Winter Solstice on the Farm

Greens in the tunnels are still being harvested, mostly when we have windows to wash and pack.

Happy winter, Farm Friends. 

The winter Solstice arrives this weekend, and for the first time ever we'll celebrate the longest night of the year with a meal that includes a pile of fresh greens.  We hope you'll do the same. The farmstore was stocked Wednesday with fresh spinach, baby kale, boc choi, and tatsoi, as well as carrots, potatoes, and plenty of squash and garlic. 

As we enter winter, our theoretical resting-season, and the hum of the holiday season surrounds us, we face our usual dilemma of being, well, pretty bad at taking time off. It's a common problem for farmers, and maybe all small business owners whose job is also their passion. It can be almost comical, as we have only half-joking discussions of whether a double-axel trailer can be considered a Christmas gift, or whether the innovative addition of  hinging roost bars, power outlets, insulation, and adding a fresh coat of paint to a chicken barn counts as festive decorating. You'll be glad to know we determined "no" on both counts. But still, it can feel like it takes a bit of active effort to keep the grinch off the farm, with such big lists of goals and necessary season-ending chores still to wrap up. The infrastructure and improvement goals are a bit overwhelming, and it can be hard to stop for a break.   

We're working on it though, and as with many things in farming, it's helpful to know that we are not alone. Chatting with fellow members of our grower's co-op social this fall, we were inspired by farmers who were preparing to take not just days, but weeks of winter to travel, rest, and explore.  We were also heartened, in a way, to hear them confirm "it does take practice!" One confessed that it takes him a full week of their month-long vacation before he gets over being "kind of mad to not just be at the farm working on stuff."  

Last week, we tried unsucessfully to take a weekend. The effort began with a long discussion of what exactly "a weekend" means, and what  was necessary in order to make it reality. We started with good intentions, but little experience. We hadn't had a weekend all year, and the last time we could remember two days "off" in a row was going to an intensive farmer-conference and a friend's wedding last winter. And so, when an opportunity came up on Saturday to see some farmer colleagues' wash and pack warehouse before they left the country for a while, we jumped on it. Through a festive flurry of snow, we drove up to Arlee, and tromped through fields, high tunnels, prophouses, and warehouses. It was fun, but also definitevely work-related. And then we spent another hour or so with them, afterwards, talking at their farm kitchen table.

It's a funny fine line--we promised ourselves a lunch date in Missoula, to make it weekend-y even though this was clearly farm-business reasearch.  But we ended up visiting with our farmer friends for hours because in reality none of us wanted to stop talking about farming. In the growing season, we never have time to visit each other, or if we manage to, there are hard planting and harvest deadlines, everyone needing to rush to the next thing. With the snow falling, we had the luxury of comparing notes on manure and fertilizer sources, lettuce varieties, washing methods, new tools, how to find employees, what temperature to store green peppers at, and all manor of things that "normal" people, lovely as you all are, would probably not be excited about. The solidarity of our colleagues does matter, and again, to hear our peers admit to also being burnt out at this time of year, despite many successes in the season, helped us feel not so alone. 

Between that visit, the regular chores, and realizing Sunday was the deadline for a group order on supplies that saves us quite a bit of money, we arrived at Sunday evening feeing like about all we had to show for our supposed weekend was a Friday night dinner and movie with friends, and having scrubbed both the kitchen sink and the shower (kind of a big deal, actually). We're going to try again. Surely we can get better at this, too.   

In other farm news...the class of 2020 hens continue to grow, but are still two months from laying any eggs. The 90-ish actively laying hens are going strong, but can't meet all of your demands, so please remain patient.  They are enjoying their newly remodeled digs, but since they were moved after dark, may not even fully understand that they gave up the biggest barn, which is, as I write, being scrubbed, upgraded, and prepared for move-in of half of the youngest flock. 

With the big chicken housing shuffle, and the continued harvests,  we will not have our 2020 membership signups ready in December, the original goal. But don't worry, we'll be ready for signups sometime in January, as you start to think about healthy habits and delicious vegetables. Past members will have a first shot at registration, so members, be sure to watch your emails! We've already started many of the purchases, tool making, and investments for the 2020 season, with hours of crop planning and seed orders coming soon. We think, honestly, it's going to be our best season yet and we hope you'll join us.  

Course materials came this week for the winter homework that will help bring our flower-growing to the next level. You can support this by purchasing a pre-paid flower card now, to spend over the summer and fall.

flower credit, and will help cover the cost of the farm's registration in an intesive online flower-growing workshop from Floret Farms this winter. This was a big investment this fall in an effort to bring our flower growing up to the level of our vegetable production. The flowers bring so much beauty and joy to the farm, and to appreciative customers, but it's the area of least expertise and training in our farming, and was in need of a little focused attention.  To help us get there, and give yourself a season of fresh, pre-paid blooms to look forward to, just click this link to purchase through the website, where you can let us know if you'd like to stop by the farmstore to pick up your card, or have it mailed to you. 

Winter breakfast: leftover baked squash in oatmeal with cinnamon, walnuts, maple syrup and yogurt. Best eaten near the wood stove.

And finally, a little glimpse at the winter-farm table lately: baked delicata squash with chopped spinach salads inside (add dollops of goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and a balsamic dressing), roasted cubed potatoes drizzled with herb butters, curried squash soups, carrot-and-cabbage salads, mashed potatoes of all colors, curries topped with raw boc choi and tatsoi, and chicken soup. We hope you are eating well as well. Even as we work on getting more of the farm wrapped up for winter, we'll be here farming, and we thank you as always for being a part of it. 

With gratitude and wishing you winter peace,
Mary and Noah 

Winter Harvesting and Poultry Masterminding

Spinach loves cold weather and December spinach is some of the best.

Greetings, farm friends! 

We hope that this almost-winter season is treating you well, and we wanted to reach out with a few quick bits of farm news.  First, it's with a bit of amazement and some satisfaction that we report that there are still fresh greens in the farmstore!  We stretched our growing deeper than ever into late fall and winter this year, and we've been reveling in the luxury of fresh spinach salads, Swiss chard to sauté, and deep green tatsoi on top of everything.  The farmstore is currently stocked with spinach, Asian mix, boc choi, tatsoi, and very tender small-leafed green chard, plus the very last harvest of arugula for the year.  There are of course the storage crops too: squash and pumpkins, potatoes, garlic, carrots, beets, and cabbage, as well, but it may be the greens that are the most exciting. 

Some of the late season plantings were to make up from our midsummer losses to hail, but some of it has also been about learning and testing.  And that includes both learning about the best cold-weather varieties and techniques, but also about how we feel about winter growing. We've been finding ourselves drawn to the additional challenge and puzzle, and the extra satisfaction of providing fresh food to our community (and our table!) over a month past the end of market.

But having fresh greens into December has also re-confirmed our need to create an adequate space for washing and packing what we manage to grow, if we want to provide that winter produce. People often ask what we do during the winter, and much of the answer is research, learning, and planning.  A number of consults with farmer-friends and advisors are on the schedule for this month, as we try to work out the best way to not only grow, but also harvest and prepare, year-round local veggies for you all.  In the meantime, we'll try to harvest whenever we can run water in liquid form, and keep you posted on what is available in the farmstore!  And when necessary, we have put up signs to let you know that spinach is un-washed and will need a rinse at home. Thank you for your patience with our developing systems, and above all thank you for continuing to support local farmers by not forgetting about us in the wintertime! It has been so exciting to realize how many of you will keep coming and buying whatever is green, as long as we can keep it coming. Thank you!

Zukes is a farmer's winter role model, the most accomplished and luxuriant sleeper on the farm. He still works hard, but boy does he rest up in cold weather.

And then there are the chickens and the eggs. Have you noticed a bit of mobile chicken-barn congestion around the farmstore parking area?  Or maybe done a double-take when a whole new chicken barn seemed to appear out of nowhere, overnight?  While Noah is getting fast at building these, the second barn that is currently front and center is not brand-new, but "just" a remodel. You may not have seen it in a while, as it was on pasture far to the back of the farm all season, with the oldest flock of laying hens, who are now stewing hens in various freezers. 

There's a big re-allocation of housing going on right now, as that barn gets a major remodel and becomes home to the current laying flock, so that the 230 rapidly growing chicks can be split between our two biggest barns, one of which currently houses the current laying flock, which will move into the new remodel.  If that got confusing, you're not alone; slotting everyone into good spaces with the least amount of wintertime building, remodeling, and investment, is practically a poultry version of a Rubix cube, but Noah has it all under control.  He estimates that this round of building and upgrading of barns is the equivalent, in both cost and person-hours, to building one of our 30 x 60 high tunnels, which we have gotten own to about 200 hours of labor each.  Egg production, at least egg production of the quality and style that we hold our farm to, is a major investment in infrastructure, which is part of why we haven't been able to magically and instantaneously keep up with the customer demand for our eggs. 

With winter conditions and minimal lighting on the current 1.5 year old laying flock of around 90 hens, we get only about 5 dozen eggs a day (and if you do the math, it's actually a really good rate of laying), compared to the 10-12 dozen in late summer or early fall, before the oldest flock shut down. This means, fundamentally, that we cannot produce enough eggs to meet demand until the 9-week-old flock starts to lay in mid to late February.  We currently do not recommend coming to the farmstore if eggs are the only item on your list.  Your odds of success are low, so please only come if you are looking for vegetables, but are happy to add eggs as well if you happen to get so lucky. 

We also currently do not recommend asking Mary "are there any eggs?" as it is likely to be the tenth time she's had the question that day, which often makes her grit her teeth and give chickens dirty looks. You can ask Noah, but at your own risk, as he's likely to talk you into buying a stewing hen instead. There will be more eggs in February. In the meantime, how about a lovely baked potato with spinach on top? 

As the true start of winter approaches, we expect to have at least a few more weeks of fresh greens, and for roots to stay stocked in the farmstore well into winter.  We'll be here too, whether you see us or not, as we delve into planning next year's crops, getting that seed order in, and maybe even getting a little bit of rest.  

With wintery gratitude and never enough eggs, 

Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm  

It's not a modern art installation, it's the latest chicken-barn upgrade, and the poultry mastermind at work.

Thanksgiving

The caterpillar tunnel and layers of row cover protected arugula and asian mix for your deep fall feasts.

Happy Thanksgiving, farm friends.  

As you might imagine, a holiday centered around food, people, and gratitude is bound to be one of our favorites.  It was challenging to lock down our own holiday plans (and there's still room for a little monkey-wrenching of plans in terms of winter weather advisories and other surprises), but wherever we end up, exactly, we'll try to enlarge our daily practice of gratitude. Mostly likely Noah will be minding the farm, as we just couldn't quite get everything wrapped up enough to leave with farm-sitters, and Mary will drive west to get some important time with family.

One thing that we are grateful for is that despite this wild ride of a season, despite the early arrival of wintery weather in fall, we have plenty for you to enjoy, in this final week of November.  The farmstore is truly loaded, and we were able to cut and wash some of the most delicious fresh greens today, just before the temperatures dropped and waterlines in the packshed froze. We invite you to come out to the farmstore in the next few days and load up for your meals and festivities: baby spinach, arugula, asian mix, potatoes, beets, carrots, cabbage, boc choi, onions, garlic, and so much winter squash. And decorative gourds. No matter how big your gathering, you could have a mini-pumpkin at every place setting (and please do, our barn is a little bit too full of them).  

View fullsize

Fall field mosaic: peppers, eggplant, and cabbages returning to the earth to feed the soil food web. We use our BCS walking tractor's flail mower to chop crop residues into fine food for worms and soil microbes. Depending on the current crops and next year's plans, beds will also get coverings of compost, straw mulch, and/ or tarps to help protect and feed the soil and prepare for next season.

For Tuesday morning, we'll have some of our direct trade coffee brewed up, roasted this evening, and bags of beans for you to buy and brew, too. We'll still be working to wrap up fall tasks, but we will take turns stepping inside to host a farmstore pickup from 4:00-6:00 this Tuesday, to help guide you to the best potato variety or winter squash for your needs. And Noah promises new-chicken-coop tours!   

And finally, we also have stewing hens to offer, just in time for serious winter soup season. This past week we butchered our oldest cohort of hens, who produced eggs for a full year longer than we had expected (an amazing and unexpected gift). If you'd like to purchase some, please contact us (email is fine, or call 240-1050; picking up at the hosted time on Tuesday will be ideal, but we can also make other appointments/ arrangements).  Birds are $8 each, with a minimum purchase of three, to make our pickup logistics reasonable, and with a discount to $7.00 each at five or more.  Please be aware, these are truly stewing hens, birds who lived a full life of using their muscles to run, flap, forage, and eat all the things that made such delicious eggs.  Cooked slowly and gently, they are divine, and will make some of the best soup stock you've ever had, but oven-roasted they'll give your jaw a workout.  We can give you cooking tips and our recommendations for how to enjoy them. Noah says these birds are a small consolation for not having enough eggs for everyone in the farmstore--but they will help get us to that goal, by helping funding  the newest barn and the next cohort of layers.  Eggs are now only about 5 dozen per day (a low in the past few years) but with the rising class of 2020, a new barn and upgrades to the older barns and our management, we expect egg abundance to soar to well over 17 dozen per day sometime in February. 

We'd like to close with a special thanks, too, to everyone who has brought us food, drinks, hugs, and high-fives through the season.  From venison sausage to caramel-apple ice cream toppings to chilies and sandwiches or cold ciders in the farmstore cooler and a few surprising checks in the mail.  We know that we are lucky; your collective generosity keeps us going, and we thank you. 

Whatever you eat this week, we hope it's delicious.
With gratitude, 
Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm

View fullsize

The garlic is in: planted into some of the least-weedy beds we've ever had in fall, thanks to our minimal-tillage soil prep and a little advanced planning and late-summer tarping. It's now tucked in under a layer of straw, pathways mulched with leaves, and we look forward to seeing these shoots peek up first thing in the spring.

Fall Cleanup

View fullsize

Nearing 100 hours of operating the BCS walking tractor, Noah's starting to look like a pro. Here he is using the rotary plow to throw soil from pathways up over mowed crop residue on our permanent beds, to help the soil biology break it down for spring plantings.

It must be fall cleanup time if I'm sitting at the desk to dash off an email in full raingear--from the blue polka-dotted kid-size Bogs boots, Dutch Harbor rubber overalls, to sweet hooded hand-me-down rain jacket (thanks Russ and Maureen!).  We've been deep into late-season cleanups here, trying to get some of the bed-prep and soil work done now that can help set us up for a smoother spring next year, even if we end up cold and wet like this year.  

But we wanted to send you out a few updates and bits of news, too.  

First:  there's good stuff in the farmstore again!  We were often short on greens this past week as we made huge cleanup pushes, getting garlic in the ground and field gear and old crops out, plus an annual farmer meeting on Saturday.  BUT we took some time Sunday and Monday to cut and wash in the milder weather (when the spinner is thawed, and the hoses are flowing, we make the most of it!).  The fridges are currently loaded with spinach, asian mix, kale bunches, and arugula, as well as some cabbage, lots of carrots, potatoes, and beets.  Garlic, winter squash, pie pumpkins, farm-roasted coffee, and a ludicrous number of mini-pumpkins and decorative gourds are piled on the farmstore tables. 

Even though we are no longer hosting on Tuesday afternoons, since our membership season wrapped up last week, it will be a good day to come out to the farmstore and load up.  And 2019 members, please remember you can take you member discount of 10% off all produce, whenever you shop at the farmstore, through the rest of the year.  We had sweet visits with many of you last week, but we hope it wasn't the last time we see you till next spring! We can never say "thank you" enough to farm members, and our dependable regular customers, so here's one more...thank you for being a part of our farm, helping us grow, and for your role in our productive season! 

View fullsize

Some of the final farm-member visits last week were the sweetest. Almost the entire Watters clan climbed the stepladder to visit the chicks at bedtime in their new barn, settling in all cozy under the heat lamps. I snuck a photo through on of the windows, of everyone entranced by the sleepy layer of chicks.

In other farm news, we've been doing a lot of work shaping beds for next year, and are starting to strategize already, based on the condition of blocks in the field, where different crops will go, what treatments they might need.  We'll start pulling some of our big silage tarps on, to encourage over-winter worm activity, early soil warming in the spring, and early spring weed suppression.  As Noah pointed out this morning over coffee, "we've already started spending money on next year, but that's a good thing."  A few truckloads of fall-spread compost, some additional tarps to order, soil tests to send out....it's still a busy time, but so much of what we do right now feels like good steps towards setting up for success next year. 

And finally, the chicks, what we like to call the class of 2020 laying hens, are settled in and loving their new barn. When people ask me "when will there be more eggs?" at the farmstore, I am often tempted to just say "February!" as we expect these girls to start their laying in the end of winter/ start of spring.  Please have patience. We have finally had the drop in production from the oldest of our two currently laying flocks, so we are down to 6-8 dozen eggs a day.  I estimate that we have 10-15 people still hoping to find eggs daily, so we're sorry if you find the shelves bare, but you are not alone.  

If you stop by the farm today you'll probably see us wet but working hard...likely to wave a muddy hand to you in thanks.  We'll be cutting and bringing in greens as often as we can over the coming weeks, so stay tuned to emails and facebook posts to know when pulses hit the farmstore.  Unfortunately, our lettuce beds in the caterpillar tunnel succumbed to a leaf mildew before reaching a harvestable size, so there will be no more salad mix for a while.  But, the baby spinach is prime, the tatsoi is sweet, and there are carrots of all colors, so salad season isn't over yet! 

with rainy farm love,
Mary and Noah, SweetRoot

View fullsize

Almost 6 weeks old, still a long ways from laying eggs, but learning to roost up like big girls.

The winter greens tunnel, two views: this is where the boc choi, tatsoi, and soon next week's spinach come from.  It's one of my favorite places on the farm these days. 

Post-Freeze News

Sunday evening, geese higher and faster than our local flocks, confirmed the forecast of coming cold.

Welcome to November, farm friends.  I know that many of you have been thinking about us and our fellow growers with this early dose of winter.  So first, we want you all to know that yes, we still have things to eat. The farmstore is open, members have two more weeks of filling their feedbags, and the local-eating season has not closed yet, by any means. Usually on the first Saturday after market we host some sort of farmstore shindig to entice people out to the farm. This week, though we had hoped to have some sort of winter squash festival (and open up some space in our shop by selling as many as possible!), we are, I'm afraid, going to have to be working every available non-frozen moment to try to get the last few things out of the field, and our garlic into the ground, before real winter arrives. But come on out, there will be plenty to eat. We took advantage of a short warm window of time this afternoon to grab some fresh green goodness, so there is baby spinach, baby boc choi, deep green tatsoi, and even fresh arugula to pack into the farmstore tomorow.  They'll join the potatoes, onions, beets, radishes, and sweet peppers that were harvested and stored before the freezes. We hope you'll come out, and we're sorry we won't have time to visit, but we'll give our friendliest wave and great appreciation, from whatever work we are in the midst of. 

And how has it been, for us, this unusual cold snap?  Well, you know the old saying, "there is no bad weather, just inadequate clothing?" This past week, we experienced the farm-scale version of that, which we would phrase as "there is no bad weather, just inadequate labor and facilities."  To be clear, I'm not saying that I consider 30 mph winds blowing 2-3 inches of snow, and a low of 4 degrees Farenheit to be great weather, espcially for October 28th.  Nor was the sudden change to the forecast that droppd Tuesday night's low from 4 to negative 1 our idea of fun either.  

But the hard thing to take, for us, was not so much the weather itself.  It was more the fact that without quite enough people-power, and not quite the right equipment and facillities, we lost some crops that we think we could have saved if we were set up better.  

And to be clear, we did save a lot. We came home from the final market and spent the rest of the daylight hours covering and double-covering crops in the field and in the tunnels, doing an extra harvest of some cabbage, kale, and chard. By Monday before the winds arrived, we had moved one of the caterpillar tunnels from its summer position over to a block of salad mix, arugula, and asian greens. In the face of the gusts, we wrestled a 30' x 120' peice of row cover over a block of carrots that we had not had time to harvest.  My chronic insomnia and the fact that we had an extra backup "torpedo" propane heater to turn on in the nursery means 2,000 pounds of winter squash and pie pumpkins were saved from freezing, around 3:00 a.m. on Monday night after I walked over in p.j.'s and down coat, and found that the pellet stove and one propane heater were losing the battle with the cold.  Noah has installed thermostat-controlled small heaters in so many spaces around the farm, including a dual-stage controller in our walk-in cooler that shuts off the cooling and adds some heat when needed, all automatically (in years past, we learned the hard way that single-digit nights mean frozen produce inside the walk-in cooler).  We've grown up a lot as a farm, and we did manage to keep a lot of it safe. Our potates were all safely harvested before the previous winter storms, though half of them are still waiting to be washed, stacked in the shop. 

But we couldn't get it all, and after so much effort goes into a crop from bed prep to seeding to watering, weeding, and tending, it can be heartbreaking to not bring in a harvest, to know that something may not reach the plates of our farm supporters and local eaters.  Some of the losses were minor: a few more bins of nice re-growth cooking spinach and Asian mix that we couldn't get cut, two beds of radishes a little small but certainly delicious that froze in the ground (they are now the texture of water balloons).  Some were big. We exist right now in an odd multiple reality in which we do not yet know if our remaining carrots, 7 beds worth, are a total loss, a mix of ruined and OK, or a sort of salvage harvest in which we have to snap the top 2" off of each individual root, because sub-zero temperatures turned the carrot texture to mush.  Most likely it's a mix of all of those; we know just enough to know that "they are all ok" is not one of the possible scenarios.  A block of beets is the same story, though we at least have a few big bags of those left in storage from a previous harvest. 

Monday, 3:45 pm, the wind and snow hit and did not stop till the next morning. This layer of cover over the carrots was the last thing we managed to cover outside.

It's not the lost income that gets us down, though that is painful, especially when some of these crops were part of our plan for making up the income lost in the late-June hail.  It's more just the loss of potential--the joy of farmstore customers at sweet farm carrots still in stock in January, or the feeling of abundance for ourselves, having a pile of beautiful gold roots to eat for our whole winter.  And again, the knowledge that effort put in earlier in the season might not come to fruition.  Taylor and Erin spent a hot, difficult day or two weeding all those carrot beds, and if they don't get harvested in the end, they might as well have been lounging by the river, right?  

We have to confess, we did a bit of moping this week.  Moping is not really our style, but it was hard to avoid for a little while as we took stock of what we had and hadn't managed, and wondered both how bad it really was, and what we could have done better.  We felt a little stupid, and a little let down, though we knew we had worked just as long and as hard as we could. We've had some hard thinking and conversations about what decisions we made, how quickly some of the scenarious shifted, and what would have let us fare better if the very same situation were to happen again (though God help me if we are ever building yet another chicken barn for a rapidly growing flock of chicks in some future fall when winter arrives early).  

So what is it that would have made this just a cold snap, not a major blow?  The first and simplest thing was people-power.  We have certainly reached a point in our growing where we need to be sure we have a full crew all the way through the end of October, plus some extra help for late-season cleanup. We'll be looking at our budget, what we can offer, and what we need, and have a goal of starting our hiring process in November and December this year, for the 2020 season. And we need to be able to budget for some extra, non-expert help, paid hourly, to get in some of these key work pushes when conditions change and everything must happen at once.  

The other big thing that was missing in this event, and which will continue to hinder us through the rest of fall and winter, is a temperature-controlled washing, packing, and storage space.  We have made do with our open-sided, outdoor packshed for years, even as we have moved towards growing deeper and deeper into the shoulder seasons.  But as we have gotten better at growing, and are actually capable of producing these abundances of deep fall or early spring greens, or enough roots to get us all through the winter, the wash/ pack and storage space has lagged behind. Our hands are full of cracks from recent weeks of washing on Friday night until the water started to freeze. We have a lot of ideas for this, and have held off on building anything yet in part because we really want to make sure we do it right, and have a clear vision of how it fits into our farm--both the farm we have now, and the slightly better, more sane farm that we really want to be.  

We need a space where we can turn on the water, even if it's 20 degrees (or 2 degrees) outside and dunk some boc choi or spinach, or scrub carrots.  We need a place where winter storage crops can park and not be too hot or too cold, and not be in the way of critical farm tasks like building or repairing equipment. We need walk-in cooler space big enough to handle the volume of harvests we now do twice a week.  It's pretty daunting to consider, and as weary as we are of building, we'll put some careful thought into this one.  We have already made calls to a number of farmer colleagues who will come out this fall to walk around the farm with us and help think through what makes sense, what our needs and our options are, and how to get to what we need. We know some fresh, outside brains will help.

This problem with washing and packing impacts the availability of produce throughout this fall, and next spring, so we have to figure out something. And, at the same time, we have to get this right, because it's not quite clear how we'd fund such a warehouse, and especially one that accomplishes all the goals of the farm. It's not a simple, one year project. 

This was a really hard week for us, a very strange end-but-it's-not-the-end to our season.  But for me at least, there are some things that are reliably cheering: green leaves in the sun is the best, and I got to take the short un-frozen window of late afternoon to cut and wash spinach, tatsoi, boc choi and arugula that survived sub-zero temperatures in our unheated tunnels. The work to move the tunnel, to add layers of cover inside, was not wasted.  There are fresh greens for you to eat.  And tomorrow, for the first time in 6 months, I will get as much sleep as I want on Friday night (unless we stay up too late tonight splitting seed garlic while having our annual fall TV show binge, a distinct possibility). 

For a farm, garlic is the crop that ties one year to the next. We plant next year's crop now, which in itself is a committment to our farm's future.  We are still here.  In all our hard conversations about how to change, neither of us ever suggested just eating the seed garlic and calling it quits, even though we had to spread old greenhouse plastic across our prepared garlic beds to ensure the soil will be warm enough to plant in the next few days.  We are in deep, and we are so grateful for all of you who are in with us.  As we bend hearts to the ground again this coming week, we'll appreciate the soil, we'll think of garlic scapes coming next June, and we'll officially begin the 2020 planting season.  The crop planning, the seed orders, the membership  signups will not be far behind.  There is a lot of thinking, resting, recovery, repairs, and more to do over the non-market season that we are entering now, and it can take a little bit for us to adjust to the shift.  But we thank you all, immensely, for being a part of this wild ride of  season.  If you keep eating, we'll keep growing. 

With raw hands and raw hearts, 

Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm. 

Watermelons In The Snow

Happy October, Farm Friends. 

Have you ever eaten watermelon in the snow? This season has been a wild one for us, and somehow this late ripening of our Blacktail Mountain watermelon feels like just another round of the twists and turns of this year.  We are still learning to grow melons, probably one of our most challenging crops, but also one of our most exciting. These almost didn't get planted, as we struggled to learn a new borrowed tool, finishing the bed prep by headlamp, and calling in help from some farm members to get the melon and pumpkin plants in the ground.  A few weeks later, they were crushed by hail, only a few shredded leaf remnants, and some stem and roots remaining. Without that hailstorm, we might have had melons ready in a more, um, seasonal time frame. Like summer. But these, despite being set back several weeks, they didn't give up and we didn't give up on them, either.  In our last round of winter storm warnings, we stomped through the snow in the new rubber rain bibs and plucked all the watermelons from the vine, piling them into a huge cardboard bin on a pallet, and parking them in the propagation house hoping they'd ripen up.  This variety was bred for our climate, in nearby Idaho, and has been the most reliable one for us over the years, tough enough to handle our cool summer nights and oddball events like 3 inches of snow in September. 

Last night we broke one open, while listening to the list of winter storm watches and warnings on the radio.  As we prepare for another round of snow, and record-low temperatures, we ate watermelon, potatoes, and spinach.  Fall and summer and winter seem to be overlapping all at once, and we're doing our best to just roll with it.  As I write, Noah is harvesting a bed of baby spinach; he called to consult on whether to just cut the whole bed (yes).  We have a long list of areas to double and triple cover, things to check on and plan for to try to get a few crops through lows in the teens.  We have, again another list of what must be cut, even if it could get a little bigger, because we don't think it will make it through no matter what we do. We texted another valley farmer with a few more years experience than us, to ask if she thought storage cabbage would make it through; like us, she was trying to decide, and her text ended in "ugh."  

So what can you do?  Most people can't just don the waterproof gear and rush out to a farm to help bring in the harvest under the tight storm deadlines.  And most farms can't train people how to harvest effectively on short notice either. So as usual, the best thing you can do is come out and shop, and eat this local food we've been working to grow you. We had a great Apple Day market, and we'll be there for THREE MORE weeks, through the very last Saturday of October.  The farmstore is still open, and still bursting at the seams with everything from tomatoes (getting into those that have ripened up in storage, after being picked firm), to baby greens, to sweet frost-ripened carrots, sweet peppers, hot peppers, onions, and so much more.  Because of limited storage capacity, we are going to start selling some of our winter squash today, even though we strongly recommend that you wait another 1-2 weeks before eating it, to let it fully cure.  We hope to get our fall salad greens through yet another winter storm, but even if they suffer, know that we will have a lot of food, with all of the storage root crops, cabbages, hardy bunch greens, and more that we have brought in. 

Harvest Before the Big Freeze

I find myself thinking of Sir EH Shackleton this week, and how he led a team through a harrowing survival adventure in the arctic long before satelite phones and smartphones. It took leadership and guts. It was that kind of week. It all started with our phantom pepper roast last week (don't worry, we will have another one). And then a workparty on Sunday to side one of the intern cabins. And then, by Monday, the weather forecast turned so we packed up all the siding and then got to bringing all of our sensitive crops in. It shifted our entire week. It took all week, with big pushes. Today, in addition to our 4-farmer team, we had Lisa out (who worked on our day off), Toby, Ed, Travis and Shelley, and Regina. Somewhere on along the way we harvested about 900 pounds of tomatoes and we started bringing stuff into the packshed this evening, circa 9, 10 and 11 by the pallet load. 

All this week while Gretha Thunberg, from Sweden, was raising awareness about climate change to world leaders. I think that was the day we were planting our very last bit of cover crop for the season, on Tuesday. It seemed so appropriate: it was just one of the few times this year we used our tractor mounted tiller, which we've completely abandoned in favor of lighter, living soil approached. We needed to bury seed, lightly in a hurry -- so it was a good decision. And then, on Wednesday, farm member Bronwyn Angela, brought 15 of her students to help clear out our big tomato tunnel for transplants (next week). And you won't believe it -- we all gasped as small legs and bodies stepped out of their bus. Rather than the 7th graders we thought they were (sorry, Angela), they were 2nd graders! But boy, all they needed was a little encouragement from Mary, and a little help from Erin and Taylor actually uprooting our tomato plants, and they were a force like we've never seen before. If you haven't caught some of the video on our facebook page, well, all I can say is that it's really worth a watch. 

And somewhere along the way, maybe Tuesday night, at 7.30 in the evening, I had a magical conversation with Dan Hulls in his dairy yard, after he loaded our trailer with compost. He shut off his loader and the light faded we traded facts, hopes, and worries. For me, that was the closing of the summer, the beginning of fall, the hope that was to come. I heard it in the scuff of our boots, the smell of manure, I felt it in our warm smiles, a laugh, and finally a handshake. 

The farm continues to amaze and inspire us all this week. Both Mary and I still get teary eyed and some of the first and last harvests of the year, and about new things to come. We've had so many visitors this week, and boy, the meal dropoffs have been amazing. 

But please, we ask you this, come out to market tomorrow. Even at 2am and into 3am, our market trailer is fun to load and we've got tons of good stuff -- all the herbs, all the greens, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, zucchinin, sweet peppers, cabbages, brocolli and cauliflowler, and about 3 pages of other stuff (at least on our harvest list). The weather will be miserable, but we'll give you the best smile we have and I'm certain that us and all of our colleagues will make it worth your while. Come at 9.30 to our booth for the best results (it's been a 20 hour workday here and Erin and Taylor put row cover on our fields just about the entire day (until midnight). We worry less about the frosts because of our confidence in them, our infrastructure, and that we know we can feed you all with whatever we have.

We are so grateful for their magic and the season.  Even as I write, and the weather alerts come up on my phone, we can't wait to share what we have with you. As we say, we can't be on this wild adventure without you.

End of August: The Annual Messy Farm Kitchen Addition

Confession:  for the last week or so I've had a bad case of cheesy Christmas music stuck in my head. It all started a Sunday or two ago when I was harvesting tomatoes from our caterpillar tunnel, enjoying the hunt for the first ripe red prizes, and thinking of the avalanche to come if good weather holds out: ripe tomatoes, basil, peppers both sweet and hot, tomatillo salsa...and I thought to myself, the entire line verbatim "it's the most wonderful time of the year."  And it's been stuck ever since, random lines about mistletoe and loved ones bounce through my head while I wash arugula in the packshed.  

Don't get me wrong, it's also about the most exhausting time of the year, and we are flat-out dead-dog tired, as it pretty common for a small farm in August.  Even as the harvests ramp up, there are still a few more rounds of planting and seeding left for our weekly greens, and some transplanting to try to maximize greens into deep fall and winter. When planting overlaps with such beautiful, bountiful, (but also heavy) harvests, farmers can feel a pretty deep exhaustion.  

But in many ways we are also settling into our groove as a farm-team, and feeling pretty hopeful about riding this wild wave of late summer into fall.  For those of you who have been following our roller coaster of recruiting interns/ labor this year, you'll be happy to know that what finally worked was when Erin recruited her sweetie, Taylor to join us at the end of July after finishing his owl-survey job in the southwest.  We've had farmer colleagues advise strongly against hiring couples, but so far this team of two is pretty much rocking, and we couldn't be doing this without them.  More than once in the last few weeks, we've let the crew (or "the well oiled machine" as they are also known) handle a huge portion of the harvest day while we worked out the details of our irrigation improvements, or the design details of the daunting market-trailer project. 

Taylor lays out the first round of onions for curing in the prop-house. Many more will be coming in soon.

And finally, after many delays, we have finished (the inside of) their living space!  The famed intern cabin #1 is livable and lived in.  We know any of you have been curious to see it, so today (Tuesday, August 27th), during the latter part of our hosted farmstore time, we have a little cabin-warming/ show-and-tell time scheduled, from 4:00-6:00.  To thank Erin and Taylor for allowing folks to poke around their home space, we just ask that you bring a small thank-you gift: a can of food, jar of peanut butter, box of tea, or any sort of non-farm food or drink would be lovely.  Or something from the short list of supplies we are still working on outfitting their space with: kitchen towels, a soup ladle, a metal spatula/ flipper, and a cast-iron skillet.  The space is pretty sweet, complete with Noah Jackson original light fixtures (of course), and we're hoping it helps keep morale up for hard-working farmhands like these two, for many seasons to come.  

The sweet peppers are getting sweeter. Though still mostly green, we are starting to get a few of the colors. September is prime pepper season for us, and it's just around the corner.

A final gratitude, to end: our passenger-vehicle shortage was recently abated through the generosity of some long-time members of the farm family. Folks who have been members since the very first boxes we packed (we used to do a pre-packed CSA box!), gifted the farm a very gently used 1999 Dodge Caravan, and it has already been serving us well as a delivery vehicle!

Hello, August

The tomatillo trickle started last week, and people kept asking "what do you do with tomatillos?" So this week at market, we have green salsa recipes at two scales: a quick batch with a small bag, or enough to can. We also have, um, a flood of tomatillos, so we hope the you are up for it.

This season has been whipping by perhaps faster than any we've experienced before.  It's hard to believe that it's August, really.  But all the signs are pointing that way.  The flocks of starlings are getting larger. The lacewings took care of the aphids in the peppers, and the poblanos are taking off. The printed sheets where we log the harvests each harvest day have gone from one page, to two.  We have gotten used to just sweating all day, and the days are definitely long. And sure, we get a little cranky from the heat, bug bites, and never quite finishing the to-do list.  But there's a secret pleasure in the full-on summer feeling, too. A whisper of color creeping into the tomatoes and peppers; with every run of sweat down my face, I think "the tomatoes WILL ripen!"  

It's never fully guaranteed here, ripe tomatoes before the freeze, and when we finished the high tunnel for our tomatoes a full month later than planned (or was it more?), we definitely worried.  But they are starting to turn, and a few cherry tomatoes are coming in (available sporadically at the farmstore, and a few for early arrivals at market this week). The zucchini really seem to have started to recover from their hail a month ago, and are making a good showing at the daily harvest again, though the high tunnel cucumbers continue to lead the charge. 

We are starting to learn some of our annual patterns, in our fifth year of farming here; not just those of the plants and the surrounding birds, insects, etc.., but also ourselves and all of you we grow this food for.  I predict that this weekend's rain will settle some dust in our farm roads, give us a few cool nights of good sleep, and boost the whole team up out of the common early-August exhaustion.  I sense that you, dear eaters, might take advantage of that cooler weather to get the kitchen steamed up, so we'll be bringing our favorite salsa verde canning recipe (and a great one for just eating fresh, if you aren't quite up for canning). We have bulk bags of, um, larger zucchini and summer squash in the farmstore, if you're ready to grate and freeze, or make a big batch of zucchini bread.  I'm having my annual panic that I might have lost the Ball Canning and Preserving cookbook that i won in the county fair at age 12 for my apple butter. I'll find it again I'm sure, I always do. And then I'll share with you the the best recipe for pickled beets.  

But till then, there's plenty to keep you busy, whether you want to start putting up for winter, or just want to eat well all week.  I (Mary) will be at market while Noah works on some of the final touches (really, it's almost done!) of the intern cabin.  Eggs will be just at the farmstore, but loads of veggies will be at both the market and the farmstore, all week long.  Hope to see you at one or both!  

With gratitude, 
Mary and Noah, SweetRoot 

We share a lot of recipes, but so many of our best meals are simple improvisation with a cast iron skillet, a good tasty oil, a few herbs and seasonings, and the confidence to know how long to cook, and in what order. Two nights this week, Erin and Taylor wrapped up their tasks a little before Noah and I, and whipped up some extremely delicious big veggie bowls. Their directions, including the secret ingredient: heat the butter, bacon fat, or oil in the pan. Have all your veggies chopped to the size you like. Start with the most durable: beets, carrots and potatoes of all varieties. Cook them up a few minutes, then add the onions and garlic. When they get a little soft, add your summer squashes, and kale, chard, etc.. Cook till soft, then season to taste. Salt and pepper are good; we have an open jar of farm-dried thyme near the stove that goes in pretty much everything. Basil is nice. Or curry powder. The secret to this weeks root-based scrambles: a dash of maple syrup, to taste, near the end of cooking. It's subtle, but somehow does bring it all together. Give it a try, do some experiments, and let us know your favorite combinations.

Farm members Travis and Shelly visit with the crew as we end a long Monday harvest day with onion cleaning and bunching.

The romaine is still sweet and crips despite the heat, and the heads are huge!

Farm-scale sandwiches, even Hershey is impressed.

Would it be a newsletter without a photo of Zukes? He's taken to napping under the peppers and eggplant, but emerges to greet anyone harvesting. Also, there are eggplant coming to market! And we love our new harvest buckets from Hoss tools; you'll likely see all of us emerging from various parts of the farm wearing these over our shoulders in the coming months, and harvests get bigger and heavier every day.

Big Harvest Time

Someone asked, by text this week: have you finished your planting?
Another: Is it harvest time yet?

We plant every single week here at the farm, and although it's week 9 of our farm membership this week, it is summer, and crops are starting to roll in. I'm not sure how many hours yet -- (don't forget, we are still new at this game)-- we have of staking and trellising this weekend, but it was 20 hours (at least) to get our cucumbers pruned and trellised this week and, in addition to the last tractor cultivation and hand-weeding, and our fall crop ground finished, we are staking and trellising like mad here - mostly tomatoes and peppers, but other crops too.

We could barely fit the harvest in the truck this morning and, thanks to some better cashflow and help from a supporter, we finally have some of our direct trade coffee. I roasted 15 pounds yesterday. 

And we have family in town. Some come see us at market. If you can't make it, the farmstore should be loaded by 2pm, and throughout the weekend. Take a look at that harvest sheet above, it's pretty impressive, even for us, and we couldn't do it without your support.

With love and admiration,
Noah, Mary, Erin, SweetRoot.

June, Ready or Not

Back in the yurt last night, wrapping up another long farming day with 10 pm dinner, I started flipping through Noah’s phone to see if we had taken any good photos of this continuing roller coaster of spring, this week.  The image above stuck out, not just because of the lovely evening light, but the impression it gave—I held the phone out to Erin, saying “wait, that looks, like, pretty good, doesn’t it?  I mean, that looks like a farm that’s got it together. Those beds look great.”  Which is to say, part of my reaction to the photo was “is that really us?” 

That photo does not look like how much of this week felt.  Did not look like a farm that had spent most of the day grubbing out thistle and quack grass, frustrated and scared by the fact that item #1 on a long list (“prep beds in beet and carrot block”) had taken till mid-afternoon.  Did not look like a farm where one farmer had accidentally caught the entire set of garden hoses leading to drip irrigation in the high tunnels on a tractor implement and ripped out fittings, header lines and snapped the hose splitter and valve off of the well house. Again. 

That list could go on, but it’s also only one part of the farm picture.  That lovely evening glow, straight smooth beds seeded with carrots and beets getting covered with brand-new 30-foot row cover….yeah, it’s also the farm where two farm members cheerfully spent a good chunk of their Memorial day helping us plant potatoes and summer squash, spread compost, and feel a little bit better about the north garden. And the farm that had not one, not two, but THREE drop-offs of delicious, soul-saving home made food from farm members this week.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  We think every single one of those was consumed within 24 hours, and boy did we need them.

Same block of beds as above, but earlier in the day: a mess of thistle, grass and perennial weeds, despite weeks of being covered in dark tarps.

Spring is always a roller coaster on the farm.  Always a time of both/ and, filled with limitless possibility and impossible lists of everything to get done.  How things look depends a lot on your angle—just like how Erin, below, turned our medium-small farm cat Radish into a monster of a leopard, joking around with trophy-fishing poses, midway through the long day of prepping ground for summer crops.  

Some of the income we lost to the slow spring can’t really be made up; some of it, we hope, can be buffered by some good summer and fall crops.  And so, while Mary is at market this morning, Noah will be getting ready for the extra hands of yet another long-long-time farm member to help us set up the temporary tunnels for our tomatoes and peppers. 

Thank you to all of you who keep us going, who remind us occasionally step back and see the farm (and our work) in a more flattering angle, and who share and acknowledge your own very human mix of accomplishments and struggles.