This Week...

This week we are going to have the garden area turned and put up our greenhouse, then fill it with our plant starts. Almost all of our seeds have come from Sow True Seeds, and everything we've started so far is growing like crazy! The basil is young and delicious, the cukes have begun reaching up for the light with their little tendrils and everything else is waiting to be transplanted into larger pots before they find their place in the garden.

After the garden is turned we will have our organic compost delivered and till it into the beds, then begin the great fun of mulching and planting. We can't wait. We will also build our potato boxes and purchase our row cover material to keep the bugs and critters out, as well as finish the compost pile(s).

What We're Growing This Year...

Purple Basil, Genovese Basil, Lemon Basil, Sacred Basil, Garlic Chives, Italian Parsley, Summer Thyme, Greek Oregano, Chamomile, Sunflowers, a wide variety of flowers including Nasturtium, Calendula, Aster, Coneflower, Daisy, Cosmos, Marigolds and many more, Rattlesnake Pole beans, Royal Burgundy beans, Cherokee Wax beans, Black Turtle beans, Black Beauty Squash, Ronde De Nice Squash, Early Summer Golden Crookneck Squash, Calabrese Broccoli, DiCiccio Broccoli, Red and Green Cabbages, a variety of lettuces such as Green Oakleaf and Cimarron Romaine, Leeks, Spinach, Collards, California Wonder Peppers, New Mexico Big Jim Hot Peppers, Cherry Tomato, Yellow Pear Tomato, Cherokee Purple Tomato, Snow White Tomato, Sundrop Tomato, Brown Cherry Tomato, Green Zebra Tomato, Tomatillos, Clemson Spineless and Red Burgundy Okra, Scarlet Nantes and Tendersweet Carrots, Melons, Fingerling Potatoes, Yellow and Red Potatoes, more…

Howdy!

Welcome to Stella's Veggie Ranch! This is our first year growing produce and producing art in Asheville, North Carolina and taking it to some of the various farmer's markets in and around our great city. We, by the way, are Chris and Cynthia and we live on old cattle pastureland with our two dogs, Stella Blue and Miles. This year we are farming about an acre, and hope to expand in the future once we get ourselves established.

Additionally, we are both artists who will be bringing samples of our wares with us, including original watercolors, hand-painted books of poetry and prose, photography, jewelery and many more hopefully interesting items.

We decided at the last minute to offer a very limited number of CSA subscriptions in order to raise some of the capital necessary to get fully underway. If you don't know, a CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which is a way to connect the consumer to the farmer, with each committing to a seasonal contract. We, as farmers, grow a variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers sustainably without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. You, as member of a CSA, purchase a share of the season’s harvest in advance. From late May to early October you get a box of freshly harvested produce from the farm every week.

The CSA arrangement helps the farmer with spring start-up costs including seeds, materials and equipment, and in return it allows the member to relax and enjoy the food that is delivered during the growing season. The CSA connects the member, first hand, to the ups and downs of their food production as well as keeping them more in touch with the seasonal offerings from the garden. When a share is purchased, the member accepts the risk of crop failure along with the farmer. However, by planting a wide variety of produce and careful crop rotation, the risk is lessened considerably.

We'd like to offer our thanks to those brave souls and good friends who took us up on our offer and we hope to provide them and our customers at the markets with the very finest veggies we can wrangle here at The Ranch.

We'll be posting pictures regularly to mark our progress and keep everyone informed!