Fresh From the Farm Blog

How time has flown, it seems like it has only been a few months since I was writing a blog about Memorial Day and here it has been a year. Originally known as “Decoration Day” the date of May 30 was set aside in 1868 to honor those soldiers lost in the Civil War. In 1938 Decoration Day became a federal holiday but the observance now included those lost in WWI. After WWII, the name changed to Memorial Day and in 1968 the federal holiday was changed to the last Monday in May so that federal employees get a 3-day...

This morning we picked our first ripe peaches from one of the two peach trees in our garden. There is a short window from when the peaches are hard and not ready to when they are ripe enough to attract those sneaky peach robbers (birds, squirrels, raccoons, and the occasional rat that the barn cats failed to catch.) As I held our first “harvest” of three peaches, I remembered picking peaches from my grandmother’s peach trees. Mamaw would plant the seeds of peaches she found juicy and sweet. It did not matter to her if the seed was from a...

We are excited to be introducing a new product: our Fredericksburg Farms Wax Blossoms! These are scented wax shapes that can be melted in a wax melter, as many or as few as you like to make a custom scent. We have four fragrances in our initial release, and to get to these four, we have trialed different fragrances and wax shapes, and worked on the shape and graphic design of the packaging. Over the last months, we have asked for input from our Freddy Farms staff, and now we are ready to get input from our wholesale partners. So,...

Fredericksburg is celebrating Founder's Day this weekend, even though the actual anniversary of the date the first group of settlers arrived is not until Monday, May 8th. That intrepid group of families left homes in various parts of Germany and sailed for Texas to make a new start. They arrived in the fall of 1845 via Galveston and landed at the port of Indianola. Short on supplies and funds, the nobleman’s society that had arranged for them to come, faced huge obstacles trying to get the colonists to the land grant that had been secured and was located several hundred...

Drought, a dreaded word in the world of farmers and ranchers. Our family comes from a long line of people living close to the land. Today I attended a meeting of our local water board as the aquifer in our county is reaching a dangerously low level. Several folks attending this meeting commented on how conserving water is likely to become extremely critical as development in the Hill Country expands. There is only so much water available, and it is life giving. The issue with water made me think of how important it is to be always mindful of our...