Rising from piles of reclaimed lumber we’ve been gathering for well over a year, the new packshed is taking shape. Two of the three independent contractors on the building crew are farm members, and the building team has been making amazing progress over the last three and a half weeks. Those of us on the core farm team have also been helping prep materials, make beams, set walls, and nail up lumber.
Yup, we are pretty proud of the new building going up. As many of you know, we’ve needed this space for about quite a while now. If you haven’t been following along, this building projects checks a lot of the boxes on our list of much-needed farm upgrades. It will house an indoor wash and pack area for processing veggies in all weather, two walk-in coolers so we can store crops at their ideal temperatures (and not run across town to rented cooler spaces all winter), a more spacious farmstore, and a nursery space large enough to meet our spring starts needs, as well as grow some starts for your gardens. As soon as we get power, we will literally start moving coolers in, racing against the cold weather, as one of the primary functions of this space is temperature controlled storage for crops our community can eat all winter: beets, carrots, potatoes, squash, and more. Nearly all of the main building components are reclaimed, and we are grateful to have found builders excited to build this way—even though it isn’t the easiest, it fits our farm values.
You haven’t heard from us lately since this has been such a major undertaking, literally nearly three years in the planning process, and even with builders hired, still requiring a lot of our time even during the busy late-summer harvest season. This is a crucial part of farming our way, creating a sustainable four season farming and being able to pay crew year round. It’s also a bit of a leap of faith; the last major details of the structure we are still figuring out some of the finances for. This is all the more reason to come out today for our first sweet pepper roast. We are kicking the building crew out for the afternoon and setting up our pepper roaster in the new lean to. This covered but open north porch will be a loading area, an area for mushroom production, and a nice permanent space for our root washer to work on warm days.
So come out today, help us break it all in, literally help us build the farm you are part of. The farmstore and market trailer will be loaded up. Our featured bulk deals are below. One reason we are offering some build deals and asking you to stock up is also to keep freeing up space in our current walk-in coolers, which are about to get pretty tight! We’ve got two coolers on the farm now, and the third (and hopefully final) big cooler is about to be put up in the new space, but we won’t have power for at least 2-3 weeks, so we are tight on space and need you to stock up!
Some crew yesterday, having some birthday cheesecake!
Need another reason to come out? It’s Noah’s birthday!