Some of today's harvest, left to right: baby kale, arugula spinach, salad mix. Radishes, bok choy, asian greens, microgreens, and eggs (not pictured).
Back before we went to market, long before we started a farm, and longer ago even still than I demanded to our realtor to stop the driving her car over our field, this year's new ground, the ground where I knew we'd farm, and back before Mary and I homesteaded, and harvested on other peoples' farms, there was the legend of the tree frogs.
It was spring, and Mary and I were madly in love. I'd write her letters from Madagascar, or Papua New Guinea, and send them off from coffee and spice or tea farms on my satelite phone. I loved my work, but something was missing. As I was writing her long distance love letters, before we really knew we were in love, I'd write about working with people who cared for land, soil, and community. I knew that I, and we, had to be part of that. She'd write me about her revelations of the natural world, her students minds, and everything else. One of the email letters she penned was titled the time of Tree Frogs. As she wrote, she'd hear the tree frogs singing out of one of her windows. She visited me one late spring, when I was caring for a friends small homestead gardens, and we'd seed his garden wildly, enough for dozens of families, maybe, out of our excitement and passion, and to burn off our energy, we'd go for long runs that turned into sometimes grueling four hour, river swimming adventures. That was the time of tree frogs, when we'd fall asleep to that mysterious and magical cadence.
And that's how all this began, our love for one another, people, land, community. And now we are in the wild ride together. Another chapter starts tomorrow, with 2019 market and membership seasons. There are a lot of new projects this year -- our new irrigation system, the intern cabins that we are literally working at every day so our team has solid housing (rather than, um, squeezing into living space with us), and our new approaches to soil. It's left us really, just as we began, with that mixture of passion, wonder and exhaustion building this farm. We'll be talking about that throughout the season in our newsletters, as we share stories and insights about this farming life, and what to do with our more than 50 crops. But tomorrow, is really about you. It's been a slower start to the spring, with both our infrastructure and the weather, but now our high tunnels are busting at the seams with early season greens.
Farm memberships start this week, and members can pickup their feedbag at market and start filling! If market doesn't work for you this week, we encourage you to come to the farm on Tuesday, anytime after 3:00 pm, when we'll have one or both of us staffing the farmstore just for members. Throughout the season you can fill your bag any day of the week, but in this first week, please shoot for one of those days if possible, or get in touch with us if those days don't work, so we know that you are sorted. Whether you are new or returning we really want to greet you and welcome the new season together, as well as just get a chance to make sure all the logistics are clear.
We staff our farmstore on Tuesday afternoons so we can greet members, but the farmstore is open to anyone, all the time. We stock our farmstore several times a week now, and of course with eggs daily and have a few new surprises in store next week, starting Tuesday afternoon.
I sit at my desk and take a deep breath. Wow, another season is upon us. We've got a warm hug for you at market and we are so grateful for you. We are at our same spot, on 2nd and Bedford. The new and improved market display we've been talking about is a few weeks from completion, so just look for our familiar well-worn used-to-be-white canopy, a big old pile of greens, and your smiling farmers.
To get our cabins complete, farm members and friends have been literally bailing us out, one work party after another. We are planning on mudding and taping drywall on Sunday as we get our crew housed on farm. Travis helped take down our ugly and falling down pole building at the cabin site. Now he, and his sweetie Shelly help hang drywall. In the first image above, Chris shares a laugh after she and Alex hung drywall and stuffed insulation for hours on end.
Not quite ready to move in yet, but close to being dried-in, these little well-insulated cabins may be our strongest, tightest, and straightest buildings yet. To save cost and make for a better footprint, all the framing lumber, some rafters, floor joists, windows (except for two new ones at each peak), and the roof are all reclaimed. Market proceeds this week pretty much go right into the finishing of these structures.