http://mockingbirdfarmstead.com/

Mockingbird Farmstead, Williamsburg, VA (2026)

08/05/2021

Our Summer/Fall Farmshare registration is now open! Join us for 10 weekly deliveries starting August 13th. Share in everything our farm has to offer: egg shares, fresh herbs, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cukes, garlic… the list goes on!

We go well beyond the produce with tips, tricks, recipes, and the inspiration you need to make the most of your produce. Ultra fresh food + the tools to use it = lower waste + increased value. A bag of mixed greens that stay fresh in the fridge for two weeks? When it’s harvested the morning it’s delivered, you better believe it.

Meet us, our chickens, and our farm - know exactly where your food comes from.

Space is limited. Sign up with the link in our bio! As always, more than happy to answer any questions below - reach out to me, we’re here for you!

07/07/2021

Another step toward closing the loop. We’ve been quiet lately in terms of long-format posts. Frankly, it's because we’ve been doing the work. We are adding to our team and getting the farm looking as good as it works - in preparation for a fun dinner and visitor-filled fall. More on that to come.

We have a water harvesting and recycling system for our produce washing station, and we have been using it for the past 4 seasons. I designed it to help reduce the massive water inputs related to post-harvest (washing our veggies). The water saving varies based upon what we’re harvesting, but our baseline savings are around 1/6th or 80%+ over our old water usage. Dirtier crops like root veggies are even higher in water savings. We are upgrading to version 2.0 in a few weeks at which point I’ll share our new design. This water is then harvested for use in our greenhouse.

It’s been 6 weeks since our last on-grid greenhouse and nursery watering. The 275 gallon tank above will be part of our rain harvesting systems being installed later this season. We have massive roofs on two barns at the farm. Conservatively, we have the potential to harvest 1,000 gallons of rainwater from them per inch of rainfall. The potential is massive.

One step at a time - just gotta keep moving.

04/05/2021

It’s Chicken of the Month time! April’s Chicken of the Month is: The baby chicks! These little ladies are from Cackle Hatchery, and they’re all Rhode Island Reds. They are very active, very fuzzy, and very very sweet. And a little bit noisy.

They fall asleep at a moment’s notice - a warm hand will do. And they peep gently as they sleep, often while in a pile.

These little chicks are already a month old and have their big girl feathers coming in! At this stage, they’re officially referred to as “pullets,” but in my book as long as they’re peepin’ they’re still chicks!

Our plan is to be open to the public later this summer. We’ll be receiving baby chicks regularly throughout this season, and we hope to have you come by to see them!

03/29/2021

It’s today! This is our farm’s fertility engine. We do lots of high rotation crops, and this is what builds our soil - and that soil nourishes our plants. It’s a fungal-powered dynamo of life. Ok it's not a mushroom. But it's fungus!
Aside: I’m starting to think we’re actually growing soil first, and then we get healthy plants as a bonus.
So what is it, exactly? We add some wood chips, alfalfa pellets, and compost, to a 5 gallon bucket. In two warm weeks (or three to four cooler ones) we get the complete colonization you see here - it’s a solid block, mycorrhizae to the core! We speed up the colonization process by adding an additional mycorrhizal source - a dash of myco inocculant or a small scoop of an inoculated organic fertilizer like Garden/Plant/Tomato Tone works. We’re talking a scant half cup vs the recommended 4.5 pounds over the same area; just looking to seed more soil life, additional fertility is not needed. This will get full colonization down to 1 warm week or two cool ones (roughly). Fertility Engine recipe below!

02/23/2021

It’s TOOLTUESDAY! And this week’s tool? Boots! These are my Fellside Chelsea Work Boots. They’re steel toe. They’re waterproof up to the elastic. I tend to walk on my toes so the level to which they’re waterproof is high enough. These have survived everything I can throw at them on the farm for just over 2 full seasons. This will be their third but I’m not sure if they’ll make it.
I sat down with them to give them a good cleaning and shine; it’s just been so muddy lately. I don’t actually really shine them, I just give them a really hard scrubbing with a bristle brush, wipe them off with a lightly damp cloth, and then rub in a coat of SNO-SEAL to help keep them waterproof. But I’m not just cleaning them. It’s a check-up, I’m taking stock of their condition.
I think about all the steps they’ve taken, all the places they’ve been, where the scars and nicks came from, and all of those stories. I think about some of the deeper cuts and tears and realize they’ve saved my toes a few times. I think about how they’re heavy and hot in the summer and that’s a major downside. But I remember I do still have all my toes. They slip on and off easily. And although they’re heavy, overall they’re so very comfortable. They’re the kind of dependable thing that feels natural - perpetual, dependable, with predictable responses whenever you need them - like an extension of a limb, proprioceptive even.
How many miles have I walked with them? How many celebrations have they witnessed? How many tragedies endured? How much mud and chicken coop and rain and dust? How many rusty nails, splinters, rocks, shards, and thorns and poison ivy and tiller blades have they spared me? They do it dependably and thanklessly.
All this is blazing through my mind, ricocheting around between my ears as I’m scrubbing and wiping and waxing these things. And then it slowly starts to sink in. Am I really just thinking about the boots?

02/16/2021

I'm giving a free virtual seed starting talk this Saturday morning! Link in bio.
is graciously holding a free virtual gardening series! It's free, but space is limited so you'll have to register. It's open to anyone!
Grateful for the opportunity, and thankful for the JCC/W Master Gardener Speaker's Bureau and their hard work and dedication to making this possible.
I'll be talking about how to troubleshoot and avoid common seed starting problems, and how to develop a more intuitive understanding of the process that promotes consistent future germination and seedling success. No experience necessary! Ask any questions below, hope to "see" you there!

02/15/2021

We are humbled and grateful to be in this month’s Williamsburg Lifestyle Magazine! Link in bio.
Our fiends , the powerhouse duo , and incomparable local mainstay are also featured. Such incredible company for our little farm!
has been and continues to be a positive force in our community, sharing anything and everything good that makes living in Williamsburg the great and singular experience it is. It’s from exceptional people; it’s evident in the dedication, production, and publication.
We are grateful to know them and we are thankful for the opportunity. Thank you!
Link to the digital version of the publication in bio.

01/25/2021

January’s Chicken of the Month: Muppet!
Muppet is a and she lays the occasional small pale tan/pink egg.
Muppet has virtually no comb (a tiny walnut wrinkle), no wattles, and blue cheeks (earlobes). She is virtually silent, save the sporadic light murmur-cluck. She is our absolute softest bird. Like all she has black skin and black bones!
What can be said about Muppet? What can be said about her that can’t also be said about our other ladies? While it is true that she is far smaller than our other birds, her plumage sometimes looks absolutely ridiculous, her egg laying is infrequent and tiny at best, she often wastes tons of time brooding on eggs that aren’t hers and will never hatch (we don’t have a rooster), she is slower and shy-er than most - missing out on nearly all treats, and often gets lost despite being in open or familiar places (like the coop), we CAN say she is most definitely a chicken.
It is for these reasons and many more that we proudly announce Muppet as the Chicken of the Month for January 2021! We love you Muppet!

01/11/2021

It’s everyone! One of the most prominent flashes of color and life we see still going strong through the short days of winter are our mushrooms! We find them flourishing on and around our firewood pile, and just past the fence line in the forest on fallen trees and debris. I’m continually surprised and humbled by the speed with which they appear, and the frequency of their flourishes.
Known as - they live up to their name! I find them in multiple different colors and patterns, even on directly adjacent pieces of wood. They’re found everywhere, and they’re year-round here. When you’re next out in nature, keep your eyes peeled!
🍄 🍄

01/05/2021

It’s another today, and we have the answer to our giveaway from this past weekend!
First, thank you to everyone that guessed! It was great to hear from so many of you, thank you so much!
The most popular guess was “chicken incubator” or some variation. Given all our chickens and chicken content we share, this is a great guess! Unfortunately, we’re not quite at hatching our own eggs… yet!
This white box is a laminar flow hood! It creates a close-to-sterile environment by blowing HEPA filtered air through the box and out the opening at the front. We’ll use that for propagating mushroom cultures. Unfortunately no one guessed it exactly (without cheating😡😉). But as I said in one of the stories, I’m looking to give away some good spices, so anyone that guessed anything related to mushrooms gets some treats! I’ve already reached out to the winners.
We’re proud of this because the typical unit can cost several thousand dollars, putting mushroom propagation at scale out of reach for many. Ours is made from off-the-shelf big box store components, and a single sheet of plywood to help make it more accessible. Even the glass on the front is a standard size and doesn’t need to be cut.
🍄 🍄

12/28/2020

It’s everyone! We have a firewood stack, and it has become one of our most interesting sources of fungi discovery. The firewood spends quite some time seasoning, typically in large piles, before coming to us where it’s stacked and spends even more time exposed to the elements. Moreover, the wood comes from fallen trees from across our entire area. That range of origins and time exposed to the elements provides for varied and continual inoculation opportunities.
We’ve seen quite a few this past year, and with new developments coming in the near future, we thought it was time to share a bit.
This tasty little treat is flammulina velutipes, AKA the mushroom or - they’re not the usual long cream color because they’re growing normally outside, and not cultivated. Their bright beautiful orange amber was easy to spot on the recently rain-darkened woodpile. A welcome flash of color!
🍄 🍄

12/25/2020

Merry Christmas Eve! I came in today to gather more eggs from our ladies, and to do our weekly clean out and coop inspection. On my rounds of the plot (to check netting and the like), I stopped by one of our long-term projects. There are many going on around the farm, which is part of what excites me about 2021.
It’s a ! But not just any crocus. It’s ! In the crazy rush to prep and long hours working with the incomparable at the Christmas Market this past weekend (updates coming soon), I missed the actual blooms, and came back to the closed but soft petals and the characteristic crimson stigmas and styles.
We have tons of options for what would be considered in our area, but very few options for what we would consider (for now, anyway!). As someone that is intense about cooking, it feels pretty incredible to reach out and touch - though ever so barely - something so wonderful and amazing. And I’m truly grateful for this !

Mockingbird Farmstead

08/05/2021

07/07/2021

04/05/2021

03/29/2021

02/23/2021

02/16/2021

02/15/2021

01/25/2021

01/11/2021

01/05/2021

12/28/2020

12/25/2020

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