Phil Potempa’s From the Farm

Congratulations to Tom Richardson and Richardson's Shangri-La Resort on the 75 year diamond 💎anniversary season and to Laura Kurella for her Minnesota wild rice 🌾 recipe win with the The Minnesota Cultivated Wild Rice Council🥇 😊

Welcome to November 2024 and Happy Friday… with vibrant geraniums nestled with white foliage of Dusty Miller among the few flowerbed plants at the farm to weather chilly nights and frosty mornings. Auntie Lilly used to uproot the farm geraniums (minus any soil or water for months) and hang them upside down in the dark farm cellar “to winter,” and then replant in the spring 😊

Happy Halloween/Trick or Treat 2024 🎃”Mrs. Brady” Florence Henderson (who hailed from Indiana) helped me write my 2019 cookbook prior to her 2016 passing. Check out the retro Halloween costume homage to Flo and a few others from the “Bunch.”

Trick or Treat? Wednesday Oct. 30, 2024 and daytime temperatures this week in the low 80s prompting our hybrid rose named for Dick Clark to still be in full fragrant bloom…

Thanks for being a top engagers and making it on to my weekly engagement list! 🎉

Amparo Garcia, Betty Pierce, Candace Mitchell, Luke Miiller, Connie Dedelow, Karen Zeldenrust, John Origer

Kraft-y kitchen fun with Tiffani Thiessen and Kraft Natural Cheese 🧀

Our “so long for now” to our wonderful farm wife neighbor friend Joann Scamerhorn ❤️

Deep purple, lush and velvety FALL hardy pansies…almost a black hue at first glance on this final Friday of October 2024. Appropriate for our farm porch steps for this funeral weekend of our beloved farm wife friend Joann Scamerhorn ❤️

“Mum’s the Word” is the motto for this mid-October Monday at the farm 😊

A great lady and life of spirit and faith 💐✝️❤️

Happy Friday Blessings! Despite two nights of cold frosts … farm planters of summer flowers are still holding on to blooms… impatiens…begonias…geraniums…asparagus ferns are bonus colors despite late season 😊

✨Congratulations Tom Richardson and Family on this 75 year 💎 milestone ✨

Still enjoying the warm daytime sunshine is the tropical blooming and vine sprawling Mandevilla on Mom and Dad’s patio 🌞

That’s a lot of miles…on the car…AND myself lol 🚗

Goodbye Beans! 🫘
Soybean Fall Harvest October 2024 🚜

Fragrant and easy to grow…the “Mr. Lincoln” rose 🥀 hybrid debuted 60 years ago and is still my Mom’s farm favorite cutting rose for flower arrangements 😊

Congrats Gabe Rosado and ACF Chefs of Northwest Indiana Inc. with the bonus of Oprah’s Chef Art Smith sharing his famous buttermilk battered fried chicken 😊

Blooming well into fall and drought-resistant is the rugged and rigorously spreading “moss rose” which loves to jump the boundaries of our farm rock gardens 🌸

Welcome to October 2024 and yet we are still cutting blooming fragrant spring lilacs to fill vases, and enjoyed by Mom as well as her older sister Ruby and daughter Christy ⚱️