A Unique Community Supported Agriculture Project begins JUNE!

We are offering a unique CSA (Community Supported Agriculture program) for the Verde Valley!

The CSA service offers weekly deliveries of organically-grown produce from Crooked Sky Farms in Phoenix, along with local farms in Cottonwood and Camp Verde. In addition to fresh, organic produce we offer value added products every other week and farm fresh eggs and meat when available. (We also offer canning & preservation classes at a fair cost.)

Traditionally CSA’s require a seasonal pre pay. We realize it can be a challenge to pay for a whole season up front, so we are offering a six week at a time program! It is requested that people make the purchase for the amount of six weeks in advance at the rate of $150. ( A few half scholarships available through work exchange at Bridgeport garden.)

Thank you for supporting Community Supported Agriculture in the green valley we call home! Remember, you vote with what you consume.

Natasha@thenoise.us

I accept paypal & CASH!

Mom says wearing black right now is like the mourning madona, which I think is clever and funny, but wearing black with a rapidly changing body is more practical and classical to me. The verde valley has little to offer in the way of clothing options except for the lovely Magdelena's Bazaar, which seems quite keen on dark colors too. Local designers come find me!

On my way to show Mom some baby clothes gifted to me by the fine ladies of Madison County. It looks like my growing babe is going to be drressed like an outdoorsy elf or fairy type. I love all the green!

PS I am now the proud owner of a safe car thankyou suzanne e! Something to deliver produce in & someday a little sprout.

4 months and some pocket change.

While in North Carolina writer and photographer Rob Amberg documented me for his third book about Madison County titled The New Mountaineer. Rob has snapshots of me from when I was a wee lass. I am honored to be cronicled in what I do believe will be his BEST book yet.

Amberg Books

It isn't without politics that people grow food. John has been spending long evenings with A. planting an acre of property in Cottonwood. It seems everyone wants a piece of the pie and some folks are threatened by change and new ideas.

There is an advantage to coming to the table clean, and I was told folks would try to shoot me down, with my ideas on forming a CSA involving several plots of land. It is a very different mentality than what I have learned in the schooling of WNC agriculture, where people make it work and the market is saturated.

I was approached a few months ago by a group seeking a CSA due to the collapse of another CSA in the region who could not provide for the amount of people seeking local food.

Amyway, the photo to the left is of John usubg ditch water and tubing to water the crops. Ditch water is key in this region folks, and it is available. One of the genius ideas. Perhaps native ideas?

Chicky time of year

This time of year the folks go wild for baby chicks buying them up like disposable PEZ heads n such.
 Check out Ashley English's fancy book on raising chickens. it's a yuppie style publication with hen houses fancier than most I see, but I am featured in KEEPING CHICKENS, published by ole Lark Books  located Asheville, NC

Keeping Chickens by Ashley English

On a domestic note I would like to launch Natasha Shealy's Badass School for Girls & Some Boys
for another season!
This year we will once again cover food preservation with a focus on adding local flavors of the south
west. I will introduce basic sewing skills, orno oven building with the help of a cob builder, outdoor cooking, gardening and daily swimming and nature walks.
The daytime activities are for girls & boys aged 5-12
With evening classes for older gals up too age 105. ( I hope to hold these in a commercial kitchen)
Call me for details- 828-337-6613

Pepper heart be spicy and unafraid of being shredded and diced by the dark.

In a few days I will be in the holler of Western Carolina. Hopefully napping and cuddling with my sweet doggie Stella.
Time to be celebrated with my growing belly with
the women. A time to not worry or figure our how to keep the business a float during so many changes, a time to recieve help and nurturing.This is my time, and I aim to recieve the love deserved, love which stores up as strength in the coming years....an arrow from cupids little sturdy bow!
 Besides that , I sure will miss John and the crazy adobe. I will miss the mustard greens and the our market friends,  I will miss the basil starts but hope you buy them before I return. Come down to the adobe and pick up a basil start! $4
PS
I hve been making collard and kale chips on the dehydrator.yum!

An artsy shot of the carrots at one of the farms we work with!

Crooked Sky Farms

Seeking local chicken egg source for local eateries!

Do you know someone with chickens that produce at least ten dozen a week? Please let me know. I am looking to spend $2 a dozen for large quanties, we have organic veggies we can add to sweeten the deal!

Looking to form an egg co op for eateries.

Family Car

It's time to find a family car. I have always loved Subaru & Volvo, and am looking for an all wheel drive with room to put people and products in the back.
I had a Volvo for years and was sad to sell her, but her wiring got tricky and it was time to part ways. Now I am building a list of cars for you to help me pick!

Blue Forester
Silver Forester
Green Forest

all have the same millage of 21-27 

Maybe a smaller hatchback without all wheel drive?

Pickled ginger and clove beets!

“Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”


Wendell Berry


I spent last night at the Red Rooster Cafe teaching some ladies how to can. We pickled beets fresh from Crooked Sky Farms, adding ginger,cloves and mustrd for a spicy pickle treat. I am thrilled to find people everywhere who are awakened by the the desire to feed the world and learn how to do it naturally!

Color! This photo was taken at a fundraiser at Eliphante this last weekend. I love that I found this hat I am wearing in the "yard" of the house I stay at in Centerville. The yard provideth.

Looks like I will be hosting a canning class at the Red Rooster Cafe next week! I look forward to offering value added products to the market, plus starting up NATASHA SHEALY"S BADASS SCHOOL FOR GIRLS is always a nurturing experience.
I was talking with a friend the other day who said
that the act of good deeds for others has the power to heal not only those helped, but oneself. Imagine what we could do in the form of positive change if we spent our money and time helping others instead of on
costly therapy, treatments and potions.
Lets make more food.

Hat season is here folks! John bypassed the trucker cap and went for the cowboy hat, Arizona is one of those places where you can wear a cowboy hat to work and be void of irony. I Like that.

We are now distributings heirloom plants starting this week. I saw the starts in their little dung pots and knew these needed a home.

We are still scouting land for Crooked Sky farms, we want to help famring grow in the Verde Valley.
Any ideas?

We will be canning beets starting next week at the Red Rooster Cafe in Old Town Cottonwood. I love canning, and certainly need to preserve food for
the adobe abode lifestyle. We never have any produce left over after market, so I am going to harvest an extra 30 bunches I do believe!

Red Heart BEETS!

Pickled beets means I don't need to use a pressure cooker, which would be dandy, but less diverse.

Food Preservation

Three little chicks in a pen made of old gates and various rubbish. Our neighbor Paul is the most interesting chap I have met in awhile. He is brewing up some pomegranite wine as I type this.

Bloomers in the desert despite the dry sky

My friend Sarah makes bloomers! I have ordered my second pair.
 American turquoise, adobe mixed with sand, the sober view from the roof of our mad mud castle. All is well in Arizona.

Produce this week!

green onions

dill

dandelion greens

detroit beets

s chard

russian kale

cilantro

spinach

lettuce mix

broccolini

s potato

diakons

easter & french radish

boc choi

turnips

curly mustard

rutabaga

The new homestead away from home.

2000 miles away from my cabin in North Carolina, John and I make home in a mud castle. John dug up the grey water sysem yesterday and I dug up a sawed off shotgun wraped in a black plastic bag complete with shells while planting irises.