After a long cold winter, spring is in the air. Hurray!

Spring brings all the best springy things.

Things like being outside for starters. And not scraping ice off your windshield. And the color green suddenly becoming part of your daily life! And getting pink sun kissed cheeks when your pale winter skin first sees the light of day after months and months of being caged up under 300 layers of clothing all winter. But most importantly (excitably?) with the spring comes garden planning!

And let me tell you – Garden planning and planting has begun!

Last year we expanded and upgraded our garden area. We added a fence (hello and goodbye, critters), built some wooden trellises, and Keno started relocating some huge rocks boulders from one area of the yard to over by the gardens where he is constructing a rock wall to edge a flower bed.

In the past, we’ve had a long run with deer, rabbits, and other such things eating our hard work. However, in 2020 (although it was for the most part a year with quite a lot NOT going as planned) it was, excitingly, one of the most successful years of gardening we’ve had in many years.

For food and flowers!

It was very exciting.

So needless to say, we’re all hands on deck getting ready for (hopefully!) another successful year of growing food and flowers for the people and not the hungry little eager beavers outside.

Keno (Tom if you’re new here) is spearheading the vegetable department and Coo (Diana) is taking the reins on the flowers. I’ve been mostly taking photos, interjecting opinions, and labeling the ID tags (arguably the most important part, I mean right?!! How else are we going to know what’s what?)

We planted over 1000 seeds. Fifteen flats total, three flats of veggies and twelve with flowers. Keno planted tomatoes, broccoli, peppers, herbs, brussells sprouts. He plans to plant one more flat later on in the season for things like cuccumbers and the like.

Coo planted SO many flowers. Calendula, zinnea, statice, cosmos, cleome, astors, moonflowers, phlox, black eyed susans, snapdragons, petunias, larkspur, tickseed, geraniums, and more.

Now to figure out where we’ll put all of these seeds outside once they’re baby starts… but between the yards at their house and mine I think we’ll figure it out! Right..? No, we will…

We’ve got a whole set up with lights and heating mats and the whole shebang. Feeling very professional! Although, not as professional as they (Coo and Keen) used to be. They (we for this article) used to grow veggies for a living.

In 1976-77 Keno worked on the Wholesale Food Market on South Water Street in Chicago. That’s where we got the idea to grow veggies for a living. Keno asked, “If we grew zucchini, would you buy it?” They said, “Yes, but only if it was of high quality.”

At that point we pivoted and got to work.

1978 was the first year of our farming adventure. That first year, we only grew zucchini. The zucchini were all grown in an old horse pasture. It was a good situation and a bad situation. The plants were huge and we could barely keep up. We bought 10,000 10-pound lug cardboard boxes with wire pop-out handles. They were all the exact same size and the zucchini had to be extremely consistent to fit inside the boxes.

At that point, we were wholesaling to Bobby Golden and Keno was driving the zucchini down to sell them at the Wholesale Food Market in Chicago.

The next year we diversified. We started growing on 5 acres of land and growing tomatoes, green beans, okra, peppers, eggplant, zucchini, cucumbers, a lot spinach, and many different herbs.

Starting that year, in 1979, we started selling on Saturday mornings at the Dane County Farmers Market in Madison on Capitol Square. Our booth was on Pinckney Street right in front of L’Etoile. We would pick the veggies all day Friday, stay up all night long Friday night cleaning veggies and then we’d head off to market very early on Saturday morning to set up our booth and sell.

Odessa Piper, the founder of L’Etoile, used walk around with a kids wagon to buy produce from us and neighboring vendors. She would shop for the restaurant and get whatever looked good that day. L’Etoile is a pioneering farm-to-table restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin. Piper established L’Etoile in 1976 and ran it for 30 years.

We grew veggies together and truck farmed from 1978-1982. During that time, in addition to the Saturday morning market, we also sold to the Willy Street Co-op, Mifflin Street Co-op, Brennan’s Market, Whole Earth, Greenleaf Grocery, and the downstairs (mostly student) co-op on Langdon Street.

We grew all organic food. Organic was a fairly new term at that time and we were often asked what being organic even meant. We answered many questions about what organic food was and what it wasn’t.

Our son, Parrish, was born in 1977 and in 1981 we moved our family to Edmund, WI. In Edmund, we grew veggies for one more year on a plot of rented land. Keno drove into Madison that last year before we both stopping growing veggies and starting pursuing a different career together as full time potters.

1981 was last year we grew veggies for the Saturday morning Dane County Farmers Market and the Wednesday market at Hilldale Mall in Madison. By 1982, we were making and selling pottery full time out of our home and studio in Edmund. Claire was born in 1984.

In 1989, we opened our first gallery in Mineral Point and by 1991 our family of four was all living full-time in the brewery here in Mineral Point.

Anyway, happy spring! (and happy growing if you’re planting a garden this year too)

Until next time,
Claire (and Coo & Keen)