January: The Month in Photos and Winter Greens Update
As I write, we are harvesting, and at the same time construction on our new build, The Foodshed, continues. It’s huge project and now as the real work on these final interior phases start, we couldn’t do it without your support. We thought we’d share some behind the scenes photos from the past two weeks, when we’ve been a bit too busy to send out newsletter. But first, a harvest and greens update!
Harvest Update: Winter greens are seasonal, and right now, most of our fresh greens are going to our farm members. We continue to be inspired by the demand of winter greens in our valley, and every year we manage to feed more and more of you with them! But if you’ve come to the farmstore recently , you may have noticed that greens have been spotty in our coolers. We just haven’t had quite enough in our harvests to keep the shelves fully stocked all week long.
Don’t worry, there are still some fresh greens available each week, and they will continue to be more abundant as the days get longer. But supply will be sporadic for the next several weeks, so there will be days with no greens on the shelf. While we were harvesting well over 100 pounds per week a couple of weeks ago, we are just harvesting 1/2 to 1/3 of that now. If you don’t find fresh greens available, there’s still a ton of other stuff: eggs, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, beets, winter squash, garlic, our own roasted coffee, and even some organic cotton hoodies. For this time of year, our small farmstore is still pretty loaded.
It’s very hard to say when there will or won’t be greens available each week. It’s only our third year of winter growing and we are still figuring out demand, honing our techniques, building our protected spaces, etc.. It’s also complicated, because we planted (and planned) for the winter farm back in August. If we have a special surprise harvest, like a decent size pulse of spinach, we will let people know via facebook, or we feel like it’s market-level scale, we will send out an email to this list. In many ways, winter farming is tricky. It’s expensive with crew, protected spaces, and some extra tools and systems (it’s also the reason for our build, photos below), but we have to admit that we are addicted to it. It’s exactly the kind of tricky complex, satisfying sort of challenge that drew us to farming in the first place…just even mores. Also, if we weren’t entirely committed to winter farming, our current build (that houses a new farmstore and walk-in coolers) would literally be about half the size. Our farm is serious about investing in good four season systems.
What do we do with all those craft gourds that didn’t sell? They get fed to our laying hens, via a distribution system we call squash-ball. If you are familiar with our radish baseball photos, these are even more dramatic. Sabrina, of course, turned out to be a real home-run hitter in her first squash-ball season. In addition to giving ourselves a solid round of fun on a deep snow day, now whenever there are melty windows, the hens find a few new patches of gourd seeds and pulp to feast on.
All of our mobile henbarns finally got names. Mostly so we don’t mix them up and another way we are implementing systems. Behind the scenes, a six page manual has been written to help simply the consistency of care for the laying hens. The name above, the Evergiven, for this 8x40’ titanic is apt. The roofline is still not entirely straightened out from the big tip it had two Septembers ago. Outriggers have since been welded on to the base of this barn so 65-70mph wind gusts should not be problematic. We hope. It has not yet been irreparably stuck anywhere on the farm, but we do navigate the narrows carefully with this one.
Left to right: Sabrina, Noah, and Ed (farm member and builder), install a custom piece of farm hardware that will be the attachment point for the inflated roof for our new nursery.
Will (not pictured) and Noah roll out the second layer of plastic on a frosty roof on Monday with the help of Rueben and Mary as a ground support team. We just had one warm, calm window to do this crucial task this past week. And while it was easier to drop hundreds of pounds of greenhouse plastic down, rather than pullup, the roof was so slick we no longer recommend this method.
The new greenhouse roof, is inflated to a giant bubble with a small motor after the two layers of plastic have been safely secured to the structure. While the old nursery will house some of the first seedlings soon, we will move over to this new structure as soon as possible. We are giddy with excitement at double the amount of space for seedlings.
We’ve needed the new nursery for about three years now. Last March and April, we got so tight on space so flats of young plants went into the pathways of a high tunnel for protection (they’d been sitting outside to harden off, but were getting smashed by 6” of snow). Other nights we had to scramble when our reliable pellet stove wasn’t so reliable. The new space features a large powerful heater and some basic low tech automation, including some rollup sides and automatic venting and cooling. The heater is mounted in the photo along with some custom SRF hardware. One special cool note — all that shiny metal tubing and roofing in the photo is reclaimed, repurposed from other steel structures in our region to reduce the footprint of our build. And, nearly all the lumber in both the nursery and the packshed is also reclaimed, from 20-200 miles from the farm. The reclaimed tin roofing, for the nursery sides and the top of our structure came from a bit farther afield, but it was also reclaimed.
In addition to improving systems, and building a real sustainable facility that streamlines our operation, this is the season for repairs. Vehicles get worked on. Compost piles get turned, hard to find spare parts get purchased from all over the internet. Above, we still aren't quite sure why a simple hyrdraulic line took a few hours to repair, but it did. Turning compost piles is extremely hard on our 45hp, 4wd tractor. It’s even harder when a hydraulic line ruptures and sprays Noah in the face.
On a snowy day, the whole team, including Sam (in the orange hat) harvests the last of our winter mild mix from one of our moveable caterpillar tunnels. The spinach in the foreground is re-growing and will be abundant later this spring. Due to a ton of precautions and safety protocols, Sam is the only person on our team who came down with covid. He was on vacation and although he’s well on the mend, he’s about to wrap-up his winter contract with the farm. It was great to have his help to share our workload with the winter farm membership this past season.
On a sunny day, hens from the young flock launch off the sundeck of The Evergiven.