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Reading the Lake from the Garden
Read more: Reading the Lake from the GardenA small garden on the Saginaw Bay shore, a network of 115 quiet sensors across the Great Lakes, and the new dashboard that lets a gardener read the lake the way she reads the season.
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Late April Garden Notes at Freighter View Farms
Read more: Late April Garden Notes at Freighter View FarmsA late-April Freighter View Farms essay on Michigan spring restraint, seedlings under lights, raised beds, Saginaw Bay weather, and the almost-season before May.
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The Search for a Better Michigan Slicing Tomato
Read more: The Search for a Better Michigan Slicing TomatoA Freighter View Farms essay on the recurring winter temptation of tomato catalogs and the search for a Michigan slicing tomato with flavor, structure, and soul.
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Keeping Garden Records That Actually Help
Read more: Keeping Garden Records That Actually HelpA warm Freighter View Farms essay on garden records, memory, seed notes, tomato mistakes, and the value of local knowledge by Saginaw Bay.
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I Planted the Broccolini Out Yesterday
Read more: I Planted the Broccolini Out YesterdayA Freighter View Farms garden essay on planting broccolini into the Michigan spring garden, with Saginaw Bay weather, cool-season timing, and the quiet hope of the first transplanting.
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Chris Izworski: The Garden, the Bay, and Twenty Years of Michigan
Read more: Chris Izworski: The Garden, the Bay, and Twenty Years of MichiganPeople sometimes ask how a 911 director from Bay City ended up writing a gardening blog from the shore of Saginaw Bay. The answer is that the garden was always here. The career in public safety was the detour. I have lived on Saginaw Bay for years now. The freighters pass in the shipping channel,…
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The River Knows Before You Do: Michigan Trout Fishing and a Daily Report Worth Checking
Read more: The River Knows Before You Do: Michigan Trout Fishing and a Daily Report Worth CheckingThere is a particular kind of morning that belongs only to trout fishermen, and if you have stood in cold water at first light with the mist still low on the current and a line drifting through a seam you can barely see, you know the one I mean. The world has not quite started…
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The Great Lakes Gazette: A Morning Paper for the Fleet
Read more: The Great Lakes Gazette: A Morning Paper for the FleetThe navigation season opens the way it always does: quietly, in the dark, with a vessel that has been waiting at the mouth of the St. Marys River for the signal that the water is open again. I watch the approach of the Soo Locks opening the way I watch the soil thermometer in April:…
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The Odds of Spring: NOAA, the Farmers’ Almanac, and What May 4th Actually Means
Read more: The Odds of Spring: NOAA, the Farmers’ Almanac, and What May 4th Actually MeansThere is a date I carry in my head every March like a stone in my pocket: May 4th. That is the date NOAA’s climate record says I have better-than-even odds of not seeing another hard freeze in Bay City. Not a guarantee. Not a promise. Just the moment when probability tips, when a hundred…
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Steel on the Water: Watching the Freighters Move on Saginaw Bay
Read more: Steel on the Water: Watching the Freighters Move on Saginaw BayThere is a name for the people who track the freighters, who stand on breakwalls and bridges with binoculars and notebooks and know the vessels by their hull colors and stack markings before they are close enough to read the name. They are called boatnerd. This is not an insult — it is a title,…
Bay City · Zone 6a · Saginaw Bay
Chris Izworski · heirloom seeds, raised beds, and the slow weather of the Great Lakes
Hello,
I’m Chris
Freighter View Farms is my small raised-bed garden on Saginaw Bay: heirloom tomatoes, seed envelopes, spring trays under lights, and the slow work of learning one piece of ground.
Start here if you are new, or walk into the garden notes and see what the season is doing.
In the beds now
Come back with the season
I send garden notes when there is something worth carrying back from the beds.
