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Homegrown, hand-crafted seasonal decor plus flavors, from my farm to your front porch
Established: 2022
Located: Independence Valley, WA
Kayla McCarthy
Jul 19, 20234 min read
How We Built a Greenhouse From 99% Salvaged Materials
With plans in full swing to begin planting at Chainy-Stakes Farm in May 2022, the next step was establishing a place to propagate seeds....
Kayla McCarthy
Jul 19, 20233 min read
3 Reasons Why Fungi Are Like Neurons
As described in the last blog post, I became well acquainted with a multitude of ways to mechanically alter the soil. After experiencing...
Kayla McCarthy
Jul 17, 20235 min read
Breaking Ground: The Make-or-Break Moment
Picking up where a previous blog post left off, we just collected a soil sample and dropped it off at Thurston Conservation District....
Kayla McCarthy
Jul 17, 20234 min read
What Kind of Farmer Am I?
Little did I know, my first-year farming at the new lease in 2022 would be a record-breaking weather year in the Pacific Northwest – the...
Kayla McCarthy
Jun 24, 20234 min read
A Public Admission About Pumpkins
This story begins on a weekend in early April. We were having a community potluck at the farm. William and Kathryn (my landlords) invited...
Kayla McCarthy
Jan 23, 20239 min read
Finding Ground and Becoming Grounded
As previously mentioned in another blog post… I joined the active-duty U.S. Army in 2021, partially to get away from my home state of...
Kayla McCarthy
Oct 20, 20227 min read
Trials and Tribulations of Growing Pumpkins in a Box
Discovering the JBLM Community Gardens Life has a funny way of calling the shots sometimes. I was up against a rut in my life in 2020,...
Kayla McCarthy
Oct 3, 20224 min read
The Watershed Moment: Hacking Pumpkins with Machetes at Jubilee Farm
Has your life ever been fundamentally altered by a moment in time? I had one of those moments at Jubilee Farm, and the memory clings to...
Kayla McCarthy
Sep 15, 20226 min read
Falling for Autumn: Growing the Vision for Chainy-Stakes Farm
There's nothing better than a fifth wheel full of pumpkins on a foggy autumn morning. Photo taken September 22, 2018. My first musings...
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