Happy New Year, farm friends.
I’m not quite sure what should mark the start of the farm-year. The first garlic sprouts emerging? The first panting of new greens? When the ground fully thaws in the field? Making the seed order? The winter solstice, or spring equinox? January 1 can seem a little arbitrary, but some numbers changed on the Gregorian calendar this past week, so welcome 2022, we’ve started a new harvest log!
And yes, in fact we are still harvesting. The greens in the tunnels didn’t love the sub-zero nights, but mostly they hung on just fine. As things don’t really grow much during this month of January, it’s all about keeping the greens alive and holding in the ground, and harvesting sections in sequence. We have different beds mapped out for harvest on various different weeks, to supply the farmstore and our Winter 2 membership. This is the first week of pick-up, for this 5-week term, and we’ll pack some extra of everything to give folks a chance to sign up through Wednesday morning; we have about 12 spots left, if you’d like to join in, and you can get all the details and sign up here with a simple online form. Winter 2 members will feast on carrots, beets, cabbage, radishes, potatoes, garlic, onions, winter squash, and a weekly dose of fresh greens, from kale/ chard cooking mix this week, to mild winter salad mix, spicy mustard greens, baby tatsoi, and more.
We didn’t exactly party it up for NYE; Noah hit the road for a trip to pick up the used walk-in cooler we bought way back in the summer, while Mary held down the fort and the chickens through the coldest night we’d seen in a while.
We’re still working on that whole “rest and recover” part of winter, starting with eating well—if you’re looking for a whole new taste idea, try out the savory squash pancakes we just discovered, described here.
Scroll on for some photo glimpses of what the farm looked like last week, and we encourage you to keep the farmstore in your routines, we’re still open, still stocked up, and still so glad that you all are such good eaters. And good local-farm supporters.
Thanks so much,
Mary and Noah
Though there are lots of complex details with winter farming (mostly about timing of plantings in the fall, actually), some of it is also so basic: put blankets on when the nights are cold. When they colder, add more layers of blankets. What may surprise you, though, is that in order for this to work, the blankets (which shade as well as insulate) have to come off each day and allow what sunlight there is, to hit the leaves and the ground; the soil, warmed even a few degrees during the day, is the heat reservoir that buffers the greens, with the blankets on at night. This cover/ uncover rhythm dictates our winter days, but is how we still have fresh greens in the farmstore and for members. Friday’s 12-below-zero low, and some of the cold cloudy days that followed, were a challenge but most things seem to be perking back up.
Even with multiple options for getting indoors, Malaya prefers to keep tabs on us all from her outdoor nests. Despite in the tight northern-dog curl, closed eyes, and layer of snow, her ears are tuned for any hint of fun and excitement. New Year’s Eve markes the anniversary of her joining our lives, so she did get an extra big chewing bone.
In the farmstore now, for a short time only: lettuce! Lettuce is actually one of the wimpier of the baby greens in the cold, so we cut everything we had before the sub-zeroes, and it’s stocked up in the farmstore. Our other, brassica-based salad mixes will continue for longer into the cold, but if you are a straight-up-lettuce fan, now’s the time to snag a few bags. The next round will be sometime in April.
Perhaps the new year starts when the compost is finished? This pile will be beautifully aged by spring. Periodically during the winter we turn it to fold in the moisture from rain and snow, to keep is simmering along through the season. A newer, younger pile give off steam even on the coldest days, as a our team of microbes works hard breaking it all down.
Squash-soup season continues. Sometimes all it needs is a handful of sautéed onions, garlic, ginger, a few cups of leftover squash, a few cups of broth, and a dollop of curry paste. Eat the spicy-greens and garbanzo beans salad on the side, or throw it on top of the soup.