The building crew, including two farm members, and Team SweetRoot. From left to right (Brandon, Will, Dave, Ed, Noah, Sabrina, Mary).
Who are we, and what do we want to become? I think of this every day. This morning, over coffee with the crew, looking at our weekly and daily whiteboards, between getting winter crops planted and getting our regular daily harvests in, I try to step back and think about this question. With revolving crew this year (we’ve had many part-timers) and a small core team this year, and all the management that has come from that, it’s been difficult to stay on task, difficult to find the answers to those questions. With the huge management load, so many of you have seen us completely fried-to-the-core this year. We’ve not had a year of so little sleep since I can remember. And slowly, over the past months, a building, part of our new farm center, is rising up from all of this.
It’s the biggest project we’ve ever done. It’s an indoor wash and pack area that’s finally enough space. If we continue to have the early freezes we anticipate, as we did the last few years, it’s overflow space so crops literally won’t freeze out in the fields, it’s enough walk-in cooler space for us that produce won’t be tucked all over the farm (and at neighboring farms), it’s a space for real mushroom production, a space for workshops and events, and also includes an attached nursery. All part of this will help us grow up as a farm, to employ year round crew, create real jobs, and help build a sustainable food system.
Who knew, when we started out, that we’d need this, it’d all be part of our us digging in, creating the farm and community ecosystem that we imagined. As I write, an excavator churns away, digging us a new power line. Even though we’ve got the shell of a building up, nearly with 80% of the materials we’ve reclaimed ourselves, there’s still a long way to go: plumbing, electrical, insulation, some efficient mechanical systems, light tubes for natural light, doors to build and a couple interior walls to frame up, and coolers to build or move, some cement work to do and a little more timber framing to do. The list is endless but finite. I wish I could say I had a plan for getting this all finished out on a farm budget, but I embarrassingly don’t. It’s a huge project, and at the end of the day, it’s astounding how much of our land debt (in addition to my student loans), we could have paid instead of doing this project.
But, thus far at least, we stand by our plan. This is really the future farm we are building. Without continued farm and market sales, we just couldn’t do it. Somehow, we’ll get this project all wrapped up, and we will keep building that future we’ve imagined.
With all this said, we run a hosted farm from 3-6pm today (Tuesday). It’s time to make sure you secure everything from salsa and canning supplies to the last of things (zucchini and eggplant) that will soon be done.
For your table: We have flats of tomatoes stacked precariously high in the shop, barn, and the farmstore, but we are acutely aware that the tomato harvests will come to a halt soon! Now is the time to stop in and pick up whole flats for canning, freezing, saucing, or dehydrating. Also on the table for us with cooler weather (frosts will visit us most nights this week) are roasted cubed root mixes (multicolored potatoes, beets, carrots, garlic, and onions), soups, and a new one: roasted cabbage. Slice thick wedges of cabbage, spread on a baking sheet, drizzle with your favorite oil (turn over to get both sides), sprinkle with salt and pepper, and bake at 450 till edges of the wedge are crispy and the centers are sweet and soft.
-Noah and Mary, SweetRoot Farm
p.s.: For farm members: We are almost into the final month of your 6-month farm membership! Feedbag fill-ups run through October 29th, so you have 5 weeks, counting this one, of loading up your bag.
The front of the new farmstore and nursery with our market trailer for scale. The south side of the super-insulated structure will house a nursery. A bunk of reclaimed lumber on the neighbor’s forklift will be made into doors and interior work.
A buckwheat cover crop in one of our unheated tunnels. Photo made this weekend right before mowing and getting ready for winter transplants.