Noah unloads chicken barn siding to clear the way for reclaimed 40 foot long trusses, fresh from a building taken down by Heritage Timber.
Dear Farm Friends,
First, a confession: the majority of the produce in the farmstore and at the market this weekend did not pass through my or Noah’s hands. Though we both helped with the greens cutting and washing, for almost everything else we just met with the team, reviewed the harvest list, and left it to Alexis, Johnnie, and Sabrina to do the digging, bunching, cutting, washing, and packing. They really rocked it, bringing in so much good food today while Noah and I have, after many weeks of trying, forced ourselves to buckle down, lock to the desk, and work on the details of how to build this packshed/ farm warehouse space that we so desperately need.
Why is it so critical, you might ask? The team can tell you some stories—about having to move the greens weighing and packing into the propagation house last Monday when 30 mph winds were whipping the greens right off the packing table in our open-sided packshed (which meant running bags of spun-dried greens across a 60-foot gap and back, when boxed and packed….you don’t need to hire a farm consultant to know that’s not the most efficient layout). Or the PhD level of tetris skill needed to fit everything harvested into our little walkin cooler trailer on Thursday before the co-op truck picks up, and again by Friday afternoon. True story: the passageway down the middle of the stack of boxes is navigable only by sidling sideways, wedging yourself between two rows of bins packed with produce, with arms overhead and gut sucked in. And if you don’t heed that last detail, or if perhaps your harvest-crew also happens to make really delicious desserts, there are consequences in the form of a classic embarrassing farm injury. Yesterday evening, on a quest to make more space, which involved excavating a bin of tomatillos from the very bottom of the very back stack in the walk-in cooler by first moving the 3 bins of roots that were on top of it, I wrestled a 50-lb tote of beet bunches from ground level up and over to the top position on the next stack…so close to victory, except for the inch of belly that cushioned its landing.
But ludicrous bruises aside, this next step of our farm evolution is so important. We are ready and eager to be able to process and store all of the food we can now grow, in an efficient, humane, and accessible way on our farm, which we currently really can’t do. One long-time farm member this week requested a lovely type of cabbage that we would have been so happy to give her….except it was stored in the rented walk-in space 6 miles away. On a busy member day, we counted more than 100 walking trips, 120 feet round trip each time, to restock our farmstore from the packing shed we’ve outgrown. We can’t do this anymore, nor can this tiny shed handle all of our produce for all of the four growing seasons we’d like to farm. We’ve been at (or over)capacity now for a couple of years. It’s one of the reasons why some crops froze in the field (literally unharvested) last year. And man, we are tired of waking up to check the wood stoves in our barn and farmstore in October, November, December, and even into January to make sure onions and winter squash — as well as greens in coolers are not in danger of freezing.
We have been asking ourselves and our crew to run the produce of almost 3 acres of vegetables through a packshed and cooler sized for a half-acre farm, and it’s time to help our facilities catch up to our actual production.
If you’ve been by the farmstore, you may have seen the reclaimed trusses, or the piles of reclaimed metal roofing, lumber, and siding starting to accumulate. Clearly, you’ve realized, we are up to something. This is all for the future packshed-storage space-- washing house that we are starting to affectionately call the Food Shed. As we solidify our design, with more slightly torturous days of planning (I would so much rather dig potatoes by hand, or belly crawl through the tomatillo thicket, than sit at a desk during daylight in September), we’ll be reaching out to let you know how you can help it take shape. There are lots of ways you all can be a part of the build, most of which do not even include swinging a hammer. (But if you are the magical farm supporter who last week offered to bring some skilled carpenters and a lift for those trusses by crane for a few days of roof and wall framing, when I was too sleepy post-market to think clearly enough to get your number then…..please do send us a message!)
And in the meantime, while we don’t yet have space to store our produce all winter for you to pick up at your convenience, the good news is, we are offering some stock-up sales for bulk items, hoping you are ready to can, ferment, dehydrate, pickle, or freeze to keep some good local produce in your own home or kitchen well past the summer season.
This Tuesday at the farm, we’ll be doing our first of probably several fall stock-up pick-ups. You can sign up through this link online, or on paper at market this Saturday, for bulk deals to pick up your order at the farm on Tuesday. We’ll have some farm crew on hand to run out pre-ordered stock up items to avoid lines in the farmstore. In this first round, we have bulk beets, cabbage, juicing carrots (the cosmetically challenged carrots that we recommend processing somehow, rather than storing for months), kale, Anaheim peppers, and red and green salsa kits. For full pricing and details, visit the online signup form.
Last week before market, we worried about smoke; this week we’re worried about rain dampening the spirits of potential market-goers, but we’ll be happy to get drenched for the sake of a breath of clean air! If either type of weather makes it hard for you to get to market, we’ll be doing our best to keep the farmstore well-stocked. But if you can come out to market, please do! We have so much good food still—tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, basil, cabbage, boc choi, eggplant, melons (!) some of the very last cucumbers, and so much more.
Some of our eating recommendations this week include stir-fries (boc choi is back!), roasted root vegetables, big salads of course, burritos or tacos with all the great mild chilies, sweet peppers, and cabbage, and for the rainy day or two we do hope is coming, our favorite version of tomato soup, now on our farm blog, here.
Hope to see you at market or the farm this week!
With love and salsa,
Mary & Noah, and all of SweetRoot
Late one night, our crew — or at least five of us — fired up our pepper roaster and made tomatillo salsa.
Sabrina loads the Western Montana Growers truck. It’s part of our harvest routine every Monday and Thursday. Once we get the truck loaded, we always breathe a sigh of relief. With our walkin cooler emptied, we can continue our harvest day (usually, the truck doesn’t come until 5pm). This is one of the several challenges our new farm foodshed will solve.