Man in Overalls

  With this Arctic blast headed our way, I wanted to share a quick note with a couple resources. ​ Growing Year 'Round - video ​ ​ What To Do When It Freezes (pdf) ​ ​The main takeaways are: Most cool season crops should be fine; they'll freeze, thaw, and keep growing. It's the warm season crops growing out of season you have to worry about like... tomatoes, peppers... Make sure your soil is good and moist before the freeze; this prevents dehydration burn turn off your irrigation Friday evening so it doesn't run early morning Sat/Sunday when your plants are still frozen because "flash thawing" will hurt even the freeze-tolerant crops ​In parting, here are a few cool season crops that are more tender than the rest and may benefit from extra care (see What To Do When It Freezes) beyond watering the soil cilantro, parsley, celery, dill, fennel, nasturtium. ​Stay warm out there! As needed & helpful, our team looks forward to future opportunities to support you

There's something about coming out of the cold, darkness of winter into the warm light of spring that swells our sense of the possible, and so spring is - universally- the most popular gardening season. And for good measure: potatoes, tomatoes , squash, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans, pumpkins, melons and all those other frost-tender crops thrive in the early spring warmth - before the onslaught of heat and pests to come. :) Probably for this reason, as a kid, I only ever grew a spring garden, 10 years running from 8 'till I graduated and left home for college at 18. I started in March, just after the threat of frost had past and seeded seeds and planted plants in beds that I'd banked in leaves over the summer and winter to keep the weeds down and build up the organic matter. Now, that's not a bad thing to do if you need a break, but truth is, I just didn't know that we  could  grow 12 months a year in the Deep South. I didn't know The Game of Gardening Season

Time to put on your overalls. If you've been waiting for a good opportunity to start growing food, now's the time. If you already know how, it's time you started extra seeds so you can get them to friends, family, neighbors, and strangers. And it's time you start posting and otherwise sharing your grocery growing hacks with anyone interested. Right now, food shortages are largely a phantom of over-buying and everyone stocking up, but with the spread of this disease, a decentralized food system is a resilient food system, a disease resistant food system. Not even in the aftermath of 2008 has a home garden looked so good. Not to mention, in the face of disease, health is paramount. My co-worker said, "What's terrifying and yet strangely beautiful about the current situation is that it reveals the amazing power of nature to grow and spread. But that same power is available to us"-- to heal, to grow, to feed. Time for us to grow a better future. In t

“Why I Wear Overalls?”  or, more simply,  “Remember” 9. My grandfather was buried in overalls. His children placed seed packets in his breast pocket before they planted him. My mother, her bowed head dropping tears on his cold face, She tells me “He never wore a suit.” “Overalls everyday of his life.  Wore ‘em to church.” “Ain’t that the truth,” chimes my aunt.  “Clean shirt. Maybe some other shoes.” And my mother again: “Just didn’t make any sense burying him in a tie.” 8. Five days prior my grandmother was reselling Salvation Army china at the flea market. Granddaddy was waiting to go home. She found him slumped in the front seat of her van; Doctors said he’d had a stroke. I say, he caught a ride from St Peter back to the farm. 7. For decades he carried an inhaler. It helped him cope with the emphysema, earned, like his calluses, from a one-mule plow.  He carried the land in his lungs like gulps of oxygen. Every now and then, he required another breath.

Thank you! Team Overalls just grew past $100k in annual revenue! We're on track to 2x the highest top-line # we've ever made! It's not all about the money, but it's worth taking a pause to celebrate and to offer thanks in recognition of this threshold of success because it notes a potential that, in all honesty, I never considered these humble Overalls held. Here’s to a great cloud of supporters & encouragers, co-workers, customers, & collaborators. First up a word of thanks to my team: Valerie Herrmann & Don Justice who have joined me in the work of helping others grow their groceries; also here's to Cecil DiChiara, who has been my right-hand-apprentice growing the seeds of our Overalls Farm in my own backyard. These 3 have had my back, shoveled my shovel, & brought their sharp minds to the Overalls table. If you haven't already, you'll likely meet them in the months to come. We are also indebted, gratefully, to our customers. Fro

10 years ago, last night - as recorded in my journal ... - "I couldn't sleep all night long because I was up thinking about this food gardening business idea. I settled on a few things: a name and a branded persona ("Man in Overalls") as well as a few ideas on how to use such a persona and business as a food movement platform and how to make food gardening demand viral." - A few months before, once I had decided to focus my efforts on launching a food gardening biz, I concluded that of the three pillars necessary for successful biz (product, books, and marketing), I was comfortable with the first two, but how to market? How to arrange for customers to come a calling? I had not a clue. Thus it was in this all-nighter idea-storm 10 years ago that I was suddenly released like water finding a crack in a dam. - It all started with the idea about a cardboard sign. (Well, it really started with my grandfather who lived everyday of his life in overalls,