Happy Winter, Farm Friends.

The sun was settling into its far-south peak as we finished the daily rounds of covering the greens inside the tunnels yesterday. From the kale and chard, that low light illuminated a suite of soil-care practices in surprising beauty: cover crop that will soon die back but provide a little protection for the winter ground and re-sprout vigorously in early spring; composts -both finished and new; bales of organic hay for the winter chicken-pasture, and of course the unheated tunnels that help us keep live growing roots in the soil year round. As we settle into winter, hoping for good stretches of rest, stories, recovery, and connection (but of course also with ambitions and a bit of fretting about how to get done all the dark-season building and projects), we are so grateful for this land, the seasons, the billions of seen and unseen lives that make up the ecosystem of this farm—including you, dear eaters.

We can hardly stop at the hardware store or take a short walk with the dog in town these days without hearing a warm greeting and, most likely, a member of our community raving about the greens, the eggs, or the deliciousness of the roots they just got from the farm. We love it.

Other than slow and fitful progress on the new packshed space (starting with the nursery on the south side, because after all, each season starts with seedlings), we have to confess, we’ve done little to no holiday preparation for ourselves. We joke about grinch-y farmer presents, like decorating a tree with bolts and greenhouse hardware, stockings full of T25 torx bits and ratcheting wrenches, wonder how a load of nice compost or a ready-to-go chicken barn would fit under a tree, speculate as to whether to trip out to buy new winter mud boots counts as festive. Except that, um, we do get kind of excited about fasteners, bits, and shiny new greenhouse parts. Someday we may have to publish a small-farmer gift guide, the things farmers get excited for might surprise you.

If you are also perhaps behind on your holiday shopping, and your recipients are good-humored, perhaps a head of garlic or an onion in the stocking? In all seriousness, a big salad bowl of locally grown greens is a gift, in Montana winter. We hope you’ll include some fresh local food in your holiday feasting; the farmstore is open and well-stocked even in this darkest part of the year. We are stocked with, well, really almost everything. Spinach is on a short vacation, hoping to be back mid-January, but mild and spicy salad mixes, baby boc choy and other stir-fry worthy greens are here, tokyo bekana, leaf-lettuce’s cold-season cousin, and plenty of carrots, beets, onions, garlic, potatoes, radishes, winter squash and more. Even the hens are on their game, with plenty of eggs for you.

The hardy winter greens: tatsoi, leaf cabbage, baby boc choi, spicy mustards, vivid pac, and red pac choi.

But in other farm gift options, for yourself or for others, we finally got in the sweatshirts, printed locally with Sabrina’s artwork, the farm-in-a-beet logo that also adorned this year’s feedbags. Members who pre-ordered, we have sweatshirts set aside for you labeled with your name, and we are happy to report we have extras for anyone to purchase, ($50 each for the organic cotton and recycled fleece zip-up hoodies), about to go out in the farmstore. We have kind of been living in ours since they arrived, and love them. The front, under our farm initials/ abbreviation (SRF) includes three words that encapsulate many of our hopes for the farm: Food. Story. Love. Truth be told, that was the one thing I hesitated about on the sweatshirts—can we really claim that this year? Food, other than a few hiccups and an aphid apocalypse in the brussels sprouts, we did well. So much food. But with frayed nerves, short on time and often short-tempered, skipping newsletters many weeks, were felt we were falling short on the other two words, the connecting elements and a huge part of the magic of the farm….we want to be better at hearing and sharing the stories, of growing a place for people to love. But the origin of these three words (another story, perhaps for winter) involved focusing on what we want, what we hope to become. And so there they stay, above our hearts, the reminder of the core for our farm: food, story, love.

Our biggest winter gifts to ourselves, if we can manage them, will really be the times for deliberate slowing-down, a walk or ski in the snowy woods, an evening to just sit and read. Thanks, so much, to all of you who have dropped by the kind cards, sweet gifts, and well-wishes for us and the farm critters.