The Winter Farm Membership, Gratitude and Week 1

We’ve decided that our winter farm membership this year is about gratitude. It’s a simple ritual, and I learned it from friends I took a permaculture course with nearly a decade ago. At each dinner time meal we simply say what we are grateful for. It’s an act, said aloud, often can reset an evening from a hard farm day, or put life into perspective. We recommend this practice. This year, even though we are perhaps in the middle of a pandemic, we all have so much to be grateful for. We’ll see you today (after 3pm). Below is what we have in store for this week of winter eating. Gratitude is a necessity during these times. All that is required is for dive on in with us.

We realize that technically we are in fall still, not yet official winter, but it’s definitely winter-style farming here.  Walking delicately across patches of snow and ice, dancing around the freezing temps to harvest greens, breaking out the work-lights to finish tasks as dark sets in so early. As a reminder: all of that is a part of the reason that the pick-up time for your shares starts at 3:00 pm today, and runs through the end of the day on Wednesday.  Sabrina is harvesting your boc choi right now, and we’ll be working to pack your shares all morning and possibly into the afternoon.  But at 3:00 or later, we are so excited to see you! 

This week’s shares include:  A large head (or a few small heads) of Boc choi, a bundle of Swiss Chard, a larger-than-market-sized bag of our mild winter salad mix (has lots of relatives of our spicy salad mix, but no heat!), a head or bag of cauliflower, carrots, beets, radishes, an onion, a Red Kuri or Lower Salmon River winter squash, and bag of French Fingerling potatoes.  It also includes a small packet of bonus flavor: dried Thai chilies and dried Thai basil.  

Our recommendation for the chili/ basil bag is to blend the two together in a food processor, blade-style coffee grinder, or mortar and pestle. Adding a teaspoon or two of salt tends to make it blend down into a fine powder even better. You can use this as a sprinkle on top of dishes like stir-fries or scrambled eggs to add heat and flavor to everyone’s separate tastes, or add it in the sauté or simmering stage if everyone at your table has a similar desired level of heat.  We like flavor of the basil-chili combo, and also the way that adding the basil and salt dilutes the chili spice, so you have a little more control over how much heat you add, compared to straight chili flakes.  Give it a whirl, we hope you like it too! 

Eating ideas for the week

We see good potential this week for a nice stir-fry with the boc choi, cauliflower, carrots, onion, and flavor packet (with or without the magic peanut sauce); or use that same suite of ingredients in a brothy noodle soup.  

For the winter squash: First don’t worry if you don’t get around to eating this this week, it can happily sit on your kitchen counter for some weeks.  In fact, we are loading the first few weeks of the winter shares with some of our larger, bulkier squashes in order to open up storage space in our shop! If you dive into them this week, our favorite method of prep is the most simple: cut in half along the equator (if you have the lighter pink Salmon River Squash, the rind is quite hard, you may want to drop it on a firm floor first to open up a crack), scoop out the seeds, and bake it face-down at 350 or so until soft. Eat straight out of the skin with butter and salt or maple syrup.  Or use it as the base for a meal-bowl; we topped some with curried lentils and wilted collard greens last night. Leftovers can be eaten for breakfast with yogurt, blended into a chili or soup, or baked in your favorite pumpkin pie recipe (secret: the best pumpkin pies are actually at least 1/2 winter squash).  

For chard and kale, which you’ll hopefully see a few bundles of in the course of your winter share, our favorite method is again the simple way: sauté with garlic and your favorite oil or butter, a splash of balsamic vinegar at the end of cooking, and serve as a side or on top of your main dinner (pasta, scrambled eggs, squash, or soups).  

The fingerling potatoes are excellent for roasting in 1-inch chunks, cooking whole under a pot roast, or making a delicately pink mashed potato dish (no need to peel). If roasting, we love doing a combination root roast with some beets, cauliflower, and carrots as well.  

Winter Farming

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This image, made just this Friday, was on Johnnie’s last day. He’s off, back to Minnesota to start his own farm, and the entire crew (Mary, Noah, Alexis, Sabrina) staying on will miss him. We are excited to see what farming operation Johnnie does next, and we look forward to supporting him however we can. Sabrina is our first year-round team member, and we are both excited and daunted about this. The winter farm membership supports this, and the winter farm has more than enough to keep all of us busy. Alexis Vai (center) will finish the farming season sometime here in late November. She’s done everything from help keep us straight at market, to harvests, planting, and even arranging farm flowers. It’s our secret hope that we can keep her as long as possible.

It’s hard to believe the image above — with our full farm crew (except Lynn, who managed much of the farm irrigation and farmstore while we were at market on Saturdays) was made just this past Friday. That was the day we got our garlic in and both tractors were running endlessly as we prepped ground for next spring before another freeze. Inside our tunnels, though, and our moveable caterpillars, greens continue to thrive. During most nights they are under the very heavy frost cloth, which we remove each day to help airflow and temperature and help them grow —taking advantage of even that little bit of light during these shortening days.

Although Mary and I did finally make it to bed before 9pm a couple nights ago, the winter farm is filled with projects, from harvesting, to working on another moveable chicken barn (the big push for the next two weeks), to breaking ground for our packshed, to all kinds of resource gathering trips (our packshed, like all our farm buildings, will be made largely from reclaimed building materials, gathered mostly with 100 miles but some materials from 1000 miles away), and there are tools we are building for systems we’ve been working on. There’s a lot of learning and development we do behind the scenes, and we look forward to sharing some of that this winter as we try and take some days off from the packshed project ahead of us.

Yesterday, though, we peeled back one of our tarps that has helped break down crop residue from summer cover crop and we planted our first ever bulbs — mostly daffodils and tulips — that assure our commitment to spring, another year of farm, and the faith that no matter what, spring will come and we will be ready.

Our farmstore is loaded, and last night we made a stir fry with cauliflower, onions, garlic, and one bunch of asian greens — all ingredients from the farm. Breakfast was tortillas, eggs and salsa we made from one of our last batches of tomatillos. It seems fitting, in this time of the pandemic, and when many say our entire country is in crisis, we can all eat locally, hunker down, and dig in. We have so many of you to thank for an incredible summer season; and we think one of the best ways to do that is to just keep going — there’s a lot in store here all winter. We’ll keep crops and the letters coming. There’s about 6 spaces left in the winter farm membership (our second winter of growing but our first winter membership) and although that doesn’t start until next week, there’s plenty in the farmstore for everyone.

You farmers,

Noah, Mary, Sabrina

Mary drops bulbs into 6 inch trench we dug with the rotary plow mounted on our walking tractor.

Winter salad mix peeks out from one of our moveable caterpillars and as Sabrina and Mary sort spring bulbs (planted yesterday) in one of our field carts. A bucket of compost, for a little fertility boost and weed suppression, waits in the foreground.

On cold winter evenings, a stir fry of asian bunches, turnips, cauliflower, onions, garlic and herbs may be all we can muster, but it’s not only enough, it’s plenty.

The Final Friday Night

Dear Farm Friends,

Well here we are, the final Friday night of the year. I realize that by the calendar there are plenty more Fridays in 2020, and for most of you they will not be all that different than those of the last six months. But for all of us who grow for the farmers market, this is the last of these Friday nights. A farm-Friday, tilting towards market, when all the things you've been trying to accomplish for the week (sometime including the things you were trying to accomplish the week before), come up against the unrelenting fact that that market bell will ring tomorrow morning, completely regardless of whether you are ready or not. The final push for harvest and prep, and the combination of late night and early morning.

As we prepare for our final market of the season (yes, there is a market this Saturday, the 31st of October! 9:00-12:30 we'll be where we always are), we have to confess to a complex mix of both appreciation for the market season, and a great sigh of releif at the fact that it ends.

Farming can be such an exercise in contrasts. For example: I learned this season that it is entirely possible for a farmer to smell simultaneously of sweet citrusy lemon gem marigold flowers, and fresh wet chicken manure. I don't recommend that particular olfactory experience to anyone, but it can certainly illustrate how things can be, all at the same time, incredibly awful and achingly beautiful at the same time. Farming is like that. Both exhilarated and exhausted, all at once.

This has been, if you've followed even the few newsletters we've managed to put out, quite a year for SweetRoot. We are not alone, it's been quite a year for many. Often lately, people at the farmstore have commented "wow, you have really had a tough season." Or "you've had some bad luck this year." And while we can't deny it's been challenging, we also can't shake the truth that there's been a lot of good, mixed in too.

Yes, our entire crew of spring hires left before the end of the season, teaching us some hard lessons along the way about our own shortcomings in management and organization. But their leaving also opened the door for the arrival of some deeply passionate people who have been elevating us and the farm for the last few months, helping us finish strong. And in the interim, that gap helped bring back some of our old farm family like Kayla and Margo, who helped us remember our roots: farm, story, love.

A global pandemic shook what we thought we knew about how much of what to grow, what to expect from our various accounts and markets, everything from our plans for salsa parties to the very layout of our market booth. It took our backup crew out of commission directly, when they contracted the virus shortly before a planned stay at the farm in time for garlic harvest. But at the same time, we were able to continue doing the work that we have chosen. You can’t bunch radishes via Zoom meeting; we have been in the field and in the soil and so glad for that. And it has never seemed more important, growing food for people to eat. Our members and customers have been so appreciative, so eager for this real, nourishing food this season more than ever. We are grateful for that.

The list could go on. The wind toppled the chicken coop--a major disaster. But we got the barn back upright, and not a single chicken was squished. October brought a record-breaking winter storm. We worked ourselves and our crew to the limits, but things got in from the field--and we had a space, albeit inconvenient, to stash those crops, safely. We did lose some greens even from protected spaces last weekend, but the vast majority actually survived--winter greens for all of us. We have been more isolated this year than normal--but we have also felt so very loved and appreciated by so many of you near and far.

As many of you know who have eaten a farm meal with us, one of the few personal routines that we stick to rock-solid over the years is our pre-dinner gratitude ritual. Whether that dinner is slow cooked farm feast or popcorn and ice cream bars (not uncommon on market Friday nights), we share something for which we are grateful. As this part of the season draws to a close, and we look forward to a Saturday next week when the alarm won't chime before 5 a.m., we invite you to bring that ritual into your own meals, too. Because we have had a hard season, and also we have had a good season--all at once, and we are grateful.

One of our great gratitudes for the coming months is that we will not completely dissappear from your lives, depite the end of market. The farmstore continues, you can come shop anytime. Members, your final bag fills will be this week, but you can still stop in and buy what you'd like, all winter long. And for those of you who want to get even closer in and fully embrace the winter eating, we still have 25 spaces left in our winter farm membership, now open to everyone. You can read all the details and sign up on our website.

With deep muddy gratitude as the snow melts,

Mary and Noah, and all of SweetRoot

When market is cancelled, the farmstore is full.

Mary, Sabrina, Johnnie and Noah harvest the last of the field radishes yesterday.

The flurries of phone calls and text messages started long before the snow. Already on Monday, we were touching base with fellow farmers in the region, comparing notes on carrot harvests, wondering if or how it was possible to do a market if the forecast held, do you think the sub-zero forecast will really materialize? The consensus emerged pretty clearly and quickly: we were all going to be running hard all week, just to try to get it all in before the deep freeze. All of us remember last October, with a similar temperature drop, we all had heartbreak stories from that storm—whether it was the beets or carrots or Napa cabbage that froze out last time, I think we were determined to get it in. Market was not an option, with temperatures forecast so low that produce would freeze on display, if we somehow even managed to set up. All of us concentrated on just getting the food out of the field. We made countless 12 mile round trips this week, after dark and after long days of heavy harvests, to stash the farm bounty in the rented walk-in cooler space over at the ag research station in Corvallis. Our own on-farm cooler was packed beyond capacity, and our farm shop has become a temporary parking for additional pallets and carts of produce.

We are so grateful this year, for the farm team that made it happen. That includes our core on-farm crew, Johnnie and Sabrina, our harvest and market helper Alexis, and all the extended farm family: from Ed volunteering in the bulk carrot harvest, to farm members dropping off some extra warm layers or a chocolate dessert, or a delicious ready-to-eat meal for us all for Friday night. Two solo farmers in the face of an October winter storm can feel very, very alone and powerless. But that was not the case this week at all. We warned the crew early in the week that Tuesday and Wednesday might be the hardest longest days we would work all season, that this week might be the biggest we’ve had. They rose to the occasion: pounding rebar to set up new low tunnels to protect the un-cut spinach, brushing snow from radish tops to bring in every last remaining root, pushing tote after tote of carrots, beets, and radishes through the barrel washer.

At one point on Thursday, our last day to wash anything before it freezes for several days, I thought the greens spinner was making an odd noise, a sort of rhythmic flapping sound—only to see, when I looked over, that it was Alexis doing a stationary high-knee jog in her rain bibs and rubber boots, to warm up while greens bags ran through their 60-seconds of spinning. Johnnie took a few laps around the orchard and chick barn to keep the blood moving. Overflowing with love and appreciation for this tough-and-cheerful farm team, Noah and I also recognize all this as evidence for needing to get that packshed built, ASAP. At some point Thursday we had to stop the greens washing to get row cover spread over crops inside our tunnels, so while we do have piles of salad mix clean and ready to bag up, we also have many totes of un-washed greens that will have to wait for a bit of a thaw. Someday, we remind ourselves, we’ll be able to do that all in shelter.

Two new low tunnels, a few crops covered with row cover, caterpillars and four large (30x60 high tunnels) along with a ton of storage crops — the last all in this past week - are part of the backbone of our winter farm.

We also covered and buttoned up all the spaces where we are holding crops in the ground for winter harvest—three of our large tunnels, and two of our caterpillars, full of greens for your winter tables. On Friday, with the immense pressure of winter storm warnings coming down, we managed to remove and replace the greenhouse plastic on Tunnel 4, our south-most high tunnel, which is planted with a beautiful mix of spinach, salad greens, and spicy mix for deep winter. The giant tear in the roof plastic had enlarged in last weeks’ windstorm (remember when last week seemed a little crazy? It’s been two pretty big weeks in a row). Knowing that giant rip could enlarge further, and that our greens really wouldn’t be protected well enough from single-digits, the four of us spent Friday morning removing the old plastic, and re-covering the entire tunnel. It is a stressful task even in spring or summer, and we’ve never done it in such cold weather before. We got it all buttoned up just in time, before the snow and winds started to hit.

Johnnie secures wiggle wire on new high tunnel plastic to block drafts and botton up the new roof on one of our unheated high tunnels.

It’s been an amazing week, again, here. We all had moments where we cracked a little bit. But together, and knowing that you were all behind us, we managed to do so much. It may be, as one of our farmer friends phrased it, a season-ender. But if so, the end of one season is just the beginning of another. Yes, the very last of the sweet peppers and tomatoes are off the vine and stored in the shop; there will be no more to pick. The final flowers will be in the farsmtore this weekend, we’ve had to say goodbye to the rest. The last radish of 2020 has been bunched. There is a bit of mourning for the main season wrapping up. BUT, it’s only the beginning of the winter farm. There are so, so many sweet winter carrots and beets stored for you to get at the farmstore. There are bulk radishes enough for everyone. The storage cabbage was safely harvested last week, to dole out in November and December. We’ve opened the Delicata squash vault; the cauliflower harvest, which we’ll pull from storage for the next few weeks, was phenomenal. The farm isn’t over, we’re just changing seasons.

And today, instead of setting up at market right now, we’re figuring out how to stock and host the farmstore. We had some ideas of clever pre-packed bags, online orders, meal plans…..but honestly, like most of our farming colleagues, we spent all week just getting everything in, knowing we’d have to figure out our plan once the harvest was stashed as safely as possible. So, come on out to the farmstore whenever your roads are clear and your schedule allows. We’ll be sorting out the cooler, bagging up greens and carrots and stuffing the farmstore this morning, with help from Alexis, and we’ll do what we can to help everyone move efficiently through the farmstore. We expect with the weather, many of you may want to wait to she till this afternoon or even the next few days. Don’t worry, we’ll keep the farmstore stocked. And maybe we will have a cauliflower-and-boc-choi special, so stay tuned to your email for announcements, deals, and special plans.

Till then, come out when you can and enjoy the season; we’ll do our best to have fresh food here for your kitchens.

With deep snow and gratitude,

Mary, Noah, and all of SweetRoot Farm.

The farm team enjoys a dinner prepared by one of our farm members last night. Our team worked so hard this past week they all get Monday off.

Obstacles in Motion: Windstorms, Laying Hens, and The Winter Farm to Come

One of 3 winter caterpillar tunnels. This one shown this morning, before it was skinned with greenhouse plastic.

What a day, what a week, what a year. As sheets of plywood started to sail through the air today, one after another like cards peeling off a deck I yelled, at the same time, over the radio, both “Look Out!” and “Put your body on the pile!,” it seemed to sum up everything. Mary was already in a full sprint towards the pile, throwing her whole self onto it to keep any more sheets from careening towards the tender plastic roof of our packshed. The whole crew works so hard to make it all happen and make this thing a farm. It’s a delicate dance with soil, weather, hope, chance. Mary and I didn’t flinch to too much when all the produce in one of the older double door coolers froze this morning. We’ve had so many wins and so many loses, we are getting strong, learning our rhythms more, even as the days get shorter and we long for less work. After all, yesterday we took down and moved two tunnels, put them up over winter greens crops and pulled plastic (what we call skinning) on one of the, finishing up by starlight. While that was happening I delivered a pallet of food to our growers cooperative after dark. And when the crew made the call today, sometime after they ate lunch and before Mary and I had lunch, that maybe we had a break in the wind, we decided to go with their gut and we got the second plastic on. They were right; we had just enough time. Then the wind came, and we wrestled hard to keep too many things from blowing away, fill that empty cooler space, our two page harvest list — yes, it’s fall, but the harvest isn’t slowing down (and there are even new crops ready), and we weighted down objects with pallets, tposts, more sandbags, and our bodies.

We had a few complaints about that third cooler being empty in the store, but it’s part of being part of a farm — that cooler did freeze. And yeah, we do need to buy new coolers that are connected to alarms and, well, you know how loud and hot they can make our current farmstore. We are working to change all that, with a brand new space. We didn’t work on much of that this week, with weather turning, we literally turned some whole days into epic harvest days, bringing in bed after bed of carrots, beets, radishes, cabbages. One of our 120 foot beds of carrots had nearly 700 pounds of carrots. That’s a SweetRoot record. The root washer with a full team of 5 of us, ran all day.

And then today, just before dark, we had a huge gust — maybe 60 miles per hour and one of chicken barns tipped over. The barn was parked next to salad greens we just took out of production - some of the hens were oblivious to the event, munching away. Others were in the barn. This was, well, kind of a disaster. We’ve moved all 120 laying hens — they all survived — into some emergency housing well after dark. We’ve made calls to have a crane come tomorrow and another call to have field welders on standby. As we’ve built this barns and this pasture system, we’ve been better builders and farmers and I’m grateful for that. On the farming front, we are better at pasture management, seeding cover crops, understanding the complex needs of laying hens, and we are probably the only place around — in western Montana - that has a significant amount of pastured laying hens. I’ve begun to worry about pasture a lot: our laying hens take up a precious five full acres of our farm. It’s really a lot of irrigated ground and they have access to some winter power and while they help produce farm compost — that literally feeds our winter greens that we will have through February — it’s a lot of area. For the past four years I’ve been spending thousands of dollars each year building a laying hen system that works for our farm and values. We’ve had some blunders in the process. There was one winter before we had established farm roads. We called the crane in then because one of the barns (um, the same one that tipped over) got stuck. Many of you coming to the farmstore this week have seen the 4th chicken barn that’s starting to take shape. We need it for a young new crop of chicks that are currently about 8 weeks old. They are enjoying short foraging sessions, but soon they will need more barn space, and having an additional, 4th barn means better and more consistent year round production — just allowing for overlapping flocks and some more flexibility with planning our laying hen ages.

Our egg price has been steady for more than five years now; with better record-keeping this winter, we realized we were overdue for a price increase, but delayed it because of the pandemic, knowing people were already stretched and on edge. We just can’t hold off any longer, though. The barns are still experimental, an awesome mobile pasture setup, but yeah, one did blow over. It actually ripped completely off its frame and then tipped over. It will take either a weekend, or a month to get this fixed. I’m terrified, I told Mary, that this will distract us from the Foodshed — our packshed — and just the harvests and crop maintenance later this month and into the winter. The 4th barn is another project. Built to withstand winds and not blow over they are about $4000 each. There are some investments in a new grain bin, better seeding strategy for pasture, and perhaps some more land (our neighbor is interested in selling and at least one large housing developer has made offers). That just concerns us and our farm would like to provide more protein for all of us and keep land in agriculture. So we need a strategy about that, and we have to make sure our laying hens just pencil out. One of my goals with this enterprise is to literally provide a pathway that shows laying hens can be practical, profitable and integral to our farming system. Other organic laying hen farmers have been pushing me on price — and our business model since January. They are right; with one of the barns literally tipped off, pushed off it’s 40-foot long camper frame, it’s more clear to me tonight than before. They are right — and my spreadsheet numbers show this as well. So now, starting tonight, eggs are $6 a dozen. I’ll do my best to make these the best eggs around. You can feel good that the extra dollar, for quite some time, is going to some local welders, lumber collectors, reclaimed building material hawkers, and one incredible crane operator. There’s some fancy UK hardware in the chicken barns that save labor, but the solar panels and even the rollout nest boxes are US made — by other farmers. Oh yeah, and an amazing organic grain corporative, and eventually, back to the farm here, where generations of chickens don’t bat an eye about wind, frost, the price of a good egg, or any objects in motion.

This is an evolving story - more to come. We have some new crops at market - the first winter squash, a new fall/winter salad mix along with some of our favorites, including sweet peppers and tomatoes. With luck, I will be back at the farm wrestling a 40 foot barn with some determined people with heavy equipment and, I hope, big good ideas.

The market goes until the last Saturday of October. Farm memberships stop for a week then. Then, we will be offering our first winter CSA that will go for 7 weeks, until Christmas. Our current farm members will be getting first dibs on this new enterprise that will help fund mostly our packshed and our first full-time, through the winter crew member (yeah, that’s Sabrina). We are excited about this; we have a lot of experience winter growing - with the farmstore full last year with greens through January, but we are generally terrified about both farming and the packshed build. The good news is that the winter tunnels and caterpillars are looking great and we have a lot of tools and techniques to make this happen. The farmstore will continue to have stuff for a long, long while. We will let you know about all of this, what’s in season, both at the farm and if there are any additional memberships available.

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And finally, I’m sorry, we have one important warning. It makes the loss, or re-birth of a chicken barn, or the hundreds of hours that each one takes to build seem trivial. In recent weeks, cases of COVID have been rising drastically in Ravalli County. We take this seriously. By some policies, with current numbers, our community should be considering renewed stay-at-home orders. We have worked to keep the farmers market open, and our booth as safe a place to shop as possible, but we do recommend that you get to market early, do your shopping, and get out. Now, at this point in our year, with a big crew and so much in the field, and storage crops in a walkin cooler, well, we need every penny and you need food. We will be masking and sanitizing as we’ve done all season. Someone will be here at the farmstore while we are away sanitizing and helping keep all of us safe. We’ve had a few outside visitors recently for the big work pushes, but it’s just a core team of masked farmers that run the packshed and we are doing are best to stay healthy and make sure we all work on our sleep. We still think that the farmstore is the safest place you can come to shop. Even Tuesdays, when it’s really really busy here, you don’t need to wait more than 5 minutes to go inside the farmstore while other households are shopping. We are so grateful for your support; and I say this not only on behalf of our farm, but all of the farmers in our valley.

-Noah, Mary, and all the SweetRoot Farm crew

Sign up, stock up, pick up, and build up your farm!

Noah unloads chicken barn siding to clear the way for reclaimed 40 foot long trusses, fresh from a building taken down by Heritage Timber.

Dear Farm Friends,

First, a confession: the majority of the produce in the farmstore and at the market this weekend did not pass through my or Noah’s hands. Though we both helped with the greens cutting and washing, for almost everything else we just met with the team, reviewed the harvest list, and left it to Alexis, Johnnie, and Sabrina to do the digging, bunching, cutting, washing, and packing. They really rocked it, bringing in so much good food today while Noah and I have, after many weeks of trying, forced ourselves to buckle down, lock to the desk, and work on the details of how to build this packshed/ farm warehouse space that we so desperately need.

Why is it so critical, you might ask? The team can tell you some stories—about having to move the greens weighing and packing into the propagation house last Monday when 30 mph winds were whipping the greens right off the packing table in our open-sided packshed (which meant running bags of spun-dried greens across a 60-foot gap and back, when boxed and packed….you don’t need to hire a farm consultant to know that’s not the most efficient layout). Or the PhD level of tetris skill needed to fit everything harvested into our little walkin cooler trailer on Thursday before the co-op truck picks up, and again by Friday afternoon. True story: the passageway down the middle of the stack of boxes is navigable only by sidling sideways, wedging yourself between two rows of bins packed with produce, with arms overhead and gut sucked in. And if you don’t heed that last detail, or if perhaps your harvest-crew also happens to make really delicious desserts, there are consequences in the form of a classic embarrassing farm injury. Yesterday evening, on a quest to make more space, which involved excavating a bin of tomatillos from the very bottom of the very back stack in the walk-in cooler by first moving the 3 bins of roots that were on top of it, I wrestled a 50-lb tote of beet bunches from ground level up and over to the top position on the next stack…so close to victory, except for the inch of belly that cushioned its landing.

But ludicrous bruises aside, this next step of our farm evolution is so important. We are ready and eager to be able to process and store all of the food we can now grow, in an efficient, humane, and accessible way on our farm, which we currently really can’t do. One long-time farm member this week requested a lovely type of cabbage that we would have been so happy to give her….except it was stored in the rented walk-in space 6 miles away. On a busy member day, we counted more than 100 walking trips, 120 feet round trip each time, to restock our farmstore from the packing shed we’ve outgrown. We can’t do this anymore, nor can this tiny shed handle all of our produce for all of the four growing seasons we’d like to farm. We’ve been at (or over)capacity now for a couple of years. It’s one of the reasons why some crops froze in the field (literally unharvested) last year. And man, we are tired of waking up to check the wood stoves in our barn and farmstore in October, November, December, and even into January to make sure onions and winter squash — as well as greens in coolers are not in danger of freezing.

We have been asking ourselves and our crew to run the produce of almost 3 acres of vegetables through a packshed and cooler sized for a half-acre farm, and it’s time to help our facilities catch up to our actual production.

If you’ve been by the farmstore, you may have seen the reclaimed trusses, or the piles of reclaimed metal roofing, lumber, and siding starting to accumulate. Clearly, you’ve realized, we are up to something. This is all for the future packshed-storage space-- washing house that we are starting to affectionately call the Food Shed. As we solidify our design, with more slightly torturous days of planning (I would so much rather dig potatoes by hand, or belly crawl through the tomatillo thicket, than sit at a desk during daylight in September), we’ll be reaching out to let you know how you can help it take shape. There are lots of ways you all can be a part of the build, most of which do not even include swinging a hammer. (But if you are the magical farm supporter who last week offered to bring some skilled carpenters and a lift for those trusses by crane for a few days of roof and wall framing, when I was too sleepy post-market to think clearly enough to get your number then…..please do send us a message!)

And in the meantime, while we don’t yet have space to store our produce all winter for you to pick up at your convenience, the good news is, we are offering some stock-up sales for bulk items, hoping you are ready to can, ferment, dehydrate, pickle, or freeze to keep some good local produce in your own home or kitchen well past the summer season.

This Tuesday at the farm, we’ll be doing our first of probably several fall stock-up pick-ups. You can sign up through this link online, or on paper at market this Saturday, for bulk deals to pick up your order at the farm on Tuesday. We’ll have some farm crew on hand to run out pre-ordered stock up items to avoid lines in the farmstore. In this first round, we have bulk beets, cabbage, juicing carrots (the cosmetically challenged carrots that we recommend processing somehow, rather than storing for months), kale, Anaheim peppers, and red and green salsa kits. For full pricing and details, visit the online signup form.

Last week before market, we worried about smoke; this week we’re worried about rain dampening the spirits of potential market-goers, but we’ll be happy to get drenched for the sake of a breath of clean air! If either type of weather makes it hard for you to get to market, we’ll be doing our best to keep the farmstore well-stocked. But if you can come out to market, please do! We have so much good food still—tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, basil, cabbage, boc choi, eggplant, melons (!) some of the very last cucumbers, and so much more.

Some of our eating recommendations this week include stir-fries (boc choi is back!), roasted root vegetables, big salads of course, burritos or tacos with all the great mild chilies, sweet peppers, and cabbage, and for the rainy day or two we do hope is coming, our favorite version of tomato soup, now on our farm blog, here.

Hope to see you at market or the farm this week!

With love and salsa,

Mary & Noah, and all of SweetRoot

Late one night, our crew — or at least five of us — fired up our pepper roaster and made tomatillo salsa.

Sabrina loads the Western Montana Growers truck. It’s part of our harvest routine every Monday and Thursday. Once we get the truck loaded, we always breathe a sigh of relief. With our walkin cooler emptied, we can continue our harvest day (usually, the truck doesn’t come until 5pm). This is one of the several challenges our new farm foodshed will solve.

The Fullness of August

The shop is full of curing garlic.

Welcome, Farm Friends, to the Fullness of August.

Our garden carts are full, our cooler shelves are full, our harvest bins are not only full to overflowing, but they are getting heavy. When we watched the full moon rising over the roof of the packshed while grilling veggies for dinner the other night, Noah said “it’s a good sign.” It’s August, believe it or not, and it’s the full season. Our days, our weeks, our schedules are full too, and certainly our hearts and our minds are as full-to-overflowing as all those harvest bins and farm spaces. 

We want to thank all of you who have reached out with words of support and offers of help since our last newsletter—we’ll get back to you individually when we are able, but certainly know that we appreciate it all, so much. We are in the midst of the process of hiring some replacement crew, and in the meantime are so grateful for our perpetually returning small farmer, Kayla, who is back again for a few weeks and in her usual style is willingly tackling everything that needs doing—from a late evening tomato pruning session to harvesting bushels of chamomile to help re-establish pathways in the flower caterpillar.

The pathways in the flower tunnel have disappeared.

And, um, speaking of that flower tunnel….have you looked inside recently on any visits to the farm? It’s gone nuts. It’s beautiful and overwhelming. It’s perhaps a little bit of a monster, but the most beautiful monster I have ever helped create. It’s also my incentive to get this email update out quickly, because if I dash off a message speedily enough, I get to jump back into the morning flower harvest.

It’s also, perhaps, almost becoming a bit of a problem. The problem being, when I took a flower course this winter, when I added flower spaces to our growing plan, I really didn’t know how many blooms would come out of a 100’ bed, so I thought “we’ll just see what happens, see what we learn.” Well, it happened. Lots and lots and lots of flowers are happening, and they need homes! I’ve learned that sure enough, we are capable of producing a lot of flowers (I really wasn’t sure). I’ve also learned that I love growing them. I love having them on the farm, I love harvesting and arranging them, I love watching people light up as they chose the right bunch for them, or take a deep breath of sweet pea fragrance. I love that working in the flowers is a draw and a reward to many of us on the farm. But, um, it’s also time to make sure that we actually sell them, too! As we realize just how many we have, it’s clear that there are enough blooms to supply not only the market, farmstore flower bar, and a few special orders, but enough to guarantee 20 or people a weekly bouquet now through early September. If you are interested in picking up a mason-jar sized bouquet weekly for the next 5 weeks, you can reply to this email or follow this link on our website to sign up! I would love to make you a weekly jar of beauty and joy for your home or workplace.

At the Farmstore this Week:

The farmstore is loaded, with most days being fully stocked up on summer squash, cucumbers (both slicing and pickling types), salad mixes, head lettuce, kale and chard, collards, cabbage, boc choi, onions, and some exciting new additions like tomatillos! We sometimes still run out of carrots, and certainly tomatoes, between harvests, so you may find those empty occasionally, but more are always on the way. The flower bar is well stocked, and herbs will be harvested within the next few hours. It’s a great time of year to come in and load up on fresh veggies for your week, and we are starting to enter the bulk-season, when we’ll have big bags of beets, cucumbers, etc. for canning and pickling, so stay tuned for specials coming up. Today (Tuesday) we host the farmstore from 3:00-6:00, so that is a great time to come by if you have questions, want tips on convincing your own tomatoes to ripen, etc.. Some of us will be cleaning garlic to prepare for garlic braids for much of the afternoon, so swing by and say hi!

The weekly un-veiling of greens. We plant a block of 7 beds every week with out salad mix, arugula, baby kale, radishes, etc. and, protect it from insects with this row cover fabric for the first two weeks, which also helps germination. We then uncover it on week 2, to grow fuller for harvest at weeks 3 and 4. Repeat some 32 times through the season, and you have consistent greens! We’ll do this 4-5 more times outdoors, before switching to hardy winter greens in our unheated high tunnels.

Attention members: 

As we said at the start of the message, it’s full season! There are so many options for filling your bags right now and we hope you are eating well. This is also the time of year when you may find yourself wanting more than will fit in your bag, so we want to remind you that that’s ok! We encourage you to load up with extras, and use your member discount (10%) for all the purchases that don’t fit into your feedbag. That might be just a few extra bunches or heads some weeks, or it might be a big batch of beets for pickling or (soon!) ingredients for salsa. The tomatoes are still just a trickle, but they are getting more abundant, and we hope to offer bulk deals by mid-August, so stay tuned. And remember that it’s a great time to walk through and check out some of the growing spaces on the farm, when you come to fill your bag!

What to eat? 

We’ve recently embraced cooking on the grill that was gifted to the farm years ago by some farm members. When it’s this hot both indoors and out, it’s become an appealing option to simply grill an assortment of “farmer-grade” produce from the cooler, toss it onto a bowl of quinoa or rice and coat it with a nice homemade dressing. I don’t know how many dinners recently have emerged into full meals after starting with “well, let’s just grill some summer squash as a start and see if we have any other ideas.”

The biggest discovery: grilled beets. Just take some larger beets (and boy do we have some larger beets in the farmstore right now!), cut them into 1/4 inch slices, brush with oil, and cook 3-4 minutes per side on your grill. You can drizzle a little basil-balsamic vinaigrette on the top when you flip the slices over, for maximum flavor, or just sprinkle them with salt when you remove from the grill. I highly recommend the Chiogga beets (the pinker ones, with strips inside) for this, as you still see all the fun striping, and they are quite sweet when grilled.

It’s also time for tacos with shredded cabbage, it’s about time to start making tomatillo salsa, and of course it’s time for zucchini in just about everything. 

Do yourself (and, ok, us) a favor, please try grilling slices of chiogga beets. Eat them plain, tuck them into a burger bun with or without other veggies and protein.

Farm membership Week 4: new leaves, new roots, and the old springtime dance.

After a big post-market shift of mowing, and some solid weeding work from the whole tam, the North Garden is looking pretty good. If you are out on Tuesday, this is a good week to take a little walking tour.

Many of you who came on Tuesday last week saw our whole team hustling to get another caterpillar tunnel up before the predicted inch or so of rain. Spring on the fam is such a dance—constantly shifting priorities, surprise challenges, tasks that balloon from on hour to ten if put off for one more week. Despite some years of this work under our belt, it often feels like we are just still learning that dance, tripping over our own feet, taking the wrong cues.

But sometimes we get it, at least for a move or two. The crew were definitely apprehensive when we said that morning that we were going to set up a tunnel after lunch that day—after all, the first one they did took several days (including a bit of fabrication). I think they might even have doubted that it was possible, which made it all the more satisfying when we cinched down the last rope that night, after they had prepped the ground and charged confidently through many of the steps they learned just the week before. They we really a bit amazed at what they had managed, and we were proud of the whole team. It was an important step, both for making it possible to get those peppers and eggplant into the ground, and so we didn’t have to wait days for the soil to dry out again, before being able to work those beds.

Some of the dance is new, confusing, or still challenging. We have this great, detailed, and adaptable crop plan that we spend weeks of the winter developing, and yet so often in these spring weeks, we just can’t quite figure out how to get through all of the steps and tasks to actually execute the plan. The changes to market, to deal with you-know-what, from masks to the “place your order” table style, are still a bit cumbersome, and seem to make it even harder to get the time for catching up on farm tasks. We so want to find a farm schedule and routine that allows plenty of time for everything, including creative ideas and farm fun, but honestly we’re quite a ways from figuring that out yet. We appreciate your patience with our sometimes frazzled interactions; we’re working on being a little more patient with ourselves.

And despite the springtime challenges, we also are sometimes surprised by what we find: the chard, kale, and collards we uncovered this Sunday are beautiful, almost weed-free, and going to be delicious. The first leaves from those beds are in the famstore right now, and we should finally have plenty of chard for everyone at market! This week, for members, market, and farmstore, we’ve started harvesting some of the first exciting roots: baby carrots, beets, and salad turnips from tunnels that we seeded back in March. There’s also boc choi, baby romaine head lettuces, salad mix, some great arugula, asian greens (aka zesty salad), loads of radishes, and perhaps a few more surprises.

This is great week to walk around little bit if you com out on Tuesday during the hosted farmstore hours. Many of you might not even realized that what you see from the front near the farmstore is only a small portion of our growing space! Most of this year’s crops are to the north; if you pass the barn and walk back past the packshed, you’ll see the onions, garlic and some of the first field plantings of greens. Or take a right at the herb garden, continue past the cover crop, and visit the chickens back in their summer pasture (after a late Sunday night move).

Regardless of whether we see you today from 3:00-6:00 for the hosted time, at market on Saturday, or if we just wave in passing as you shop at the farmstore some other day this week, we so appreciate all of your support.

-Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm

Mini-romaine heads are a great crunchy addition to salads, or you can slice them lengthwise to make each a little salad of its own.

Rituals in the Time of a Pandemic (2nd Market)

Not quite the same, but we will be ready for you at market.

Yesterday, on Friday, and just a few days late, we seeded our weekly greens plantings (we seed 7, 120’ beds every week until my September birthday), we planted our second succession of peas, set up irrigation on winter chicken pasture (in preparation for a cover crop seeding), moved 40 bags of oyster shells when I couldn’t quite get our neighbor’s forklift down on our roadway of wood chips, transplanted four beds of brassicas and other crops, affixed row cover, move some new, farm built planting benches to our nursery, finally fixed the track on on of our tunnels (so it’s so so much easier to open) and did many other things. And finally, as our workday was about to close, we wrote two (large for us) checks to our crew that are patiently learning our systems, tools and methods.

Managing farm crew, and fostering the next generation is difficult, but seems so important for both a production farm and this time of a global pandemic. We tried to explained the gravity of the complexity of all this in our morning meeting - the importance of getting everything done on time, the relationship we have with you, the promises we make, and the all that we hope to have this season. You are counting on us jus as much as we count on you. It’s a reciprocity and we are doing everything we can.

One of the things about being a year round farm is the surprises that come from a long season. When Taylor and I prepared one of our final beds of spinach last August, and then fine tuned the planting in September, we had no idea that it would yield such amazing flavorful spinach — literally 8 months in the ground. We harvested just about the last of it this week, and early this spring, green garlic — tons of it - sprouted between some of the rows, a re-birth of a previous crop. Both crops, planted in the same space but apart in time, are delicious and a bit of a wonder. So yesterday, we spent the last hour or so harvesting and field bunching that garlic, after we cut the slow growing, flavorful spinach.

We are grateful for everyone coming out to market, helping keep our farm and crew safe, and especially all of our farm members. We made spinach and green garlic pizzas this week, along with more salads than we can count. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow — or whenever you come.

For those who are at risk, or don’t want the market experience, Laura, our wonderful farm volunteer will be at the farm on Saturday (while we are at market), keeping things sanitary. I think she’s read all of our newsletters and she’ll no doubt have some stories about us if you want to visit or if you just want to grab eggs, anything else from the store, or wander the farm.

We’ll see you soon, and be safe.

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Our Week In Photos

How to Diffuse a Mob and Make a New One

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Mary waters our nursery one morning this week, where space is filling up fast.

Years ago I was living and working in Africa. I spent months traveling in the Ivory Coast and got confident, and perhaps a bit too cocky. I was wandering on the outskirts of a busy marketplace; I was fascinated by people of all ages tearing apart engines, cars, for recycling and making things. I wandered deep into the operation, without permission or a guide or translator, fascinated by my own instincts of curiosity.

And then somthing happened. I only understand enough to know it's linked to the political history of the country; someone got a bad vibe from me, a white person with a big camera. Before I knew it, people and hands were on me. Understandably angry. I was the cause and center of an angry mob. It was bad; I was shoved and pushed. And then all of a sudden, in a rare moment I had a flash of instinct. I smiled. I started madly shaking hands -- everyone's hand I could find. There was an instant change of the mood. The mob disappated; I was invited deeper in. Whatever cultural virus and anger I had incited, I also somehow dissipated and converted into something else. The world sometimes just works just like that. And, sometimes it doesn't.

What a month it's been. We are writing to check in, to reassure you, and to let you know that we are here. Thank you all for your phone call, texts and emails, we are still getting to some of them.

First, the good news. Our farm is going to be bursting with produce in about 3-4 weeks. It's exciting. It's a warm spring, quite an amazing weather contrast from last year, when we still had snowbanks along our high tunnels on this week. The big investments we've done with silage tarps and minimal tillage systems are really starting to pay off, as arugula and carrots pop up though smooth meds with drastically fewer weeds than past springs. When unloading feather meal, micronutrients, alfalfa meal and other goodies to grow nutrient dense veggies and watching our supplies for the coming months stack up here, it feels good. We are ready to support you, and although I had long conversations this week with some of our restaurants this week -- and their outlooks haven't been great, we haven't changed our growing plan. We still stand by our advice from a few newsletters back….don’t panic. We are still planning on growing LOT of food, and we will find ways to get it to you, safely.

The safety measures at our farmstore have been working; you all being respectful, and we are grateful for that. If you visit you’ll most always be the only customer a given time, and we’ve appreciated watching people naturally and patiently wait for the person ahead of them to finish, when we occasionally have 2 cars at once.

And now the news. The news that we can't quite escape, even at Ace or Massa or Don's or one the phone with our suppliers that help make our farm, and our greater food system work. It's summed up best by my friend Jessica Washkowiak, who runs Field to Fork with her partner.

Food safety and human safety is the thing we should all be thinking about. Money is just an object and it will come and go. Your health, heart and hands is all you really have. During the flu of 1918 eventually distance was the only way to slow it. It took many years. I feel people are nervous and will distance for a long time and for as long as they feel comfortable. So even if this passes in a few weeks many people will feel scared and are not going to put themselves in crowded social situations… the days of beautiful high produce displays with free choice at markets are probably insensitive for a little while. We feel lucky technology is on our side and can offer lots of options through the internet. … Everything is so uncertain right now and communities of the globe have been through this before and will be able to get through this again and be better prepared for the future ahead. Stay strong, stay health, stay home. Grow for life! Return of the Small Farm! Small Organic Farms Will Change The World and I believe this.

So, how are we all really doing? It's okay to be scared. We are too. When talking to my Aunt Sandee (in North Carolina) this past week, she asked,

"What do I do, Noah? Am I to blame? I mean, weeks ago, in one day I hugged like 25 people."

Her words brought tears to my eyes, made my voice crack while I was attempting to weed one of our tunnels with Mary. It wasn't working. We all need the Aunt Sandees, the big huggers of the world, in full force. It’s odd to adjust to showing care by keeping distance.

But, there are a lot of things that are working, including the 20-100' away air-hug gestures many of you send us from the farmstore doors. The chickens never stop working, 20-22 dozen eggs per day, even if they can be a bit of a mob. One of our favorite seeds suppliers, Johnny's Select Seeds, temporarily shutoff sales to home gardeners so market gardeners like us wouldn't be disrupted. Everyone from chicken feed suppliers to local growers, have been on calls strategizing about how we make our farms stronger, resilient, and keep your food safe. Some of our favorite welders in town have been making things that we can't easily get or ship in, and that's perfectly fine, and even better for us. The news and stories from overseas and large California farms is grim, regaurding the outbreak of the virus, and mostly, there's just not enough data. 

And, there are also a lot of businesses that might be off course. Every day online marketing platforms call or email us, trying to convince us to get on one new marketing platform or another. I think many of them have it wrong; our food is real and doesn’t have to be one large virtual online marketplace. We are not yet sure exactly what methods we’ll use to create safe no-contact ordering and pickup options for eggs and veggies, but we’re mulling it over and trust that some firing inspiration will strike—some equivalent of the smiling and hand-shaking—will rise up as the right and fitting response to a suddenly changing situation.

We believe that while the time of hugging well come back; we are preparing for how we get though and help everyone get what they need unit then. Right now, although our memberships are full for the season, we've decided to open up about 15-20 more, so if you want the best deal on whatever you'd like, you can signup on our website. That will make us 100 feedbags strong and help us get all those last supplies in so we can hunker down and focus on doing what you help us do. Those of you already on the waitlist will be hearing from us shortly—you are in.

Amidst the turmoil and uncertainty, we really place our faith in you, our community. We’ve had additional interest in farm memberships. We’ve had so many of you take an extra moment to express your appreciation for us and our farming colleagues. Thank you. And if you need a little faith in your community, know that so far we have had far more offers from volunteers to deliver farm goods to people at home, than we have had requests for deliveries!

We do have a major gap with our particular farm washing, packing and cooler storage space. We’ve been at capacity for a couple of years now and are constantly strategizing about whether or not it’s responsible (or even ethical) to build a warehouse space for additional packing and large cooler space, or if we should wait. It’s complicated, and we are saving most of that discussion along with egg prices too. And don’t worry, we still have great egg production, and even though we do need to raise our price at some point, we are waiting until everyone is on more secure financial footing.

Farms can become the centerpieces of our community. Some of the first farm member farms involved farmers deeply embedded in communities of support. There is an almost forgotten history of the first farm membership (Community Supported Agriculture Farms) in the United States literally passing around a hat to provide enough income for farms to make a decent living wage and cover costs. And there are examples from all over the world coming into our social media these days. Even the city of Missoula is shouting and banging together pots and pans at dusk. It’s our own virtual mob, but a good one. Maybe like a flock of chickens. And it has more power than we can imagine.

When Mary looked over this newsletter (we often take turns with the writing), she reminded me that in ecology, there’s another type of mobbing. We see it all the time in the air above our fields as we work in the summer: a group of smaller birds like swallows or starlings will work together to swoop and pester a larger, threatening bird of prey like a hawk until it leaves. We try not to take sides in those aerial conflicts, but there’s something about the image of collective and cooperative action against a danger that feels hopeful. So, as much as we are scared, we are so excited to have the best season of eating, storing food, and building a healthy community. Thanks for all of the well wishes.

We are with you,

Noah, Mary, SweetRoot

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The Week in Photos

Both our crew cabins got new, buried power lines from the resident farm electrician (me) with his journeywoman (Mary). The 6 gauge buried cable was actually donated to the farm from some of Mary’s family. It made the whole project much more affordable. Along with this, buried power went to our yurt and sauna too — quite an upgrade for us and it means more planting space for perenials. The power upgrade too means that heaters are now inside both the crew cabins!

We aren’t sure what we’d do without a neighbor with a forklift. Mary used to be the forklift expert here, but when the delivery driver of this tote of composted organic chicken manure complimented me, well, I think I’ve got the title now.

There is big experiment going on with our chickens. When pasture and cover crop run a bit short, we are supplement with organic alfalfa— almost 3 tons of it on this 3/4 of an acre series of paddocks. While this strategy is more expensive then some other approaches, it means extra flavor and nutrition in eggs and healthier soil in the long term. Our chickens, in their 3 mobile barns, will be moved in about a week.

Farm Food Rising: Eat Local With Action Opportunities

For those of you who have come to our farmstore with business as usual, giving us a friendly wave or nod as you see us in the nursery or the shop—thank you. As farmers do in spring, we’ve been busy planting, working, seeding in the nursery, and planting some more. One of our colleagues, on social media, says that he’s been practicing social distancing for his entire life; farmers’ daily routines have been less disrupted than most. And, while distancing is not usually our strategy, it may be one of the reasons he’s one of the best growers I know: he’s hunkered, constantly experimenting and learning, with grit and tenacity. Of course, lately, we’ve been practicing distancing, along with frequent wipe downs of the farmstore, and generally washing our hands a lot.

We do this whole life, of growing food, and growing community with you, so it feels strange to not be gathering people together on the farm. Normally our farming and our people are tightly interwoven as a community, so some of this just all feels wrong. And, like farm equipment or lumber or steel, with things that are lying around, we make things and we build things from these dreams. We are all, constantly evolving. It’s really you that are our raw inspiration and material, and we couldn’t do this without you. We have many thoughts about all that we hope to share, but today we’re focused on a few key bits of news and actions for you:

1. We’ve posted a sign on our farm-store that notes our virus-related precautions, along with our cellphone numbers so you can call us if you’d like us to bring fresh produce or eggs out to your vehicle. If you are elderly or quarantined or just don’t feel safe, let us know if you want our offerings. We’re even piloting an option to have a volunteer help get our farm to your doorstep if leaving home is not an option.

   Email us here.

2. We have opened a waitlist for 2020 farm memberships. We will be growing a lot of food this summer, and we are determined to get good food to our people. Adding space to our farm membership may be easiest and safest way to do that, especially if other regular sales outlets drop off. If space becomes available, we’ll notify people from the waitlist in order of registration.

   Sign up here.

3. Perhaps most new and exciting: this Saturday (tomorrow) our farmer-friend William, one of my mentors, and owner of Mother Fungi, will be delivering pre-ordered mushrooms for Bitterrooters to pick up at the farmstore. He will be here from 10-noon to share more about these delicious treats, but you can pick up you order from the farmstore anytime after 10 am on Saturday; we’ll keep labeled orders in our cooler fo you. We are planning on harvesting some fresh greens as well, available starting tomorrow morning.

   As you all know, we don’t sell anything in our farmstore the we don’t grow ourselves, but when whopping 90% of William’s restaurant orders were canceled this week, along with the rest of the Missoula winter markets, we knew it was time for some creative collaboration, as he pivots to relying completely on direct to consumer sales. Customers can order directly from him though the link below, and he’ll bring your order to our farmstore for you to pick up at you convenience. William is a friend, mentor, an innovative and inspiring grower, and we vouch for his product’s quality, as well as his passion, grit, and dedication to local agriculture. We can also vouch for the delicious flavor, as he always brings some mushrooms whenever we share a meal! He’s offering some of his blue oyster and lion’s mane mushrooms for pickup at the farmstore, from tomorrow through Monday. At a time when we are all struggling with what we can do, buying good food from a local producer, especially to help them through sudden surprise changes, is an action that helps everyone, and gets a delicious new food opportunity to you.

   Signup (and pre-pay for mushrooms) here.

In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing more of our thoughts on how we hope to not just weather, but grow from this difficult time, as a farm and as a community.

Members, watch for additional communications soon too—membership pickups start in just 6 weeks, and we promise we will find ways to adapt our member pickups to whatever the situation may be at that point. We’ll get you good food in the safest ways possible, and it will be delicious.

-Noah and Mary, SweetRoot Farm

Don't Panic: An Abundance of Eggs and Spring Innovation

Even though we are well established, spring at SweetRoot is always a little, um, rocky.

Spring is always a wild adventure in the Bitterroot, and this year is no different. There's always so much to say in our first real spring email, and so little time to say it. Bear with me, and read on. 

First, we want to encourage you not to panic. While Coronavirus may be here in Montana, and while it may have more impact on our local food system than we'd like, we wanted to let you know that we are strong, healthy, and have a plan. Soon, we'll have some hand sanitizer available at the farm store. We've started regular wiping down countertops and coolers and are working on some new creative ways to make sure our valley gets fed if this lasts longer than we'd all like. While we are not at all panicked, we also recognize the potential for disruption to our normal seasonal routines. Like many, our farm is making plans for a scenario that includes a partial shutdown of our farmer's market, or substantial reductions in market customer traffic, as people practice social distancing. 

Let me be clear - the farmer's market here is not yet canceled. But, we've got a couple solid plans in place that we can implement if need be -- including making sure our regular farm members and market customers get food in an easy, abundant, healthy, and stress-free way.

In general, we plan our planting for best-case scenarios, and are continuing with seeding for abundant summer harvests, no reductions in planting a all (just a one-week delay because of excavation - see below). We've hired some incredible crew, promised them jobs, and, with the big help from farm memberships, we've already purchased supplies, and locked our crop plan in based on our winter rituals of researching new crops, talking to chefs, our growers cooperative, and listening to all your feedback. So don't worry, we'll have plenty of food for you and your neighbors. It's all more exciting than last season, and we can't wait to it all to begin, including this ritual of writing about this life.

There have been a few glitches in the process. Those 24 volt controller valves I've been waiting for since December? They were made in China, so I bought a US-version. The seeder we have on backorder because some parts are made in South Korea? We will wait for it, and our current seeders and systems are all fine and working. 

And while the farm store, and some of our wash/packing/refrigeration and storage has been beyond capacity for a year or more now, and we are working on a solution to fix that. It's not an easy fix. 

But now, you can come anytime and besides as many eggs as you want we have potatoes, kale, carrots, and later this afternoon, micro-greens and our farm roasted coffee. All the food is handled by us according to a food safety policy and conditions in our coolers are all monitored. 

Two of our three mobile, pastured chicken barns. Each barn is insulated and wired to double as a brooder space. The first spring move of the barns — to pasture — will be this coming week.

Our chicken flock production is literally astounding, and, as you can see from the graphs below, we are well on our way to meeting your egg needs. When I scaled up our laying flock last year of about 220 hens to 335, by a whopping 50%, it was because of complaints we had at the market and farm store about how often eggs were sold out. we've never yet quite been able to meet demand. This was a tricky endeavor: it meant a new mobile barn, a commitment to better forage and pasture, and to make sure we could raise chickens not only well, but to our standards. It was a significant investment, not only of some farm proceeds from the fall, but of time. I'm proud to say, even though this was the first time we raised chicks in winter, the new flock is exceptional and healthy, and all the investments: in the brooder infrastructure and barn improvements look like they were good ones -- as long as you come and buy eggs. It was  a large investment, and I need regular supporters so, basically, I can keep having a regular supply of eggs, whenever you want them. Also, the other night, had a dream, about eggs not selling in the farm store. It got a bit hazy, but I wound up storing all of our eggs in a personal refrigerator and when Mary asked me what I did with the vegetables in the refrigerator, I told her that I fed them all to our chickens. Please come alleviate my worries.

Egg tracking data from the past two weeks. Egg totals are individual number of eggs; by the end of the week we will be producing more than 20 dozen per day.

As a farm, we are on the tale end of our learning season -- a key time of the year when we finishing up watching videos, including private paid membership videos produced by some of our mentors. We talk to other farmers about innovating and share our own knowledge we've learned over these past six years. If you come and wander around, you'll see some of the results of that work. Our nursery is really starting to hum. That experimental pellet stove that we weren't quite sure about last spring, our attempt to not use propane or plumb a natural gas line, is working out well. And the nursery is starting to get so packed, we've re-designed and re-built benches leftover from the bunk of reclaimed lumber that our woodshed and market trailer didn't consume last season. 

Zuges lounges on top of our germination chamber in the nursery.

The high tunnels are starting to get planted out and the tarps that have been down for a good portion of the winter, are starting to get moved so that they germinate and kill weeds, protect our soil, and keep our soil just at the right moisture levels as soon as it gets warm enough.

And, yes, for those of you who came to the farm last week, there were craters of sand and gravel everywhere. We finally buried waterlines to our tunnels and all the front growing space. We installed 5 frost free hydrants, including one in the nursery. This means no more 150-foot hose strung across the front parking area to reach from the hydrant by the shop to the delicate seedlings, and reliable any-time-we-need-it water in the nursery for the first spring ever! 

Wrestling the 2-inch poly pipe  was like literally like fighting with spring itself: convincing it to yield to our efforts, our desires, our hopes, our fears. Then, Mary's Dad told us to go out and buy a heat gun. And things got easier.

And while we were working on that, Jeremy from Bitterroot Mobile repair came and fixed up other things that needed doing so we could meet planting deadlines. It was the second big little project he did for us here, and we are so grateful for the web of people and businesses that are part of the farm and valley.

We also put in one giant stop and drain valve (just like some big acress points you see in downtown Hamilton), so the water can drain, not freeze in lines. And, underground, we ran power in conduit to our tunnels for more late season growing ability, and, my favorite: we ran 7, 18 gauge wires to automate some of our irrigation. I think I used 100 wire nuts. Mary believes automating just this portion of our watering, will save us about 8-12 hours each week. It was a huge project, and even when we kept adding one day of work on to the project (including shopping and phone consults it was a full 8 days), but we are excited about this giant leap ahead in efficiency. And, our well house received a new series of valves and controllers that ensures our washing water stays clean. It won't freeze anymore either, thanks to a small space heater with a thermostat -- that right now helps double as a space -- and way -- to incubate oyster mushrooms.

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“The project was so consuming, and required so much work in the tight well house quarters, I even had to make a dedicated light fixture for the well house, repurposed from an old chicken waterer.”

The new system is a big enough deal that it will mean anyone on the farm team can be empowered to make moisture adjustments, and we will all feel better about our crops and management. At the end of the season, we'll have a cool spreadsheet that shows our water use. Mary and I can leave the farm and know that crucial parts will get watered, and that's huge. It's part of working towards a lean farming system where we can leave to do other projects, both personal and professional, even as we set ourselves up to be a thriving, year round farm.

And that's where you all come in. You are the community that makes all this work and click. We have some really big goals for the year, and for the next few years, and we are grateful for how  you've made us think, evolve, and respond. We just can't wait for everything to enfold.

So with that, I'm going to get out and get back to seeding, or, as I told a farm member Becky on the phone recently, just go build something. We'll see you soon.

And thanks.

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