.

The story won first prize in the children's literature category in the 2011 Spirit of Writing Contest sponsored by The Whidbey Island Writers Association.

He along with some of the other award winning writers will be reading at libraries in South Whidbey over the next few weeks.

Thursday January 12th 7pm Langley
Saturday January 14th 10:30am Clinton
Thursday January 25th 7pm Freeland