We are in the middle of an interesting week beginning with getting the place ready for multiple groups of visitors.  It is hard to make the Kalahari desert look vibrant when everything is brown except for the small patches we are irrigating.  But we mowed what needed it and picked up and tidied around the buildings making mental notes that we should never have tours in September when we are just about to close for the season, oh well.  The best looking thing we have are the cowpeas we planted as a cover crop and which, in a normal year, should have been mowed down by now but have struggled to get this far, at least they are a rich green.  Saturday was a long but fun day.  The Southern Foodways Alliance was in town for what they call one of their field camps.  A group dedicated to the preservation of southern culture(s), from arts and crafts to music and writing but all sort of surrounded by the foods of the south.  People from all over the country were here, you may have noticed them touring the market on Saturday.  We hosted them here at the farm Saturday afternoon where we talked about small scale farming, the market in this area and tasted tomatoes.  They didn’t realize what a miracle it was for us to have the wealth of tomatoes we have had this late in the season, this season in particular!  We then headed into town for a large dinner with the whole group, having been awake since 1:00 a.m. we decided to head home at 10:30 instead of following the group down the road to sample the local taco truck, it was a sound idea.

Yesterday we had a group out from NC State which included two Uruguayans who are doing research in their country on organic farming.  Through an excellent interpreter we walked all around and showed them how we did it here.  Discussions about soil fertility, rotations, cover crops, etc.  They were also very interested in how we used the turkeys, integrated with the crop production, too bad we didn’t have any turkeys to show them this time around.  This coming Saturday after market, again, there will be a film crew here from Gourmet Magazine shooting some of our crops (up close I hope) for their TV show “The Diary of a Foodie” which is on PBS, here on Saturday afternoons.  They are working on a piece with Andrea Ruesing at Lantern Restaurant, who knew when we all agreed to do this that we would be in the middle of an historic drought.  At least it will be cooler and they always tell me they can do miracles with the camera and editing!