Pizza!

Blackrock has been providing produce for 50 Local in downtown Kennebunk since they opened.  It has been an honor to grow vegetables for them, and as a small business it is truly special to see a restaurant dedicated to purchasing its food from only local sources.  

Now David and Merilee have opened a new brick oven pizza restaurant with the same mindset and one of the pizzas is named for Blackrock.  

Needless to say, we're honored.  

I'm going to post the entire menu below, just to entice anyone in the area to visiting this cool new place, but first Blackrock would like to wish the best of luck to Owen's as well as 50 Local.  Eating locally is truly important, and as anyone who has ever visited your restaurant can attest, it pays off too.  Cheers!

    Wood Fired Pizza 12 “

Local Whole Wheat add 3 Gluten Free add 4

Blackrock - tomato, mozzarella, spinach, pickled vegetables 9
Harris - meatball, tomato, ricotta, basil 11
Breezy Hill - housemade sausage, spicy pepper, mozzarella, tomato 11
Ewe & I - farm egg,oregano, goat cheese 10
Stone - parsnip, caramelized onions, pickled radish, turnip 9

The O-man - tomato, basil, mozzarella 7
St. Onge - local mushrooms, roasted garlic, leek, pecorino 10

Salads
Sunset - Pauls Greens, shaved vegetables, pickles, balsamic 6.5
New Morning -greens, goji berries, quinoa, curry, flax & coconut oil 8
Pullen - chicken salad, greens, pumpkin seed, apple 9
Groundwork - greens, bacon, avocado, egg, blue cheese 9

Small plates
Chicken Parm 9
Meatball Hero 8
Orecchiette, Sausage, Cauliflower 8
Vegetables, Pickles, Chilis 8

Open House 2012

The Blackrock Farm Open House has been scheduled for May 19, 2012.  You wouldn't believe how much work and time goes in to having this little nursery in top condition after the winter.  Not only do we have pruning and clean up from the winds and snowfall of but we have a lot of tidying to do at the many properties we take care of.  Many of our shrubs have to be stored in unheated greenhouses when the snow flies, and as the temperature rises we are forced to race against time to get them outside before the differences in climate damages them.  Also, many of our trees and shrubs come by bare-root delivery

which means they have to be root-pruned, potted, and fastidiously watered even as the other shrubs are organized and pruned for the upcoming season.  Bare root perennials and plugs also arrive during our preparation time, and since the threat of freezing is ever present in Maine the irrigation system will probably not be reactivated for a few more weeks.  

This might sound like an awful lot of complaining but it's actually a really interesting time to be working at the farm.  There's always a lot to do, and every one of the things on the giant "get ready" list, when completed, really improves the overall look of the grounds.  During the next six weeks you can see a difference with each work day that passes, and as the weather gets better and things begin to bloom the Open House generally arrives at the perfect time.  We always have a few big ticket trees available for sale as well, so if you're looking for an instant impact for your home this is a great day to really have a look at some large scale B&B trees.  

I hope i'll be able to post a few more times before the big day as things really start to get green around here.      

Michael Dirr at The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Blackrock Farm is a great place to work for a lot of reasons, but one that sticks out for me this week is the field trips.  As long as you’re a lover of learning and enthusiastic about the subject and destination of the trip, Helene makes sure to get you on board.  Last Wednesday six members of Blackrock woke up early and drove to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens to attend a “walk and talk” lecture of sorts by tree and shrub rock star Michael Dirr.  You can find more information on him here.  For almost four hours we had the honor of walking the grounds of the CMBG with him, learning what makes certain specimens work in the landscape, what makes them remarkable, or simply just the history of their species.  If you’re a woody plant fanatic Michael Dirr is a must see and a must read.  

We got home to Kennebunkport at around five o’clock, but the day really flew by despite its length. 

It’s a lot of fun to get out there and break up the workweek with a trip like this, but I believe (and I think Helene does too) that part of what allows a little nursery like ours survive is the enthusiasm of the employees.  Grinding out weeks of maintenance and installations can really take the spirit out of you, but getaways like this recharge us and help us to remember why we stick with this work when we’re tired and sometimes, I’ll admit, bored. 

There was nothing boring about Michael Dirr.  His knowledge was vast, but he was never boring as we walked with him and a few of the curators of the Botanical Gardens.  He does not talk at you, but with you, and demands interaction and participation.  He constantly refers to ‘the quiz’ that will be administered at the end of the walk, but with good humor.  He encourages questions and never seems to be stumped by one.  Put simply, I was amazed; I didn’t say much, as I was way out of my league, but as we walked I often reflected on the value of seeing and talking with such a knowledgeable member of our field. 

On Sunday afternoon I got a frantic call from Helene, and through her excitement she told me Michael Dirr had come by Blackrock to visit the nursery and walk around a bit.  I’ll make sure she posts about it, so I won’t go into details, but his visit marks what is probably the most important person in the plant industry ever to walk our modest grounds.  More to come from Helene.

A Minute to Complain

This is a very difficult time to be in the landscaping and nursery business, and i don't just mean because of the economy.  Here at Blackrock we hire a lot of college students, and even a few teachers on their summer vacations, during the busy season in order to keep up with the work.  Our crew swells to around 15 during the summer months, and while it is a logistical nightmare we certainly have enough hands to get the work we need to do done.

As the season starts to change to fall all these seasonal helpers head back to school and we are left with a skeleton crew.  The only problem is the work is still steady.  Now the crew is down to three on a good day, with a few able to be salvaged from the vegetable division when they have a minute.  Sometimes I make lists and as i get to a second page I start to panic a little bit.

It's like this every year, and I fully realize we'll be able to take care of the work, but it seems like i can never get used to this time of year and the drastic change in the way this business operates.  

Colin Lewis at Blackrock Farm

Colin Lewis is coming to Blackrock Farm on August 11, 2011.

We've been struggling over how to best present this gentleman to our advertising outlets because it just doesn't seem right to put "You Guys Just Don't Realize How Big A Deal This Is" in a newspaper advertisement.

But that's pretty much what we want to say, and the blog is an excellent place for me to be able to be up front like that and get away with it.

The man is a highly acclaimed teacher, artist and writer, and is a consultant for the Lars Anderson Collection of Bonsai at the Arnold Arboretum. The list goes on, but you could visit his website at www.colinlewisbonsai.com to see more about his resume. If what you find there isn't enough to be convinced I don't know what will be.

Colin has recently moved his collection and school to his house just a few minutes drive from Blackrock, and we felt we would be doing our community a disservice if we did not make his work and his move known to the public. Like I said, to both the artistic and landscaping communities, this is a pretty big deal.

His knowledge and calm, focused delivery had me wanting to get involved with this art form the minute i met him, and I know that I will be in attendance on the 11th with the hope of gathering enough information to get started on a Bonsai of my own. It turns out that a some Bonsai start out as heavily cut back shrubs or trees. If they are still producing new growth from the bottom they can be dug up and trained into smaller and smaller containers to become Bonsai. It always saddens me to rip out perfectly good living shrubs, and I hope i can learn to save the promising ones for a second chance at life.

As i understand it, this is one of the ways Colin has made some of his artwork (i'm not entirely sure if the piece pictured above was started that way, but it's gorgeous nonetheless). Obviously, i have a lot to learn, but i'm very excited to have a chance to get my questions answered by a master on the 11th.

Mark your calenders!

Blackrock Farm Open House May 21, 2010

Blackrock Farm

Open House 

May 21, 2011

Come and join us for a day of friends, neighbors, staff and garden nuts from all over.  We have some nice food to eat and lots of new things here at the farm.  I promise the sun will come out!

293 Goose Rocks Road in Kennebunkport.  

Redwinged Blackbirds and the end of winter

This morning was amazing!

It is Saturday and all the chores that are sometimes carried out by Adam and other people who work here are all mine for the weekend.
And so....I walk out to feed the animals and get to be alone, something that does not happen a lot here at the farm.
Incredibly it has snowed in the early morning.  It was 50 something yesterday and sunny and today the earth has been covered with white.  This is rare.  Usually winter winds down in a rather ungraceful fashion.  Mounds of dirty snow, lots of mud and beaten down shrubs and grasses.  Things that you forgot to put away in the fall begin to appear and the amount of work facing us seems insurmountable.
But this year we have one last beautiful morning, clean and white and filled with warmth and the spring sounds of birds.
The lovely thing is the sound of the birds.  Foolish things that they are, they simply continue with their spring songs even though it looks like winter to me.
I am a bird lover and no time is better to listen to them then in the early spring when they are out there looking for their mates.  They sing and sing continually and I sometimes am in awe that a lot of people don't notice.
I mean really!  The red winged blackbirds arrive each spring and I have a contest with a friend about who hears them first.  (we actually get nervous when we hear them....the winter is over and we will be crazy busy until December) They were here this year on March 12th and now are in full voice up in the trees.  Hundreds of them!
How can you not notice?  It is deafening once you let yourself listen.

This is a good time to think about how you plant your yards and properties to enable you to protect and provide nesting places and food for all the migrations that pass through and all the birds that stay and help keep our insects in check and spread seeds and for heavens sake.....fill our outdoors with music. You can still see the 'bones' of your gardens and plan for what you need and what you missed this winter. Shrubs like red twigged dogwoods and willows and paper barked maples.  

Enough....I am going to prepare for this evening's dusk performance of the American Woodcock!  I love this bird! He flies up in the sky at dusk and does a dance to entice his mate and the sound is truly the sound of spring.
My favorite new website is http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/American_Woodcock/sounds  If you click on this you will hear the Woodcock and if you search the site you can learn to identify a lot of other songs.
Such fun.
Helene