2012 was start of the Mortroski Midcentury Urban Farm. We broke ground on St. Patrick’s Day, with one raised bed crammed full of the crops we thought we could handle: bell peppers, mild jalapeño peppers, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, radicchio, and a bit of lettuce. We didn’t know that we’d accidentally plant Ghost Peppers (naga bhut jolokia), the world’s hottest peppers. And we didn’t know that we were starting the garden about a month too late for the Texas weather.

Over the course of the summer we expanded. We now have three raised beds and two stock tanks and plan to add another raised bed and stock tank this spring.

What we didn’t know, we learned. And we learned that even if we knew, we didn’t. Even when we asked how to do something better, the most seasoned Texas gardeners would often shrug their shoulders and say, “I dunno, the weather’s the problem.” Or cabbage worm. Or squash borer. It’s really a combo of science, hard work, and miracles that anything grows here at all.

Our 2012 harvests were pretty good—certainly better than I expected since I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe it was naiveté. Maybe it was dumb luck. Not sure, but we’ve kept it up and even on December 30, 2012, we’re harvesting.Yesterday it was collards, mixed salad greens, and kale. And it snowed on Christmas and has been below freezing for at least 4 days. Today it was finally nice enough to uncover the farm.

We’ve been boring our Facebook friends with photos and updates on the urban farm for long enough so we decided to bring the adventures in gardening here. And we’ve decided to take gardening to another level and start sowing sees instead of purchasing transplants. We’ll let you know how that goes, but fingers crossed, it will go as well as this fall’s seed crops (mixed salad greens, baby bok choi, beets, carrots).

And then we decided that we needed another challenge and bought ourselves a sewing machine. We start our first sewing class next weekend. You’ll hear about that too.

It’s hard for us to be quiet about stuff that gets us riled. So, you’ll hear about whatever that ends up being too.

Thanks for reading!