Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program
There’s always something that needs tending to on the farm. Sometimes in our commitment to get it all done, we forget to slow down and appreciate the experiences that are happening all around us. As the summer months begin to wane, we’re reminding ourselves to celebrate these precious moments. In this spirit, our blog post this week  is a compilation of journal writings by one of our farm stipend program participants during the month of June.

By M.

We harvested a large flat of snap beans that were cooked to perfection. Ate for breakfast, too! Can’t wait for honey from nukes for toast! Watched the supervisors take harvested produce and prepare it with such care, the ready to sell products look better than any store prepared salad mixes! They are better for you, too and fresh! Prepared cut fresh flowers and this was a nice combination with vegetable gardens as it was creative and fun! Look forward to working next week with all the girls and reaping rewards, eating good stuff!

Lots of weeding, market harvesting and flowers, too! This week was a lot of beautiful arrangements for June weddings, watching the harvest from seed to sale.  This whole system was well run, I was proud to have had the opportunity to participate in any way. The produce is so perfect, I hope they will enter a contest for the quality and beauty as the supervisors are deserving of a prize!  Not only do they look great, they taste awesome!  I cooked beets for the first time, just could not wait until they were used in a recipe by the girls…

Garden is very plentiful and again pleasing to the eyes. I had the pleasure of enjoying fried green tomatoes for the first time.  One of the girls made a huge batch from the green tomatoes from the garden! They also made zucchini that was excellent! Cut fresh flowers and had fun making “fresh potpourri” with lavender, mint and other fragrant arrangements.

This week was nice to exercise a little more freedom in the garden picking out fresh veggies for dishes and arranging my own flowers. I enjoyed that the most so far.  Almost forgot… I bought a large cheese pizza and used fresh vegetables to make it an awesome pesto chicken pizza.

New girls joining in. We cut flowers for arrangements for the house. This was peaceful, sitting, talking, and arranging flowers. The flowers to go to market were all picture perfect. Made another great dish with green beans.  It was a great beef stir fry. Plan on using blackberries in something, perhaps cobblers… This week I may look into a holistic approach to minor ailments in the BDVP garden.  Lots of herbs and remedies to be found out there.

This post is part of a series written by survivors of domestic violence who are participating in our farm stipend project.