Dear Farm Friends,
It’s been a big week at SweetRoot, once again. One of those that has been so packed, so long, and yet gone so fast.
We planted a lot, and yet the nursery is bursting at the seams (we keep planting more); we moved all four chicken barns to truly lush fresh pasture. We seeded more greens, planted more peas, installed irrigation timers, repaired a few things, planned a whole bunch more. We turned over two tunnels from their spring greens crops to summer veggies—cucumbers and peppers are in the ground, tucked under thick layers of row cover even inside their unheated greenhouses, for these next few nights.
Speaking of greenhouse space: For those of you who have been wondering about starts—we have so little room to start even the veggies and flowers for the farm in our greenhouse, we are not offering many starts this year at all. We’ll sell a few leftovers here and there as they come up (onions and scallions at market this week), but for filling your garden, we highly recommend checking out other farms—Lindsay of Fourth Wave Farm is excellent at producing starts, as of course is Lifeline Produce.
At the market this week, we’ll have so many good greens again: baby spinach, salad mix, spicy mix, tatsoi, chinese cabbage, a lovely pink-stemmed pac choi, plus radishes, chives, cilantro, tulip bunches, and lots and lots of eggs.
Farm Members, it’s the start of your second week! Thank you for bearing with us in getting the membership going this spring, and we really hope you’ve enjoyed week one’s goodies. Whether you find us at market or at the farm this week, please choose 4-5 veggie items to put in your bag (or a bag at least….still waiting for the official feedbags to arrive).
Read on for meal ideas, details of what we’ve been up to, and plenty of behind the scenes glimpses of the farm. We’ll be at our spot on Beford street tomorrow morning, 9:00-12:30, no matter what the weather brings, so we hope we’ll see you there! If not, the farmstore of course is open all week, and will be well packed with greens and veggies for you.
-Mary and Noah
Can you spot the nest? Look past the hose Y that cracked in last fall’s frosts, the vice grips where the valve handle fell off, to the more organic mess, where a startled robin flew off her nest early this week when I went to start the irrigation pump.
She shoots out of the nest every day when I start up the irrigation, but despite her daily fright, has persisted, adding an egg a day till she reached four on Thursday.
If your mother would appreciate a home-baked spinach frittata and bouquet of tulips, we’ve got you covered. Mothers day is particularly bittersweet here this year, as we lost Mary’s mom at the end of December. Her diagnosis right around the time we started the farm meant she never had a chance to see it in person, though she enjoyed the photos and stories and reports of our development those first few wild-ride years. We know she would be proud of what the farm has become.
If you, too, are missing a mom this year, perhaps get some tulips for yourself—and make a good veggie filled omelette; surely she would want you to eat your spinach.
One way to eat greens: massive farm-team-dinner salad, features all the types of greens at once, topped with gingery marinated chickpeas (from the original Moosewood Cookbook), some good bread, and your favorite dressing.
Or prepare to stir-fry with our newest addition to the greens lineup: vivid pac, a tart, crunchy pink-stemmed pac choi. Use it like you would boc choi—we recommend stir fried with peanut sauce and an egg on top. Try it with your favorite peanut sauce, a ginger dressing, or since cilantro is back, our creamy cilantro-lime dressing!
Many parts of farming are in no way picturesque. But when these irrigation valves, can be set to open and close on a schedule, from a controller at the well house, it will be a beautiful thing (and save many hours and countless distractions each day, when one farmer doesn’t have to make trip after trip across the farm to turn water zones on and off).
Spring is hectic for most farms, and we are all eager to connect. When there’s an extra moment for a phone call, usually early in the morning before starting out with crew, or perhaps late at night, we all tend to seize on them. I could tell that Nathan from Raven Ridge was in the same state as us when the call about biodegradable packaging quickly also covered new crew, work schedules, strawberry spacing, micro greens, team organization, and more. Noah has been our main communicator with other farms lately, everything from squeezing potting soil totes for three different farms onto our trailer when he drove to Big Arm to load us up, to an almost daily text message stream with Max from MGVC that covers everything from the best seeder settings for spinach, to incredible nerdy farm-based ‘your mama’ jokes.
We are grateful for farm neighbors, near and far—we called on the MGVC crew for a short term loan of 100 sandbags to fill to hold down row cover on a new planting this week. A few days later, when their flame weeder was acting up with hundreds of row feet of carrots needing pre-emergence flaming (a process where sometimes a four-hour delay can mean you miss the window, with disastrous results!), of course we loaned ours. We forgot to mention it’s kind of a farm-built ungainly large and awkward piece of equipment, but we managed to strap it to the top of Barret’s not-very-large car and get it over in time.
Spring is a time when things change so fast, too. Thursday it’s over 80 degrees, Saturday it might snow at market (we’ll be there even if it does, don't worry). People come and go—Kayla’s month here before starting her med school adventures is coming to a close and we’ll miss her so much! We are still sorting out who will fit into the core farm team for this year, and are hiring both a full-time farmhand (living on the farm in one of the cabins), and two part-time positions to help with harvest days, plant care, and weekend farm duties while we are at market. If you or anyone you know would like to apply for one of those options, please send us a message. It’s not easy work, and it’s not for everyone, but for those of us who fit it, farming can also be just about the best job.
It might only be other farmers who find this beautiful….but this week also included completing a “charging shelf” in the new and improved storage area of the barn.
The full lineup of four moveable barns on fresh pasture!