May Farm Flowers

I'm not entirely sure where times does. We moved up to the Blue Mountains four months ago. There's been a flurry of weddings since then I feel like I live partly in the mountains and partly at the flower markets, in a bucket of flowers. Not a bad situation at all.

A lovely friend {the lady behind henryhudsonblog.com.au a wonderful floral design blog} took me to  May Farm Flowers near Windsor. The grower there is a dashed lovely man called Chris. He grows ranunculus, roses {great old varieties and excellent new ones too-of particular note a couple of my favourites Hot Chocolate, Sentimental and Graham Thomas but also so so many more splendid roses}, poppies, lisianthus, kale, lavender, dahlias, buddleia, achillea, gardenia, veronica, smoke bush and some wattle and gum foliages. Really great stuff. Oh and rose hips and the most glorious exuberant scabiosa I've ever seen. Chris was really interesting to talk to. It's good to hear things from the growers point of view and also kind of scary. I guess it's the same with everyone growing/rearing things there's a lot of uncertainty.

Chris is at the EQ markets at Fox Studios on Wednesdays, fridays and sometimes Saturdays being kind, slinging flowers. What a world, eh?

He let us cut whatever we wanted. It was a life highlight.

Thanks Chris.

And warmest thanks to Amy for sharing the days photos with me-long live flowery adventures x

Elevation seems to be a theme

Soon after Josh finished his trail race in the Alps, we found ourselves at our favourite burger joint in Chamonix. It's called Poco Loco and if you go there I highly recommend the Chèvre burger {it's worth it in cheese alone} and I think the other great one was called the Americano. It had seafood sauce on it-sounds peculiar, was great. 

It is so intriguing and joyful to watch the runners finish the race. They run through wild country. Sometimes it might just be them, the narrow trail and the sound of their own foot falls. They also find themselves in little groups running together for a while, sharing the highs and lows, keeping each other going/sane. The lovely thing about this race was the array of people from different countries. Sometimes people run together without speaking the same language, together in purpose.

When they finish the race they are given glory and an item-of-clothing-present, in this case a bright red vest. This, along with the unsettling amount of gear they run with makes it kind of obvious that they've just finished running and people stop to congratulate everyone. All very civil and generous. 

While we were eating our excellent burgers, a guy from the US started chatting, he was running the following day. This has been a long winded introduction into how I heard about the Brooklyn Grange. This guy's friend had been instrumental in pulling the project together in 2010. Basically, the Grange is an inner city roof top farming initiative. They have one acre in Queens and one and a half in Brooklyn, which is the one I visited. 

This farm, the largest of its kind is on top of the Navy Yards. They produce over 40, 000 pounds {about 18,000kg} per year. When I went there was spinach, kale, basil {green ands he pretty black kind}, various lettuces, a good variety of tomatoes and peppers, eggplant, ground cherries, carrot, raddish, a few chickens, bees and a couple of flowers!

They supply vegetables to restaurants, CSA members and directly to the public via weekly farmstands. They host Wednesday/Sunday dinners on the farm, inviting local chefs to cook up a storm. And roof top yoga, of course. 

The farm is open to visit on Wednesdays from 10am to 5pm they take you up every hour on the hour {last visit at 4pm}. They are good people, enthused, knowledgeable and also just figuring it out as they go, which is my very favourite kind. While I was there I met a Danish beekeeper who was volunteering for the month. I asked them if they needed an extra pair of hands on harvest days etc and they said that they actually have more help than they need at the moment which is so great. 

Go visit! The season is winding up so i think you can visit until the end of October brooklyngrangefarm.com