A forest of kale buried by the first winter storm. Fortunately, more mountains of greens are protected under the farm’s six moveable caterpillars and four permanent high tunnels so the harvests are far from over. The snow is actually helping insulate the last of the carrots that we will hopefully harvest out next week.
Dear Farm Friends,
The deep snow on the ground is not the only thing making this Friday different from the previous 24 Fridays. We are still washing and packing produce to prepare for a busy Saturday morning, but the checklist of things to do today looks a little different. For the first time since April, we will not be packing up and driving our trailer to our market space downtown. Remember the last email, when we promised that we come to market come rain, snow, wind, hell and high water…but not if the temperatures will be below freezing the whole time? Well that’s the current forecast for Saturday morning: ranging from 12-24 degrees, so impossible to put leaves out on a display shelf without them freezing solid. But don’t worry, you can still get all the veggie goodness you could want, you’ll just need to come out to the farm. For those of you unfamiliar with the farmstore, this is a great time to try it out and get into a non-market season habit for still sourcing local food!
We will have the whole normal market crew ready to greet and help you out at the farmstore Saturday morning, while the normal on-farm team helps bag up and stock the farmstore to supply a much busier than normal Saturday morning in that little space. And remember that even if you don’t make it in on Saturday, you can stop in at the farmstore any day of the week for a self-serve shopping. Small and humble as it is, it is at least temperature-controlled, so we can get you all the good produce we’ve been working to get in this week.
Because, wow, what a week. When the forecast changed substantially on Saturday night, moving the cold and snow earlier and foreshadowing this weekend’s potential for single digits, we put out the call to the whole farm crew that this would be a big push. We had people come in on Monday and Tuesday who normally have those days off, we had lots of folks put in a few extra-long days, and Noah and I ran deep into headlamp territory every single night, getting as much done as we could before the forecast of nights in the teens. Collectively, we harvested a huge amount of greens, roots, and more, before the snow dumped. Most of it we crammed, un-washed, into our walk-in coolers to deal with after putting in critical crop protection. We set a new speed record for moving not just one, but two caterpillar tunnels in one day to cover both salad mix and winter spinach, and we got hundreds of pounds of salad turnips, beets, and carrots out of the field and barrel washed….plus more hundreds of pounds of carrots, harvested out from under 6 inches of snow, not yet washed but at least safely stowed.
So actually, part of our message today is actually not just that you can come out to the farm to load up this Saturday, but also that we need you to come out and stock up! The walk-in cooler (all three of them, and some at our neighbor’s) is ridiculously full and believe it or not, we have more to come in: beds of carrots that we will jump on harvesting as soon as possible with the predicted thaw next week (and we are so counting on that to happen as predicted, also for planting the garlic and lots of field cleanup). But to fit those carrots in, we need the good eaters of SweetRoot to help eat up all this salad mix, spinach, head lettuce, kale, chard, stir-fry mix, and more, that is pushing our capacity of space! We also still have the last few tomatoes, lots of hot peppers, carrots, beets, radishes, salad turnips, potatoes, sweet peppers, (though mostly green ones now), garlic, onions, and more. Cabbage, did we mention the cabbage? Lots and lots of cabbage. One advantage of market-at-the-farm is that no matter how much sauerkraut you want to make, we can grab a bulk box of cabbage for you, or a 25-pound bag of carrots or beets. We’ll be bringing out more of the winter squashes as well.
And as an added festive bonus (it’s not just to keep the crew warm, really), we’ve just decided to fire up the pepper roaster one more time. We have a huge stack of red-ripe Anaheim peppers still, so you can pick up a 5-lb batch to take home fresh or to run through the roaster to stash away in your freezer for the rest of winter. No advance reservation needed this time, just come gather round the roaster anytime between 10 and noon.
And one final detail….the rest of winter, the part that comes after the October winter storms: we should have had our winter farm membership signups ready already, but that task got buried by the snow as well. Winter-farming is still on, and don’t worry we’ll be getting signups out as soon as we can, but we had to push it back to get those critical tasks covered. People have often been asking at the farmstore, too, about how long it stays open. The answer: all year. Of course the hot-crops disappear eventually, but through the winter we are stocked with roots like carrots, beets, radishes, etc., plus lots of cold-hardy fresh greens, and cabbage, winter squash, onions, and garlic. Yes, you can eat local produce all year!
Hope to see you at the market farm tomorrow morning!
Gratefully your farmers,
Mary and Noah
p.s., farm members, this is the final week of your feedbag membership! The farm weeks start on Saturday, so make sure to come in for your final feedbag fill this weekend or anytime through Friday of this week. And watch for the winter-membership signup coming soon….you’ll get that first shot at the signup form.