Birth of a Barn Quilt

Sean's brother, Paul, was our master carpenter on the project

and his sister, Carman provided the artistic skills

The farm crew discusses the installation plan

Up, up, up it goes...

Just a little higher...

The "Blue Gate Star" in its place of honor.

Wasn't there a contest???

Well, there is nothing like setting a deadline, announcing a contest and then falling flat on your face with the follow-through. Somehow, no matter how well we think we have planned everything, this time of year always catches up with us. Ah well, things like this are just proof we can learn...right??

Regardless, we did actually have the contest and we received more than twenty fabulous entries. The stumbling block was realizing that the design we thought we were looking for was actually far too complicated for the actual piece . So, after sifting and sorting through all the submissions, we finally took inspiration from one of them and created a final design that we felt portrayed Blue Gate Farm while still holding to the tradition of barn quilt designs.  Then looking back, we realized that we had actually received another submission with the same basic pattern.

Here is the cool submission from our CSA member Amy B. that was our launching pad:

a basket filled with produce!

and then the entry from Virginian Phyllis H. that we at first overlooked:

and finally, the design that we settled on after many hours of ruminating and "discussion"...

This is our Blue Gate Star design. The colors of each chevron represent important crops that we produce on the farm including honey, tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash, peppers, blue & brown eggs and the edible flower in our salad mix. The greens represent the myriad of greens that we grow and the corners are our trademark blue pickets.

Congratulations to our contest winners Amy & Phyllis. They have/will receive a package of goodies from the farm in thanks for their inspiration!

Here's a fun link to Amy's blog post about the contest: Design of the Times

Will post photos of the actual quilt in the next day or so.

My Favorite Email Ever!

We received this drawing today of our Blue Heeler, "Blue" from Ellie, a 9yr old CSA member who (along with the rest of her family) helped out at Farm Crawl this weekend. It is the best email I have EVER received. Thanks for sharing your talents and your love for Blue, Ellie, we're so glad you are a part of the Blue Gate Farm Family!

The Day After

This kind of says it all

The 5th annual Farm Crawl has come and gone, and what a day it was! More than 1,350 people visited Blue Gate Farm on what may have been the most beautiful day of the entire season. There was much touring, chicken feeding, question asking (and answering) dog petting, and general fun all around. Thank you so much to everyone who came out and Crawled! We had such great help from friends, family and the farm crew this year. Huge thanks go out to Mom & Dad B, Brenda, Maggie, Terri, The Berger Family, David, Kristin, Jeff, Paul, Miranda, Willa & Spencer for all their fabulous help. Farm Crawl is a great fun event, but it truly does "take a village" to put it on.

So now, take a minute and get it on your calendar for next year...its always the first Sunday in October. Farm Crawl 2012 will be on Sunday, October 7th. We hope to see you there!