Meadows & Long Grasses

Here at HollyHedge, we have been slowing our wheels… our lawn mower wheels.  We have made a point of growing our grasses longer, giving more time between mows and we couldn’t be happier with the results. 

Interested in biodiversity & helping our native species along, the unmowed ranges have really started to boast a beautiful array of grasses and flowers, highlighting each one at different times of the years.   The spring lawns brought forth blooms of bluets & spring beauties nestled in shaded mossy grasses while violets jumped out for the sun in our open spaces. 

A little later, the heal-all bloomed in the open sun too.

Blue-eyed grasses flowered (tiny blue flowers atop their short stems),

followed by deptford pinks, scattered across the property.

Even a healthy colony of wild strawberries have cropped up, nestled in the long grasses that will become our summer meadows.

The spring rains give way to summer sun & the meadows show that they have matured.  Repeated years (this is our third year) of letting the grasses grow have helped the various species become truly established. 

Beard-tongues & ox eye daisies have spread, cropping up in new places.  

The grasses are thicker and taller, creating the right environment for new native species to move in.

 Milkweed & false sunflowers have made their first appearance on the property this year and its only June!  We look forward to black-eyed susans, trefoils and tick seeds.

The benefits of our long grass & meadow project is many fold; we are contributing to our goals of sustainability by decreasing gas consumption, increasing biodiversity & wildlife habitat on the property, & reducing soil erosion & water runoff.  Our grassy endevours also contribute to our constant aim of making Holly Hedge a spectacular setting for weddings.  In addition to the gardens & ponds, towering trees, & historic stone buildings, the meadows now offer visitors yet another blissful setting to fondly remember a special day.

HollyHedge Keeps Growing

We started this growing season with good planning and pretty good luck. The spring rains were plentiful, often teetering on excessive. Despite some loss to wetness, we still managed a good harvest.

The spring garden was planted with leeks, peas... turnips & cabbages... & fennel... all ending up in the kitchen & on plates. In addition, this year we also experimented with onion sets, spinach & arugula.

Crowns of asparagus planted 2 years prior, offered their first delicious spears in May (asparagus requires a year or two to get established before harvesting). Our summer plantings, however, encountered quite the set back. Although fending off the critters is an annual struggle, this year was a particularly disheartening one. Cat birds feasted on blueberries despite our netting. Groundhogs & rabbits devoured our peas despite our fences & row cover. Pumpkins, squash, beans, broccoli raab, broccoli & parsley fell victim. Even hot pepper plants felt the sharp tooth of the hungry rodent. This certainly reinforced the idea that a diverse garden improves the chances of a successful garden.
While blueberries were eaten, our raspberry crop was beautiful. Though we haven't a single pumpkin plant left, the tomatoes have once again yielded more than the chefs could imagine. Even the cucumbers managed to inundate out baskets for a few weeks. Garlic continues to prove to be unpalatable to our garden fauna. Many herbs also seem to harbor those essential oils that rabbits just don't care for. And as of now, we have a promising apple crop hanging in the orchard.
Much of our summer successes also heavily relied upon our watering system; the rains didn't seem to frequent us as much as they did in the spring. Saying it was dry is an understatement. Each year, we seek to manage & refine our watering system, striving for efficiency and resourcefulness. Negotiating an irrigation system is plenty of work, and involves maintaining a balance between what is coming out of the ground and what is going back into the ground.

Ben finds himself watering each bed as it is needed & having the sustainable resource at hand to do so. We like to keep in mind that, in a way, the water the garden demands is the same water that offers showers at the inn, washes dishes after a wedding, or simply quenches our thirst.
Though on hot dry days, dragging water lines around is nothing short of hard work, we rejoice in what the sun offers. This July, our solar panels have provided our biggest solar output to date & we've just harvested grapes that thrive under abundant sun.

Maple Sugaring

Maple sugaring commenced early this year at HollyHedge. After having taken a year off to make sure the trees were healthy, we, quite coincidentally, decided to start when we were almost out of syrup, literally down to the last bottle from two years ago. We had also been taking note of the temperature dipping below freezing at night & staying above freezing during the day... ideal conditions for collecting.

So on a sunny February afternoon, we set forth with our bundle of tools...

...and for three weeks thereafter collected the sap daily. Though the sap flow started off slowly, day-time temperatures climbed and yields increased. Sap flow peaked in late February with a steady run that was producing around 10 gallons of sap a day from our 8 trees. While this video surely doesn't capture the excitement we felt during our daily collections ("How much will there be today?!"), it does show the slow but steady way trees deliver their sap.

After a little over 3 weeks, we had collected a total of 84 gallons of crystal clear sap.

It was time to get cooking but this time, with all the knowledge we had gained from two years before. We chose a quiet day and took advantage of the big range that was usually used for feeding hungry guests. With 6 burners and two LARGE shallow pots, we were evaporating faster than we could have imagined, transforming crystal clear sap into brilliant gold syrup.

Although still a lengthy process, we had cut cooking time down by more than half & ended up with a beautiful reward for our efforts, a subtle, fragrant, soul-warming maple syrup.

Then time for the final test, pancakes.

Maple sugaring is a tradition available to few geographical ranges where sugar maples grow. While this is only our second time maple sugaring, much joy was taken by the simple process of repeating what can be an annual event, a seasonal joy only available during a time when it seems spring will never come.

The Fall Season

Hay bales… check
Mums… check
Mother-nature’s yearly transformation of color… ... check
Our property was almost an autumn wonderland.
All that was left... pumpkin pick-up day (our favorite)! This year, like years gone by, we went to Penn Vermont Fruit Farms, with a big pickup truck & bought 850 lbs of pumpkins. We really love to support local farms and are fortunate to have such a great network of growers in the area. Along with local decorations, we keep our food pantry stocked with plenty of what the season has to offer, apples, from an orchard just down the road at Manoff Market Gardens. From the spring to the fall, they have kept the kitchen supplied with fresh seasonal fruit.
This fall, we refocused on a few tasks, making revisions to some projects already underway and finishing up others started in the summer.
Learning as we go, some projects inevitably require some changes. While our composting process is working well, its location left some desires. We wanted to make an effort to cut down on driving these machines carrying composting materials across the property. With that in mind, we relocated the new compost pile just off our secondary parking lot. Not only does the new location save time & reduce gas consumption, it keeps our vehicles on previously established roads, thereby saving our fields from erosion.
(Driving repeatedly across grassy areas not only kills the grass, it compacts the soil, making it harder for other plants to get started. Then water run-off starts following the path, leading to further erosion. A steeply sloped hill, like the one we are located on, speeds up the soil erosion process substantially.)
With the pile more accessible, we can turn it more regularly, which speeds up the composting process. Lastly, we made a number of compost bins, allowing for piles in different stages of decomposition.

Our summer chicks grew fast and needed a new home, but where to start?
With the mindset of conserving, we save lots of materials that could “be used for something.” This goal of reuse has left us with a few piles of offcuts & leftovers, which from afar, don’t look like much. However, with a little creativity & imagination, they can really turn into a fun & functional project.
Using old fence posts as the foundation... ...our scrap piles slowly erected a house... ...complete with recycled doors & windows. Leftover from our pond overhaul, thick black rubber (pond liner) covers the roof. Temporarily, this serves a as a waterproof roofing, but in the spring, we hope install a living roof. The black plastic will serve as a liner for a garden that will be planted on top of the coop. The only lumber we bought were 3 sheets of plywood and four 2x6s, used on the roof; a strong roof is required to support the garden that will be living on it. Now all we need is that first egg!

The Rain Barrel & Water Conservation

The initiative behind out rain barrel project is to move away from pumping water from a well & instead, collect rain water; this water is used to irrigate the vegetable garden, our fruit trees and eventually, the rest of the gardens here at HollyHedge. We even keep the water bowls full in the barn yard! Because such a large quantity of water can be consumed here during events of up to 200 people at a time, we are making a concentrated effort to conserve water wherever we can.

So far, we have installed a 1550 gallon barrel at the back of the tractor barn. A hose connects the barrel to the drip irrigation lines that we have set up in the vegetable garden. Gravity, water pressure & manually opening the water line are the basics of the system; no electricity (nor fuel) is required to operate the system.

The drip irrigation lines slowly deliver water to the roots of the plants.Water isn’t wasted on surrounding soil (or weeds) and you lose a lot less to evaporation. The combination of mulch (be it straw, leaves, woodchips or black plastic) with the drip irrigation maximizes the effectiveness of the water. Using water efficiently doesn’t just cut back on wasted water. Keeping plant leaves dry also helps prevent diseases in the garden.

As we’ve mentioned repeatedly, it was a hot, dry summer. With such infrequent rains to fill the barrel, one barrel proved not to be enough during a dry season. We would like to implement more rain barrels throughout HollyHedge to capture rain from other roofs. It is important to note that the water collected is runoff that would otherwise be diverted off the property. Even with this recent summer, efficient water use helped this garden flourish.

Summer Crops

The spring heat carried through into the summer months. Excessive hot weather usually means watering is inevitable. Calculated irrigation & mulch played a key role in keeping our plants healthy & prolific.This summer, like the summer before, we grew our staple crops... heirloom & cherry tomatoes... zucchini, eggplant, jalapenos & herbs in addition to a few new vegetables... tomatillos, purple string beans & a medley of hot peppers. (Visit Cross Country Nurseries, a great local farm that specializes in hot pepper plants.)The cucumbers were especially prolific, so we made pickles, relishes and, of course, used them fresh.There was a lot of excitement over the Asian Pear tree this year. Not only did it bear fruit, we managed to keep the squirrels from getting to it & earned a beautiful harvest!Mid-July also brought us chicks. In an attempt to help supply the kitchen with eggs for breakfast, we rescued 2 chicks from a shelter and bought 6 more locally. Fric, Frac, Sally, Lola, Cecelia, Corrina, Eleanor & Roxanne are all growing up, their first eggs expected late fall.

Lastly, our edible flower project has been going well. Short of a wedding or two, we managed to supply the kitchen with enough edible flowers for each dinner or salad plate.

Spring Crops

This spring's harvest was certainly challenged by the early heat. Unlike last year's endless rainy days, this spring was much drier.

Despite the hot weather, our sugar snap peas (strategically planted under the filtered light of an old ash tree) were a delightful spring success, a whopping 68 lbs. The plants grew almost as tall as last year, making us glad we also experimented with a shorter variety. Perhaps next year, we will not have to pick on our tip-toes. From plant to plate, the kitchen was supplied from the end of May through the end of June with a fresh & crunchy vegetable.

We experimented a little more with radishes & greens in hopes of having early cool weather crops and were thrilled with the bright red radishes & 2 varieties of kale.This year, the blueberries came early, thanks to the heat. However, our harvest was noticeably less than prior years, making us glad we had planted six beds this past fall... ... six new beds we hope will provide fresh berries for the kitchen & the birds for years to come. Once again, as tradition carries, as our harvest petered off, we turned the remainder of our crop over to the birds. You are welcome Catbirds.

The raspberries were ushered in early with the heatwave, thriving in the heat. Without lots of spring rains, the raspberries could sit & ripen without worries of rotting. We used some fresh in the kitchen, but kept a tidy quantity to make jam & vinaigrette dressing later.