Olypmic efforts in the farm leagues

Dear Farm Friends,

Have you ever seen 192 pounds of green beans?  I hadn’t until today, but that was our morning harvest. As with many things this year, the heat of June and July pushed together in time two different plantings that were planted weeks apart in order to spread out their peak abundance. It didn’t work, it’s all right now.  Many are in the farmstore, more are coming to market, and believe it or not, more will be ready to harvest on Monday.  We can’t quite believe it ourselves.  That epic harvest this morning was followed by another bulk harvest, this one of cabbage, as one of our storage varieties, which usually matures in late August or early September, was starting to split because of the heat.  The only solution was to cut it and truck it to our rented walk-in cooler space over at the Ag Experiment Station. 

I know August is technically not here till Sunday, but it has felt like it here for a while.  When we stare at these mountains of produce, just harvested or soon to harvest, the weight of August settles in.  Watch soon for some sign-ups for bulk deals on some of these…beets and beans for pickling, cabbage for kraut, kale and squash and more for processing and freezing. We have the food, so much food….we just have to find the ways to get organized and get it to you! 

After a strong start in spring, we are well aware our “weekly” newsletters from the farm have dropped off sharply.  It’s been one of our hardest seasons, for a myriad of reasons, and the irony is some of that has made it harder than ever to keep our people updated, informed, and connected.  We are ever so grateful for the supporters who have known us long enough that they see the struggle, and respond with “I am bringing you dinner.”  Last week, by our count, we had food delivered by farm members more days than we did not. I almost tear up just thinking of the caring and love that goes into each of those meals, the fact that we had a whole section of our farmstore for returning people’s dishes on Tuesday. Thanks to that, we got just far enough ahead in washing our dishes that last Saturday we could make a batch of pesto out of the market leftover basil. Those dinners meant we have a few more treats stowed in the freezer for winter dinners of farm food, and we are so glad.  

As I write this, Noah is harvesting zucchini by headlamp, and I am trying to gauge what or how much I can tackle from the harvest list that is nowhere near complete.  The normal calculus of what is most valuable, what would be most missed, and what we have the ability to muster ourselves for is complicated further by the calculation of what I can or should accomplish in the face of a persistent foot pain for which so far the only prescribed solution is “rest.”  Not walking, not taking steps, staying off her feet, simply isn’t something a farmer can do in July without pretty much stopping all the work of farming.  The team has been good at trying to stop me, trying to support and pick up the slack.  But we are a small crew, already stretched thin, so everything is a tradeoff. So much of the daily work of farming at human scale relies on the body of the humans doing the farming. To be honest, I hate sharing anything about injuries, problems like this.  I don’t want to answer 100 questions at market about “what happened” or what my symptoms are. But as Noah constantly reminds me, people have to understand what’s going on. It’s part of the farm we are, or want to be, that people understand. And so we have to admit that this season, especially after losing 1 of the 2 people intended to be the core team with the two of us, we have pushed ourselves, physically and mentally, to and beyond our limits. We have never had quite so many nights of so little sleep, or quite such a constant effort to determine what gets done and what gets cut.

We are dealing with it in various ways; there’s an appointment on Monday with a physical therapist who works with distance runners and understands extreme athletes (we think farming fits that category).  We still need to get a new, revamped job ad out to add another farmer to the core crew. We’ll figure it out, like we will the other challenges—how to let the other farmer peel away from the production of produce work, to make progress on our packshed, which is the long-term solution to so many of our current problems—even if we aren’t yet sure how. It can be so hard, though, to take the actions really needed to invest in the long game. To say, we will not harvest crop X today in order to finalize the details of the packshed roof.  Or we will have none of crop Y at market, though we have plenty in the field, so that one farmer can stop, ice her foot, and get more sleep.  We hear the disappointed sighs in the farmstore at the lack of lettuce or tomatoes, or whatever you were most hoping for.  It is heartbreaking, when we have pushed ourselves, to know we have also disappointed.  Knowing we are a  true community supported farm, we try to ask our people for what we need. It’s odd that the asks for money, for funding a home for us to live in, or loans to fund a better set of tools for soil health, have been relatively easy.  Right now, we are not sure what to ask for, other than patience and understanding. 

But regardless of all that….there is food. I don’t know, still, what will and will not make it in from the last of the harvest list.  I am sure there will a few gaps. I do know all the greens are packed, including chard and kale and salad mix.  We have beet and carrot bunches, radishes, bags of bulk carrots, cucumbers of all kinds, so so many of those beans. Beautiful fresh onions, thanks to a new part-time helper Dylan. Sunflowers and some supplies for mixed bunches, thanks to market and flower helper Adrienne. Zucchini enough to feed the whole town, and so much cabbage. Sabrina got all the tomatoes, and there are double the number there were last week, thanks in part to her work pruning and trellising them. There is plenty, plenty of food, so we hope we’ll see you at market Saturday morning, or at the farmstore anytime all week.  We’re working on the solutions, and hope that you’ll stick with us.

Possibly the best thing anyone said to us recently was “please don’t lose heart.”  Thank you.  We are working on it. 

With gratitude and grit, 

Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm 

Glimpses from the Other Side (The Unload)

Part of our north garden, just before all the row cover came off this week.

About 10 years ago, I was striding through farm roads in the Ivory Coast. It was the end of a long day. I had one foot in the ground, traveling with farmers there, and one foot already back in the US, with Mary. Not yet farming, but growing and making and thinking about food, sustainability, community and how we fit into it all. Our road to farming is long, but we believed in making a difference, in rooting ourselves, growing food, love, and community. Had I known how much I'd struggle to impact to our food system and culture, would I have started farming? Probably, but I'm not sure.

With our farmer friends, we are always talking about what makes a good healthy farming community. One challenge is that what works for farmers doesn't always work for everyone else. What makes a good market for farms, or for customers? What makes a good farm for everyone involved? A good store? A good community? It depends who you ask.

Despite all of our disagreements, religions, and politics, there are things that are clear. The challenges of running a small scale farm in Montana are real. There are just 6 months of market, 3 months of of frost-free time to make the bulk of our income. We constantly push those boundaries (as those in our winter CSA can attest) with row cover, cold hardy varities, nursery improvements, and various tunnels for season extension. Speaking of which, those carrots you will see piled up tomorrow, or in the farmstore, were planted in one of those tunnels back in March. It can be easy to forget, as many of us work to extend the season, that carrots in May and early June in Montana is no small feat. Those turnips? Seeded under row cover in early April, where they weathered snow, and a few nights in the teens. There were some late night texts about them between farmers, pest management mistakes, and lessons learned. There are stories everywhere, about our food. Each year most of the farmers we keep up with make wild, daring improvements. I was hoping that the pandemic would help us all slow down, and take time to ponder those stories, about our food and our lives but I worry lately, whether we will get time for that reflection at all.

During Tuesday visiting hours this week one farm member asked us how we were. I think she was surprised when I said exhausted, and tired of managing. While the gardens this year look pretty awesome so far, and most plantings are getting in on time (we just did a late evening shift to get the pie pumpkins and melons squared away), behind the scenes we've been pretty worn down. One lesson we are continually learning and re-learning is how hard it is to be good leaders, good trainers of crew and good communicators with everyone, when we are stressed and exhausted. Like covering the salad turnips *as soon as they come up* to prevent insect damage, it seems to be a lesson we need to take multiple runs at. We're working on solutions; this year we raised wages for crew, and also hired on more people in an effort to make the work easier for everyone.

It seems that that good communication is more critical than ever. Part of running a farm is being able to explain what we need. This week we were literally trying to talk about how our farm works to a new chef at one of our long-term restaurant accounts, while sumultaneously loading up a pallet for the grower's co-op. It did not go well, but the tractor running in the background wasn't really the problem. It's complicated, what all it takes to run a farm well, and be a good contributor to our community. When people lose connection with their food, or their farms, for whatever reasons, it feels like a loss. It's a pattern we worry about, as we watch a new storage unit, a new housing development, go up every year on potential farmland within sight of the farm. We want our work to be, in part, helping to tell the stories, helping people understand the full picture of their food. Doing it well requites a bit more re-charge of personal energy reserves than we've been able to muster this year.

I expected, as we hopefully start to emerge from this pandemic, there'd be a lot more conversation about health, happiness, and slowing down. As my friend Todd, a farmer in Whitefish writes, those that died from COVID had many underlying health issues. A CDC study found that people who suffered catastrophically from covid has 3.8 other health systems. A lot of this can be linked to diet and stress. We like to think we can be part of the solution, growing good healthy food, but we are guilty ourselves of working 16 or 17 hour days, of worrying too much, of wearing ourselves out. The irony of the physical and emotional toll of a job promoting a healthy lifestyle is not lost on me.

Why do we do this? I think the why is because, we believe we can still help make this community better. I think we want to see that it's possible to make a living on a small farm. Despite hundreds of hours of planning this winter on our new project (packshed, farmstore, enough cooler and nursery space), I don't know how we are going to get it finished in time for fall storage crops. By some accounts fifteen thousand people have moved to our valley. I want to say that this is good for our local food economy, but I'm not sure. More agricultural land, and even some of our neighboring land we've had our eye on for crops and protein, is getting swallowed up. Contractors are booked up, and generally out of our price range. We are pretty resourceful, but even with our piles of our reclaimed lumber, I worry that we may have started a project we don't quite know how to finish. Honestly, it wouldn't be the first time.

Building a local food system, and coordinating between our fields, walkin cooler space, our markets, and figuring out how to run a sustainable business can feel like bailing water at times. Our walkin cooler got so full last week, I took a drive. I loaded up eggs that were starting to impede the vegetable harvests, and drove them several hours north to The Farmer's Stand. This is a retail outlet, made and designed by farmers to bolster the local food system in the Flathead Valley. They choose a strip mall for the location, easy and accessible to customers, and when I burst through the temporary paper-covered door in the mall, I was greeted by smiles. People busy putting a new venture to life. I gratefully carried in all 18 cases of eggs out of the farm minivan and then began my real unloading, as I do: talking it out.

I spoke about previous attempts we've had coordinating our own food system down here in the Bitterroot. I spoke for love about my fellow farmers, and the growers cooperative. I joked about one food leader here that offered me some walkin space, when what we really needed was a real home for our food (that's our packshed, with cooler space). I talked about my hope for showing films in our space in the winter, and coordinating more closely with farmers. And to strangers that I barely knew, just like on that road in the Ivory Coast road, I nearly broke down from the weight of it all. I talked about our dream of supporting SweetRooters past and present, those who want and crave their own farms, because we all imagine our stories growing delicately with plants and dreams of spring, and all the future harvests we collectively have yet to have.

I crave that conversation, that sharing of stories. I don't know that I coudl farm, or do anything else well, for that matter, without it.

Now, if you thought this email was a boatload, there's more. There's a ton at market. There's our first ever Spinach Challenge (see below, there are prizes). There's turnips (the last of them from our farm till fall), green onions, carrots, beets, even peas and I can't believe it, but some brocolli too. Without a single piece of lumber yet raised to our new packshed yet (but we did order one new walkin cooler this week), I am literally terrified of the harvest yet to come. You should be a bit terrified for us as well, but you can help share the load by picking up bulk bags of spinach, telling your friends, your continued love, emails, and all that you do. We couldn't do this food community without you.

The Great Spinach Challenge

Here’s how it works. In the combined interest of bringing a little fun and cameraderie to the market, and also helping all of us sell the mountains of spinach that were in danger of bolting in this surprising June heat, we are throwing out a challenge to you, market customers. Dust off your recipes for Saag Paneer, Spanikopita, creamed spinach, green power juices, or whatever you do to cook down a mountain of healthy green. Here's the challenge: 1) cruise the market on Saturday morning and buy one bag of spinach from at least three *different* farms. 2) Stop by the SweetRoot Farm booth on your way out, and leave your name and email to enter the challenge.....if you've used up all your spinach by the time we contact a few randomly chosen winners at the end of the week, you get your choice of a dozen eggs, a pound of coffee, or a bouquet!

The Week In Photos

The crew plants tomatillos, eggplant and peppers in one of our moveable caterpillar tunnels.

This walkin cooler is just way too full. This photo is after we removed some boxes. It’s why we bought another cooler this week.

Two of our chicken barns. Can you spot the coyote cutout that prevents aerial predation?

Noah wraps a pallet, outside, with a big hustle for Monday’s Western Montana Grower’s Coop harvest. We couldn’t have done it without Alexis (left).

Our winter rye is mowed to make way for the next move of our laying hens. Cover crops like this winter rye is one of our primary soil building strategies. It also makes great chicken forage!

Clear sunny market morning! Come find us and all the spring greens.

Dear Farm friends, 

Have you ever worked a week that started at 80 degrees, and ended at 32?  We have.  It’s been another big one, and we hope you have weathered it well. 

At the market: 

Market morning is dawning quite clear and pleasant, no snow falling at all! We’ll be there soon, with lots of goodies for you.  IT’s still a bit chilly for the tomato starts, though, and with a few more quite cold nights in the forecast, we think you should hold off planting them into your gardens anyways.  The good news is, we do have quite a few tomato starts left over to sell, now that we have all of our own planted into our caterpillar tunnel. On Tuesday during the hosted farmstore hours, we’ll have all of our extra plants out for sale, so come then to shop for your garden.  (3:00-6:00 pm, one of us will be available to help you choose varieties, answer questions, etc..)

There will be plenty of cool-loving veggies at market! We harvested some greens a little early in case that 2” of snow really did materialize, but we are so glad it didn’t.  We’ll have spinach, salad mix, spicy mix, baby kale, arugula, boc choi, baby boc choi, radishes, a few salad turnips, kale and collard bunches, plus mint, chives, cilantro, and dill leaf to flavor your tables.  And plenty of eggs, too! 

The mini-head lettuces are starting to come in! We recommend combining them with spinach for a delicious and beautiful salad with both tenderness and crunch. Chop in some dill or cilantro for flavor, or mix up a creamy dill-yogurt dressing, and top with toasted sunflower seeds.

From the farm: A theme of the farm this week for me has been hoping that some of the challenges, even the mistakes, help us improve, help us draw in the resources for longer term success.  

The pump-house robins hatched this week, and the rain has probably been a relief to their protective mama, as we haven’t had to turn on the pump in days, which causes her to fly off and scream at us from a nearby aspen tree.

For example: we planted our winter squash last Sunday, but had been dragging our feet a bit about covering them with row cover (which requires placing hundreds of wire hoops over the plants, and carrying lots of sandbags to hold the frost cloth down in the wind).  The frosty nights and snow forecasts were stressful, but they did force us to get several blocks of field plantings covered, which will now help them stay warm and cozy and boost their growth over the next several weeks. 

Out front, if you have come to the farsmtore, you may have noticed a row of brilliant yellow flowers, near the peas.  Full disclosure: those were intended to be nice little tatsoi and mizuna bunches for you early season stir-fries.  Something about their conditions in the caterpillar tunnel, and some early problems in the nursery, however, caused them to form very little leaf before “bolting” and sending up flowering stalks.  Kind of a failure, and yet now they are buzzing with life. We’ve been watching them, on the sunny days, packed with bees—not just honeybees, but also a plethora of solitary native bees that do so much work of pollination through the season.  

A bit of a mess, and also a feasting ground for pollinators and beneficial insects.

With little else blooming, we decided to let that bed go, to feed our insect friends.  It’s a bit dicey, as it is also full of another farm problem: aphids.  With more winter growing, we fear we are helping some of our pests over-winter as well, and have had a few early spring outbreaks of those little monsters.  If you happened by on Monday evening, it might have looked as if we were wandering slowly and relaxed through that bed, giving the flowers a little loving caress and close observation every few plants.  It would not be totally untrue; we were scanning closely, noting the concentration of ladybugs there, the diversity of bees. The loving caress was actually a motion of smashing clumps of aphids on the flowering stalks, a somewhat gross pass-time. But you see, in the ecology of the farm, we’re hoping that we are doing a tiny equivalent of feeding the bears…..or the ladybugs, lacewings, and other predators, in this case.  It’s a delicate balance; we want to leave enough of these pests to be an early feast for the beneficial insects, without creating a source population for a farm-wide aphid explosion.  Ideally, this little mistake will help boost our number of beneficial insects on the farm, which will fan out as plantings grow, to protect our peppers, eggplant, etc..  If we were a slick farm documentary this would be guaranteed to work, complete with triumphant soundtrack and time-lapse photography.  As an actual, real farm, we’ll just have to see how it plays out…stay tuned. 

Similarly, as we continue to recruit for our remaining full-time and part time farm help positions, we are thinking a lot about our systems, our team dynamics and management and tools, always with the hope that we can keep getting better each season, each week. Again, we’ll see….and if you know anyone willing to join in on that journey, we are still hiring!

We hope to see you at market, or at the farmstore—remember, leftover plant sale on Tuesday afternoon, but the self-serve farmstore is open all the time!

With frosty green gratitude,

Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm

When you plant tomatoes on a snowy frosty morning….and invent some new ways to cover them inside of the caterpillar tunnel. Our second succession of tomatoes is all planted out, and all tucked in.

Zukes, as usual, not-helping in the final round of flower seeding.

Dozens of small things...improving the farm one bit at a time.

Greetings, Farm Friends!

We are getting ready for market after a big week on the farm. Scroll through the photos below to catch some of the details, but rest assured there has been a lot of planting, plant tending, and quite a lot of growth. We’re entering that point of spring where the harvesting, the plant care, the bed prep, and the planting all overlap, and it can certainly be overwhelming. Another round of greens went into the field, along with summer squash, brussels sprouts, and the tunnel tomatoes. Mary will actually be returning home after helping set up market, to catch up on our nursery seeding and make the plan for all the transplants going in in this coming week.

People often ask us in the spring “what’s new things year?” and sometimes it’s major—an actual home to live in, or a switch to minimal tillage, or a complete perimeter fence to keep the deer out. This year it seems like it’s many small things, but they are starting to add up. Scroll down through the photos to see a few of the innovations and improvements we’re adding this season.

We do have a few fun new items at market this week including baby boc choi and full-size boc choi, more spicy mustard greens bunches, some of the first dill and mint, more cilantro, salad turnips, and a few baby head lettuces. Plenty of spinach, baby kale, spicy salad, arugula, and salad mix too. We will also be bringing some of our leftover tomato starts, now available for your garden. If you are planting them outdoors, please plan to have some way to protect them on chilly nights for a while!

MEMBERS: You are now entering week three! This week, please again chose up to 5 items for your bag (and we are crossing our fingers for those to finally arrive this week). You are welcome to include starts for sale as some of your items, if you are setting up your own garden. And if you come to pick up at the farm, definitely take a little walk around—a lot is starting to happen, and things are looking good!

And, finally, a quick note on masks: our core team on the farm is now fully vaccinated, so you will actually see some of our full smiling faces again, especially while we are outdoors at market. We will, however, always have masks at the ready and are more than happy to wear them while helping or visiting with anyone who requests—we recognize some members of our community are higher risk, unable to vaccinate, etc.., and we want to accommodate your needs and keep everyone safe. If you are not yet vaccinated please continue to care for your community by keeping distance and/ or wearing your mask in public.

Noah running the new compost and amendment spreader, dropping neatly onto our permanent 30” beds.

We had a few exciting new pieces of equipment running this week. Like many small farms, we feed our soil with a wide variety of organic inputs—our own composted chicken manure, purchased compost, alfalfa meal, azomite, and specific micronutrients as recommended by our soil tests. Some we add by the tractor bucket-load, some take only a few ounces for a block of seven beds. Also like many small farms, we have up till now done the vast majority of that spreading with shovels, wheelbarrows, the tractor bucket, and for specialty amendments, many trips dispersing with 5-gallon buckets. One of the most exciting developments this week was getting a new compost and soil amendment spreader finally working for our system. We purchased this tool with a small grant from CFAC, trying to find a more sustainable way to disperse many of the things we use to feed our soil. After some rough starts using the tool with our BCS walking tractor, which it was designed for, we collaborated with J&B Welding again, to improve it—it now runs behind our 4-wheel tractor, lifting up at the end of each bed for easy turning. In addition to saving many person-hours and aching muscles, it seems to spread much more evenly. Today Noah and the tractor and tool covered 21 beds, preparing the way for the winter squash and potato blocks (adjacent to each other in a zone we may have to call the carbohydrate block this year).

Freshly weeded beds of onions! We hit a lot of weeding (we call it plant care) this week, and it feels good to be on top of some big areas of the farm. It’s easy to lose onions in the weeds of spring, but so far we are looking good.

Tomatoes are in tunnel one! We called it a date night, planting together till late Tuesday evening, after the crew had put in a full good day already. We’re excited to have these in the soil and growing earlier than the last few years, and hoping for another year of being overwhelmed by tomato harvests.

Meal of the week: sauté some shrimp (or protein of your choice) in hot sesame oil with garlic and chili flakes, then throw in a whole bunch or two of chopped mustard greens or salad turnip tops. Serve over rice or noodles…or, if you have just had a late night tomato planting date, serve with a course of blueberry pancakes because you ready to eat anything you find in the pantry.. It pairs better than you might think.

In this week’s episode of “More Exciting Than It Looks,” we finished installing and programming some automated irrigation valves leading to the drip irrigation; 12+ different zones now go on their own, instead of needing farmers to turn each one on and off.

Farm nest of the week: killdeer, in a gravel edge near the future nursery. Happy to find a nest somewhere that is out of traffic and not anywhere that we need to plant!

Getting a caterpillar tunnel set up for the third wave of flower planting. Bouquet subscription members and bloom card holders, we are on track to start having some bouquets in early June. The tulips pulse is done, but the first calendula are not too far away.

Winter squash ground is ready, planting is on our weekend plan.

Malaya apparently find tomato starts a bit boring, but we hope the rest of you will be excited to get some for your gardens.

We hope to see you at market in the morning, or at the farm sometime this week!

Gratitude and spicy greens,

Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm

Market Scene Saturday morning, behind the scenes at the farm all week...

Dear Farm Friends,

It’s been a big week at SweetRoot, once again. One of those that has been so packed, so long, and yet gone so fast.

We planted a lot, and yet the nursery is bursting at the seams (we keep planting more); we moved all four chicken barns to truly lush fresh pasture. We seeded more greens, planted more peas, installed irrigation timers, repaired a few things, planned a whole bunch more. We turned over two tunnels from their spring greens crops to summer veggies—cucumbers and peppers are in the ground, tucked under thick layers of row cover even inside their unheated greenhouses, for these next few nights.

Speaking of greenhouse space: For those of you who have been wondering about starts—we have so little room to start even the veggies and flowers for the farm in our greenhouse, we are not offering many starts this year at all. We’ll sell a few leftovers here and there as they come up (onions and scallions at market this week), but for filling your garden, we highly recommend checking out other farms—Lindsay of Fourth Wave Farm is excellent at producing starts, as of course is Lifeline Produce.

At the market this week, we’ll have so many good greens again: baby spinach, salad mix, spicy mix, tatsoi, chinese cabbage, a lovely pink-stemmed pac choi, plus radishes, chives, cilantro, tulip bunches, and lots and lots of eggs.

Farm Members, it’s the start of your second week! Thank you for bearing with us in getting the membership going this spring, and we really hope you’ve enjoyed week one’s goodies. Whether you find us at market or at the farm this week, please choose 4-5 veggie items to put in your bag (or a bag at least….still waiting for the official feedbags to arrive).

Read on for meal ideas, details of what we’ve been up to, and plenty of behind the scenes glimpses of the farm. We’ll be at our spot on Beford street tomorrow morning, 9:00-12:30, no matter what the weather brings, so we hope we’ll see you there! If not, the farmstore of course is open all week, and will be well packed with greens and veggies for you.

-Mary and Noah

Can you spot the nest? Look past the hose Y that cracked in last fall’s frosts, the vice grips where the valve handle fell off, to the more organic mess, where a startled robin flew off her nest early this week when I went to start the irrigation pump.

She shoots out of the nest every day when I start up the irrigation, but despite her daily fright, has persisted, adding an egg a day till she reached four on Thursday.

If your mother would appreciate a home-baked spinach frittata and bouquet of tulips, we’ve got you covered. Mothers day is particularly bittersweet here this year, as we lost Mary’s mom at the end of December. Her diagnosis right around the time we started the farm meant she never had a chance to see it in person, though she enjoyed the photos and stories and reports of our development those first few wild-ride years. We know she would be proud of what the farm has become.

If you, too, are missing a mom this year, perhaps get some tulips for yourself—and make a good veggie filled omelette; surely she would want you to eat your spinach.

One way to eat greens: massive farm-team-dinner salad, features all the types of greens at once, topped with gingery marinated chickpeas (from the original Moosewood Cookbook), some good bread, and your favorite dressing.

Or prepare to stir-fry with our newest addition to the greens lineup: vivid pac, a tart, crunchy pink-stemmed pac choi. Use it like you would boc choi—we recommend stir fried with peanut sauce and an egg on top. Try it with your favorite peanut sauce, a ginger dressing, or since cilantro is back, our creamy cilantro-lime dressing!

Many parts of farming are in no way picturesque. But when these irrigation valves, can be set to open and close on a schedule, from a controller at the well house, it will be a beautiful thing (and save many hours and countless distractions each day, when one farmer doesn’t have to make trip after trip across the farm to turn water zones on and off).

Spring is hectic for most farms, and we are all eager to connect. When there’s an extra moment for a phone call, usually early in the morning before starting out with crew, or perhaps late at night, we all tend to seize on them. I could tell that Nathan from Raven Ridge was in the same state as us when the call about biodegradable packaging quickly also covered new crew, work schedules, strawberry spacing, micro greens, team organization, and more. Noah has been our main communicator with other farms lately, everything from squeezing potting soil totes for three different farms onto our trailer when he drove to Big Arm to load us up, to an almost daily text message stream with Max from MGVC that covers everything from the best seeder settings for spinach, to incredible nerdy farm-based ‘your mama’ jokes.

We are grateful for farm neighbors, near and far—we called on the MGVC crew for a short term loan of 100 sandbags to fill to hold down row cover on a new planting this week. A few days later, when their flame weeder was acting up with hundreds of row feet of carrots needing pre-emergence flaming (a process where sometimes a four-hour delay can mean you miss the window, with disastrous results!), of course we loaned ours. We forgot to mention it’s kind of a farm-built ungainly large and awkward piece of equipment, but we managed to strap it to the top of Barret’s not-very-large car and get it over in time.

Spring is a time when things change so fast, too. Thursday it’s over 80 degrees, Saturday it might snow at market (we’ll be there even if it does, don't worry). People come and go—Kayla’s month here before starting her med school adventures is coming to a close and we’ll miss her so much! We are still sorting out who will fit into the core farm team for this year, and are hiring both a full-time farmhand (living on the farm in one of the cabins), and two part-time positions to help with harvest days, plant care, and weekend farm duties while we are at market. If you or anyone you know would like to apply for one of those options, please send us a message. It’s not easy work, and it’s not for everyone, but for those of us who fit it, farming can also be just about the best job.

It might only be other farmers who find this beautiful….but this week also included completing a “charging shelf” in the new and improved storage area of the barn.

The full lineup of four moveable barns on fresh pasture!

Support Beginning Chickens and Farmers! Spring Frittata special, Updates from the Farm

As spring makes its presence more definite, here are a few bits of news and updates from the farm week: 

Spring ground work: smoothing tunnel beds for seeding beets and carrots with the power harrow, after loosing the soil with broad forks. Outside, beds mulched for winter with alfalfa hay, and a caterpillar tunnel with overwintered chard, kale, and beds ready for peas.

Last Thursday marked the very first of the baby greens seeded in the ground.  We’ve been seeding in the nursery for weeks, but it’s always a big milestone to put the first seeds of food into the actual earth. Protected with row cover inside of the tunnel, they just started to emerge this week, while the next rounds of seeds, including one tunnel full of beets and carrots, went in right on time too.  It’s crazy to realize that this kicks of the start of 30 weeks in a row, now through mid-September, of seeding a suite of greens every single week, and additional crops on many of those weeks as well. 

2021’s first greens emerging.

This time of year, a lot of our days are spent getting ground ready—broadforking, hand-pulling perennial weeds, moving tarps, setting up trellis, spreading soil amendments like alfalfa meal, compost, and other slow release organic fertilizers.  On Friday Sabrina tackled quackgrass in the caterpillar tunnel that will get the next round of salad greens, Noah kept up the push on the upgrades to Tunnel 1 (because what would spring be without at least one infrastructure project taking more time than we anticipated?), we started using our new vacuum seeder purchased through a grant from CFAC, to seed many more flats of greens, lettuces, and scallions for spring transplanting. 

Trellising for peas, going into the caterpillar tunnel next to overwintered chard and Kale, which are supplying the leaves for our cooking mix and Frittata kits!

Support beginning farmers! 

We also have almost entirely filled our farm membership; just a couple of feedbags remain, and we are so appreciative of everyone who has joined. Since we are practically full, we want to encourage the rest of you to consider supporting some other beginning farmers; if you’ve been on the fence about a full 6-month membership commitment with us, didn’t get around to signing up before we filled, or just want to try something new, check out the CSA offerings from Jay and Ashlee at Fern Co in Stevensville.  They just started farming here last year but have years of experience working for another farm, and will be growing some great food for the community this season.  Talking with them lately as we sort out some group orders, borrow and lend tools, etc., has us remembering how challenging our first years of trying to fill memberships were, before anyone really knew us.  It makes us ever more grateful for the relationships we’re a part of in our community, that allow us to spend more time in the spring planting seeds instead of working so hard on member recruitment.  A few selling points of the Fern Co. farm membership: 18 weeks of produce, great for folks who might not be so keen on the shoulder-season offerings (like the greens, greens, greens of May), or are interested in monsly peak-season produce. Second, they just invested in a heater for their greenhouse, meaning tomatoes far earlier than most farms in the area! You can learn more about their program and options here.   

We really believe that more successful, thriving farms in our community is a good thing for all of us, so please check them out. On a similar note, did you know that The O’Hara Commons is offering an online market, assembling products from a range of local producers? Check that out too, at https://www.theoharacommons.org We have a few offerings there each week—they are more expensive than at our farmstore because the organization has costs associated with assembling, storing, and handling the products, but the advantage is you can pick up loads of things from other producers too—ferments, diary, cheeses, meats, honey, and more, all in one stop.

Support beginning chickens! 

The poultry Class of 2021 is really starting to come into their own, filling two solid baskets of eggs per day.  Many are starting to size up to standard large size, but many eggs are still in the petit size category, which we sell at $6 per 18-pack, as pullet eggs.  Pullet is just a term for young hens; we realized recently someone thought it might be a totally different species of bird!  Basically these are the first efforts, the eggs of beginning chickens, if you will. They are stil totally tasty and delicious, but it’s true they can throw off a recipe that calls for X number of eggs.  That’s one reason we are making a special meal-pack deal with the pullet eggs this week: spring pullet egg frittata kits.  For $10, pick up a 1.5 dozen carton of pullet eggs, a bag of cooking mix (small tender leaves of rainbow chard and kale), and a bag of micro-greens for garnish.  It makes a great spring meal, paired with your favorite crusty bread or whole grains, and leftovers are a staple farm breakfast. 

Colorful cooking mix of chard and kale.

SweetRoot Spring Frittata Directions: 

 In addition to the ingredients from the farm, you’ll need: 

-large slosh of milk, cream, or ½ and ½ (third to half a cup)

-cup or so of grated cheese of your choice

-one medium onion

-couple of  cloves of garlic (2 to infinity, depending on your taste)

-oil or butter for sautéing

-salt and pepper to taste

-2-3  tablespoons fresh herbs, or 2-3 teaspoons dried herbs. The possibilities of herbs to use are endless, but some of our favorite combos are: basil/ rosemary/ thyme;  parsley/ celery seed/ black pepper; cumin/ red chili flakes/ cilantro; thai chili flakes/ thai basil/ curry powder; chives/ parsley/ celery leaf or celery seed.  

How to make an SRF style frittata: 

-preheat oven to 350-375

-chop onion, garlic, cooking greens, and any other veggies you want to include 

-heat up a large skillet that can also go into the oven for baking (cast iron is ideal) 

-sauté onions and garlic for a few minutes till they soften 

-while they are cooking, crack and beat the entire 18-pack of pullet eggs in a large bowl, with the milk or cream

-add ½ the herbs, a little salt (we probably use about ½ teaspoon) and the chopped greens to the pan, cook another 1-2 minutes, just till greens start to soften and turn brighter green 

-turn off the heat, and pour the eggy mixture into the pan, nudging it around to distribute the veggies evenly and remove any air bubbles

-sprinkle the grated cheese and the second half of the herbs over the top (it’s ok if you forgot and added all the herbs already, that works too), and slide the pan into the oven to make for 35-45 minutes (will depend a lot on the size of your pan and the depth of your frittata).  It’s finished when it has puffed up to the max, the cheese is nicely browned, and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean, no runny egg residue. 

Add the microgreens, whole or chopped, to the top as you serve for an additional taste of spring! 

Way behind the scenes: bits of farm-made hardware, new and reclaimed lumber, and our custom sliding tunnel door setup from the air, as work on updating tunnel 1 continues. At least Noah has a big spread of chickens in view in the background as he works.

Photos from The Winter Farm

It’s been awhile since we sent some news, so we thought we’d start reconnecting by sharing some photos.

From the Winter Archives. Above left: Noah and Mary inspect the building of some farm cabinetry in shop. That was the winter of 2018, and those are the cabinet frames that were destined for our yurt. Right: 2017 was a cold winter, and Noah installs the (still working) farm-built germination chamber in the farmstore. Our farmstore opened in 2016.

Winter is a time for farm improvements. The shop got a facelift with a large workbench that doubles as tool storage. There’s a new rolling cart that holds fasteners and wrenches. Being a farm that still fabricates a lot of our own tools, cleaning up the workshop was a necessity. We found some things to donate to other farmers and took the rest to local reclaimed building stores. That’s not a puppet theater display on the tabletop; it’s just a freshly assembled nest box for our laying hens.

At the height of winter — just over a month ago — our tunnels were bursting with greens. These greens, all harvested now, were harvested as long as the temperatures were above freezing in our unheated tunnels. Since we receive so little sunlight in the winter, we are uncovering in this image to promote growth and airflow. To make the daily covering and uncovering easier, most of our unheated tunnels have thirty foot wide row cover.

This is the first year that we’ve grown microgreens at scale. A good portion of the reason is Sabrina. With some help setting up the system from us, she’s been seeding and harvesting weekly. We grow these using sunlight in our nursery and a small amount of supplemental light. Our favorite (and most reliable) varieties are radish and pea shoot greens.

From the winter warm, we’ve also had a decent amount of spinach, radishes, carrots, garlic, occasionally other fresh greens and eggs. The carrots and radishes were harvested in the fall and are kept in our walk in cooler at 35 degrees.

In the winter, we spend a lot of time on soil fertility. Large organic alfalfa bales are purchased from a farmer-colleague and the alfalfa is spread and then flail mowed on beds that we haven't tapped for the season. And we compost! With the help from chicken bedding, we make about 40 yards of compost a year. It's turned regularly in the winter, to take advantage of moisture. You can't see it in the photo, but it's steaming hot.

“And it’s also hauling season. We scavenge the countryside, literally Oregon on the left and New Mexico on the right for good deals on quality, used materials. It cuts down our footprint a lot. That load in New Mexico included dozens of walkin cooler panels and a cooler-compressor unit. It’s part of building a sustainable farm.”

All the materials need somewhere to go. The footprint for the new farm center is large, but it includes a new farmstore, several walk-incoolers, adequate indoor wash and pack space, some better climate control, a nursery, and a space for growing mushrooms. There is also a space for events as well, those workshops we’ve always wanted to have, or a winter film series.

The whole north lean-to will be storage, mushroom growing space, a loading dock for our growers cooperative and help a few neighbor farmers use this as a shared space. On sunny days you may see us out here eating lunch, but on cold rainy days there’s a space for the whole crew to hang out inside!

There are a lot of drains in this project. We hired out the cement, but we did all the drains, rebar, and design work ourselves. Most of all the other work you’ll see us doing this spring.

The cement pouring this winter was dicey. It involved using a lot of cement blankets and added a huge amount of chores to uncovering and covering the weeks it took to do the excavation and drains. On the morning where we poured the last of the cement, some of the soil was frozen about a 1/4”. We fired up the farm flame weeder and that took care of the problem.

And there it is. Or at least the base of it. It’s our biggest project yet. We are daunted by it, but also excited. It’s something we’ve needed for a long long time. But it’s the biggest project we’ve ever taken on and when we aren’t in the farm office working on our crop plan, interviewing perspective crew, or working on another project, we are likely making working on this. It’s been more than a year of planning and we are excited to see this project take shape.

All the while we’ve converted a small part of our nursery, heated by a pellet stove, into some wash and pack space. This is last weeks’ spinach harvest.

But the pipes in our little sauna/bathhouse where we wash eggs (yes, there’s also an egg washing station in the new farm center), froze. So we had to wash eggs at home until we thawed pipes. Next fall we’ll insulate those pipes a bit better.

The winter laying hens have really been thriving. We finished a new chicken barn, the 4th to the fleet, just in time for really cold weather and the new flock (pictured here a few weeks ago) lives together, albeit in two different mobile hen barns. Their winter range is part of our orchard.

Malaya, ever a tomato scavenger, is in high form, sleeping in the snow on sunny days, waiting for farm visitors, and somehow, got one of the last farm tomatoes of the year.

Christmas Day 2020, with the whole farm crew, including both Sabrina and Willa, in the farm van off for an excursion.

Final 2020 Greens are in the Farmstore!

Hello, Farm Friends.

What a winter it has been already. We’ve been rolling with all of it, learning so much this winter about timing, strategy, and the dances with sun, wind, temperature, and greens. In our first season of offering a CSA that ran from early November through the end of December (members, it’s your final week…more details on your shares are below), it has been a wild ride, harvesting weekly greens for our farmstore and members that, just a few years ago, are the quantities we would have cut for a busy summer market.

We just yesterday cut and washed our final “big” greens harvest—meaning three kinds of greens for the weekly member shares, plus all the options for the farmstore: winter salad mix, spinach, spicy mix, bunch greens, and baby boc choi. Right on schedule, this did finish out many of the plantings we had allocated for our deep fall and winter harvests, so the coming weeks will see a notable dip in the abundance and diversity of greens. We have one more batch of tatsoi and baby boc choi for next week, and some spinach regrowth on track for mid-January, but you’ll notice a lot less green on the shelves for a while, until regrowth starts to pick up in February.

We know how sad many of you will be to have fewer greens in the farmstore, but we have to admit we farmers are all ready for a little lightening up of the harvest load for a few weeks. Rest assured, there will still be plenty of farming happening: crop plans, seed and equipment orders, recruiting the 2021 field crew, preparing those harvested-out tunnels for seeding, starting the first early season seeds in the nursery. We’ll be getting space and systems set up for winter micro greens and mushroom growing. And of course the eager anticipation of the first pullet eggs, coming soon as the “new girls” get closer to laying age. But maybe, perhaps, we’ll each get one or occasionally even two full days off each week? And though there is less green, the farmstore will be far from empty; we grew enough beets and carrots to keep the shelves well stocked with tasty roots, potatoes, and winter squash through the greens dip. We also urge you to watch for local offerings at The O’Hara Commons online market to support other farmers like our friends at MGVC, rocking winter greens and much more, downriver in Stevensville.

This time of easing up on harvests is also important for our big winter project: the Foodshed. Many who have stopped by recently have asked what is going on in the leveled and gravelled space between our propagation house (currently doubling as a winter wash station), and the south-west growing beds. A new greenhouse, the most common guess, is not even the half of it. Literally—though a new plant nursery is included in the footprint of this build, and is very exciting, this building has a lot of jobs to do, and housing baby plants in the nursery on the south side will be just one of them. We’ve cringed to see this central complex denoted as “farm shop” on things like a cement slab quote, as it is so much more than that. It will house a more spacious and better designed farmstore (one that wasn’t originally designed to serve as a home kitchen), simultaneously store winter roots and fresh greens around 34 degrees, onions, garlic and potatoes at 45, and winter squash at 50….all without us needing to load wood stoves in the middle of the night or drive across town to rented cooler space. There can finally be space for growing the mushrooms Noah has been fascinated with for years. Water will flow through without a tangle of hoses, cooling and cleaning thousands of pounds of produce with farmers working out of the summer’s sun and dusty wind, protected from winter’s freezing wind and snow, in a cleanable and secure area where harvest bins and tools can store without blowing across the field or accidentally becoming bird roosts or mouse habitat (read: extra scrubbing and sanitizing). It’s about food safety, farm efficiency, and food security for the whole community.

Of course, with so many jobs, it’s not a simple build. It’s the first farm structure we haven’t basically muddled through building on our own, and that has been a daunting process. At any moment, it could all get shut down due to freezing or other weather shifts, or to glitches with crew and equipment far out of our control. We were lucky to get that sloppy wet December thaw that allowed excavation to happen. Now we cover the site every night, uncovering it again for any work, and trying to understand the sequence of events of a process new to us (and quite often feeling a little bit stupid about it all). We keep reminding ourselves that the foundation is the hardest, often most expensive, and yet so critically important, part of any build.

We recently passed, without fanfare or acknowledgment, the 7-year anniversary of our purchase of this place. By many measures, we’ve been building the foundations of this farm for all those years. What the farm has become, how all of you relate to it, has in many ways exceeded what we ever envisioned at the strange polished desk of the title company office in Hamilton. As we stumble our way forward through this building’s foundation, we know we have high hopes and dreams for what it will do for our farm and community. In difficult moments, I remind myself that it is likely to exceed and surprise us beyond those hopes as well, in large part because of what you all will bring.

So, as you continue to come out to the farm through the rest of the winter, watch for progress there, likely in fits and starts. Watch for the mix of excitement, trepidation, and exhaustion in the eyes of your farmers. There will be plenty happening on the farm this cold season, and we couldn’t do any of it without you.

Thank you so much for being along for the ride,

Mary, Noah, Sabrina, and all the rest of SweetRoot Farm

P.S.: Special section for members: It’s your final week of the winter CSA! We have been so thrilled this winter to offer a substantial weekly dose of veggies to our community, and we thank you all especially for pushing us to new heights in the volume, diversity, and consistency of winter food. Your final pick-up is this week with the usual hosted time Tuesday, 3:00-6:00, and shares available to pick up un-hosted all of Wednesday too. This week’s greens bags include spicy mix, spinach, and a baby boc choi or tatsoi bundle. Perfect for topping hot noodle soups, layering spinach into pasta dishes, or making a savory stir-fry. The roots are are a full dose again of beets, carrots, and potatoes…we’ve been reviving our traditional winter dinners of roasting chopped roots all tossed together with garlic, onion, and olive oil and topped with some of our farm dried herbs. Puree the leftovers with a good broth, top with cheese, and you have a great winter soup. If you have some purple cabbage still from last week, try a super-colorful winter salad of grated carrots grated cabbage, and a simple dressing of olive oil, red wine or apple cider vinegar, and salt and pepper. You’ll have your choice of winter squash or pie pumpkin again, and a dried herb or tea.

And regardless of winter harvests, winter builds, or whatever stresses you may have, Zukes wishes you the coziest and warmest bits of winter from his festive yurt loft.

Winter Membership, Week 5

Dear Winter Members, 

Welcome to Week 5!  It’s a quick note this morning, as Sabrina and I (Mary) have been holding down the fort at the farm while Noah did another big haul gathering reclaimed materials for our packshed build. He left early Saturday morning, meaning I have managed three days of covering all chicken chores without anyone (farmer or foul) having any breakdowns or disasters. This may be a record, and perhaps I shouldn’t speak too soon, as there is one more round of morning chicken duties before his return. 

He had been on schedule to be home yesterday in time for chicken bedtime stories, but was delayed for repairs in Quincy, Washington for several hours after one of the trailer wheels rolled leisurely past the truck when he stopped for gas. Luckily, it was just a one-afternoon delay and he managed to find a tire store that could get a new hub delivered, wheel sourced and reattached and get him back on the road. One thing we are starting to learn with winter farming, just like with winter driving, is the importance of leaving a little extra time buffer, a little longer to get things done, and to roll with the conditions and the unexpected a little bit. 

For example, if any of you tried to top up your greens over the weekend, you might have been surprised to find the farmstore cooler shelves bare of our most-common color: green.  We had a big harvest list typed up for Friday, enough to stock all the shelves, and it seemed do-able based on the forecast.  But winter demands some respect—when the day turned out cloudier than forecast, and the night before was just a little colder than expected, the combination meant that we actually couldn’t harvest at all.  Most of the greens we work with this time of year are extremely cold tolerant—meaning that they actually freeze solid and recover fairly often.  BUT, for harvesting, they have to be thawed out. If we harvest while the leaves are frosted, they can shatter in the harvest process, and also will become a pile of green mush when washed. There can be a lot of waiting for the right time, in winter growing. 

Luckily, Monday was a good greens-harvesting window, and your bags will include spinach, leaf cabbage (Tokyo Bekana), and baby boc choi this week. Read on to find what to expect in the rest of your bag, and a few meal ideas.  

As we settle into some of the shortest, darkest days of the year, we hope you are taking time to for some slow simmering, some rest and fuel, and we hope the farm veggies are a good part of that, for you.

With gratitude,

-Mary…plus Sabrina (downstairs working on the seed inventory in the barn) and Noah from the road.

What you’ll find in your bags this week: 

Greens:

Baby boc choi (perfect for stir-fries, broth noodle soups, or slitting in half lengthwise, brushing with sesame oil, and grilling on a hot skillet; eat it semi-crunchy by just searing each side, or add a few tablespoons of broth to the pan after initial searing, and cover to stem for a soft savory side to your meal).  A small bag of spinach, great for salads or tossing into scrambled eggs. And a bundle of Tokyo Bekana, ready to use as you would a head lettuce, or to stir-fry or sauté like a boc choi, with just a little shorter cooking time. 

Roots: 

Potatoes (either Red Norland or Russian Banana Fingerlings), both varieties great for roasting and topping with butter, salt and pepper, and/ or farm-dried herbs. Radishes, and carrots. Radish recommendation of the week: slice thinly and slip into sandwiches for a little bit of crunch.

And also: You get a few choices in the non-refrigerated items this week: you’ll pick out two winter squash or pie pumpkins, based on what types you enjoyed the most in the first month of the membership. Remember these can happily sit on your counter to help tide you over after your weekly veggie dose has stopped. You’ll also pick out two choices from the herb packet options.  These will include dried red chilies, dried rosemary, packets of the Italian-ish herb blend, and a chammomile-spearmint herb tea. 

What to eat: 

We’d like to share a particular meal with you that we made last week, that was a lovely use of lots of greens:  sauté finely chopped ginger and garlic (about a tablespoon of each), onion (a half cup or so) in a pan till soft. Scoot the sautéed veggies aside and settle 2 (or how ever many people you are serving) pieces of fish into the pan (we used salmon, but many options would work, as would chicken breasts). Cook several minutes on each side, till done through. While it’s cooking, chop a large pile of greens—we used one bunch of Han Tsai Tai (the purple-stemmed greens bunch you had last week), one Tokyo Bekana head, and a bag of spicy mix. When the fish or meat is cooked through safely, throw the huge pile of greens in on top, add about 1/4-1/2 cup of broth, and a splash of rice vinegar and soy sauce, place a lid on top of the pan, and cook just till greens are brighter green and wilted.  To serve, dish up a bowl of hot rice, layer the greens, then the fish, topped with some broth and garlic/ ginger/ onions from the pan. Add salt, soy sauce, hot sauce, etc.. to taste.  Grate some radishes on top, for crunch, or a spoonful of the pickled radish recipes from a few weeks ago. 

Other quick ideas: 

We really do eat some kind of broth-and-noodle based soup (based more or less on this recipe) heavy on veggies and greens, every week. Um, several times a week.  Sometimes for breakfast. 

Scrambled eggs with spinach can be a meal any time of the day. 

Tokyo Bekana works great as a crunchy addition to tacos of burritos. 

Curried squash soup, like the broth and noodle soups, is in regular rotation here. Also try, with leftover squash or pie pumpkin, mixing a cup of pureed squash into pancakes, with a sprinkle of cinnamon or pie spices.  

Make a warm potato salad by boiling cubed potatoes (skins on for both varieties you have this week) in salted water till tender to the fork. Drain, and toss with olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt pepper, fresh or dried herbs of your choice, and maybe a little finely diced onion. Let sit 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally, and serve just slightly warm, then refrigerate any leftovers.

Winter Membership, Week 4

Farm members, welcome to the mid-point of your winter membership! This week’s message, original veggie art (below), and member hosting time is brought to you by Sabrina, SweetRoot’s first year-round farmhand and critical member of the team. She came to us late this summer with lots of farm experience, excellent cooking and farm eating skills, and a sweet-crazy little dog to keep Malaya on her toes. We’ve been so grateful to have her as part of the team, and the winter membership truly wouldn’t be possible without her. This week we asked her to introduce herself to you all as well as introduce you to the veggies, and she’ll be running the member pickup this Tuesday, so you’ll get a chance to visit in person. Happy eating! -M

Chances are, in your last few months of farm store visits, you have seen a new, very wiggly black and white pup with bat ears. She’s probably barked at you (she loves to bark at friendly shoppers), or stared at you while gnawing on a bone (she has no manners at all, we’ve tried). Her name is Willa and she came with me (Sabrina) to the farm from a small western Washington vineyard by way of New York, as any young semi-nomadic farmer is wont to do in a year like this. 

True to any proper Farm Dog, Willa is my right-hand-gal and Inspector General of any and all produce I bring home- samples and seconds of this week’s bag are no exception! While the soft mustard greens tend to bore her, Napa cabbages are always a blast to tear up and eat (It’s exactly 5:38pm, Monday and she just jumped up to grab a huge chunk for a snack off the counter!), and carrots are consistently the best, but that won’t stop her from begging for any bites of stir-fried greens or spoonfuls of squash.

Per usual, bags will be available for pick up after 3 tomorrow (Tuesday) at the farmstand. In the greens bag you’ll find spicy salad mix- my go to for adding to the daily lunch ramen with a soft boiled egg or fried tempeh on top- and a bag of stir fried green mix, as well as a head of Napa cabbage (I’m already dreaming about a stir fry with some carrots on top of jasmine rice). Roots will bring the usual carrots, cylindra beets, and radishes, as well as German Butterball potatoes. 

Allow me a moment to wax poetic about these spuds for the uninitiated. 

Some backstory: I’ve spent the last few years working on a farm that specializes in potatoes; we grew almost two dozen varieties and for market you had to be well-versed in all of them to help customers suffering from Tater Choice Overload. German Butterballs are one of my top three varieties, and it was hard-won. They are a very versatile potato, with delectable golden flesh, and need little more than butter and salt to coax out stunning, fluffy, luscious insides. I love these guys. They are especially well suited for light frying, and I’m not going to tell you how many pounds of them I’ve eaten simply thinly sliced and lightly fried in butter with salt, pepper and paprika. I’m not ashamed of it, but not so proud as to share. Ahem. 

Continuing on, lastly there will be a spaghetti squash and small packet of Italian-inspired herbs which seem like a winning combination to me- add a jar of tomato or alfredo sauce, saute up some onion or ground beef with the herbs and BAM, low-carb GF pasta. There is an important note here though; if you’ve never made the mistake of eating a big bowl of spaghetti squash and expecting that to be as satisfying as a bowl of actual pasta, be sure to add some kind of protein or other *really filling* meal aspect to your dish or you will end up hungry sooner than later. 

It’s inevitable, sincerely someone who somehow still makes this mistake every. single time. 

This week’s bag is full of deliciousness and Willa and I are both so happy to be part of the team growing it all for you all (even if Willa’s contribution is mostly moral support and gross kisses). I’ll be around the farmstand hosting tomorrow from 3 to 6, although the bags will be available through Wednesday if you can’t make it here in those three hours. And as always- if you can’t make it at all this week just give us a heads up so we can donate the bags to a family who could use it. 

Thanks from all of us, and remember what I said about the squash!

Your Farmers, Sabrina, Noah, and Mary

(and their pups, Malaya and Willa)

Week 3 of your Winter Farm

Baked beans in a squash bowl, side of spinach salad. Perfect winter meal.

Welcome to Week 3, Winter Members!

This week’s shares come to you after/ in the midst of the grand finale of the chicken barn. Last night Noah couldn’t stop saying “I can’t believe it’s done….” He and Sabrina had wrapped up the final carpentry and roost-bar details by late afternoon, and we pulled the barn into position after dark. There was of course a pit-stop next to the barn the whole flock of chicks have been living in, where we bucket-brigaded 120 birds from that rather crowded barn, splitting the flock nicely between the two spaces. If we seem a little dazed or tired, it's just the tail end of that barn marathon; Noah estimates these builds are around 300 person-hours to complete, and when each of those person-hours competes with some other critical farm tasks, it can take a while to get through it all.

But chickens and barns aren’t the only big news…you are here for the winter veggies, after all!  In that department, we’re excited to share several new types of greens, introduce the storage cabbage into the mix, and generally set you up for another good veggie-filled week. 

Meal ideas: We won’t assume you made turkey for Thanksgiving, but if you did especially if you made the usual size with a fraction of your normal crowd, many of these meals can absorb turkey leftovers in various forms.  We’ve been on a kick of beans and lentils lately, and highly recommend serving your favorite chili, baked beans, or a curried lentil soup using any variety of winter squash as your edible bowl. With the dried chilies included in your share (directions for those detailed below), we also recommend making fajitas or (sauté strips of cabbage, carrot, onion, etc, till just tender and toss with a generous spoonful of chili powder for the last minute of cooking. Serve warm in tortillas with beans, reheated leftover turkey, fresh greens, and/ or salsa).  Or tacos, with grated cabbage and other greens filling on top of beans, leftover turkey or other meat, maybe pickled radishes as a garnichs. You could cook up a big pot of beans and make chili, using any leftover squash as part of the sauce base (blends well with tomato based chilies, or can totally replace the tomatoes). We used tatsoi last night on a Thai-inspired pizza, by tossing chopped leftover turkey in our peanut sauce with a little extra hot sauce added, spread that over pizza crusts and topped with chopped greens—bake till everything is hot and greens get slightly crisp. 

Whatever you eat this week, thank you for being a part of the winter eating adventure! We are finished up the harvest and packing today to get your shares ready by 3:00 pm (please remember they may not be ready before then), and we'll host the pickup time from 3:00-6:00. If that window doesn’t work, the shares will be in the farmstore all of Wednesday as well.  If you know you aren’t going to make it to pick up this week, please just send us a message so we can donate your share to a family that can use it.  

Many thanks, 

Mary, Noah, and Sabrina 

What you’ll find in this week’s share: 

In the greens bag: ~Spinach. If you are a smaller household and in any way feeling overwhelmed by the greens volume, remember that you can chop and freeze this spinach in ziplock bags to add to scrambled eggs, pasta sauces, whatever else you use it in, for later in the winter when your membership is done.  Or really any dish that cooks spinach makes it just sort of melt away, so consider finding a recipe for saag paneer, spanakopita, or just layering it on thick in a lasagna. ~A bag of the winter salad mix (non-spicy).~~A large fluffy head of Tokyo Bekana, a Chinese leaf cabbage. One farmer we follow in Vermont describes this green as “like boc choi and romaine lettuce had a love child.” We use it in place of big leafy lettuces for salads and sandwich greens, or as cooked, a delicate cousin to boc choi—just reduce your stir-fry cooking time a little bit. ~Tatsoi, another member the same family as boc choi, but with some behaviors in common with spinach.  This dark-green little rosette works great as a stir-fry just as you would use boc choi, or as a fresh tasty salad green, a topping on hot soups, etc..

In the heavier things bag, you’ll find: 

Carrots, still the easiest winter farm snack, and versatile in any cooked dish. This week, consider slicing them into long narrow sticks 1/4 inch wide, for fajitas. Or if you’re getting a pileup in your produce drawer, consider the roasted carrot soup recipe we shared this fall (even ones that are getting a little rubbery will work in that). 

Radishes: if you are lukewarm on radishes as a raw snack or salad ingredient (confession: I love growing radishes more than eating them, so I fall in this category), you might have a few weeks’ worth in that produce drawer.  If so, try one of these options: cook them—I know it seems weird, but try just slicing them up and adding them to your stir fry, or roasting them along with chunks of other roots in a root roast. It mellows and sweetens them and frankly makes them disappear. Or, especially if you are going to take our advice and consider some tacos, fajitas, etc., in your menu this week, try turning them into a zesty condiment with this spicy pickled radish recipe:  https://cookieandkate.com/spicy-quick-pickled-radishes/  . Or, for topping the stir-fries, etc., our rice vinegar radish relish would work too (just grate them, include an optional sprinkle of red pepper flakes and/ or garlic and add enough seasoned rice vinegar to the bowl or jar to cover them, and refrigerate for a few hours or days). 

Cabbage: We are excited this year to have some winter storage cabbage tucked away for these cold months. The heads are denser than the summer cabbages you may have tried from market, and a bit firmer. But they’ll still work great grated up for salads and cole slaws, or sautéed in a little butter, salt and pepper as a simple side dish. We encourage them sliced into ribbons as a fajita component, or grated finely as a taco filling. They add an additional crunch to stir-fries or general veggie sautés. Or if your produce drawer in the fridge is really over-full, take the cabbage head straight to a fermentation project, and make a jar or two of sauerkraut. 

Delicata Squash: this is one of our favorite, sweetest winter squashes, and one of the more versatile. Simplest cooking method it so slice in half long-ways, scoop out the seeds and bake face-down at 350-ish till soft (ontly takes 20-30 minutes with these smaller squashes, compared to larger types).  Since their skin in thinner than most squashes, you can also keep it on, slice those halves into “smiles,” toss them in olive oil and salt, and bake them at 450 into a squashy version of oven fries.

Onion: this may be the last week that includes an onion, as our yields were below what we’d hoped. We wish we had enough to supply the membership several a week all the way through, and hopefully next year we will. 

Dried chilies:  these are Chimayo and/ or Pueblo chilies, so they are on the milder end of our hot peppers, a lot mellower than the Thai chilies you got the first week. You can break them open and toss whole into a pot of simmering beans, or grind them a blender or coffee grinder to make chili flakes. Or, for a home-made chili powder, take the chilies (break off the stems), 2 teaspoons of whole cumin, 1 tsp of whole coriander if you have it, 1/2 tsp black pepper or peppercorns, and 2 tsp of salt—blend it all in a coffee/ spice grinder, food processor or blender till you have a powder, as use as you would your favorite chili powder. 

Optional addition: chose either one bag of potatoes (any variety) or another winter squash or pie pumpkin, to complete your share this week. Since we have plenty of both potatoes and squash right now, we thought we’d give you the choice of which sounds best. 

Winter Farm Membership, Week 2

Welcome to your second winter-farm week, members. We hope you enjoyed your first week of veggies, and are ready for more.

As I sit down to write this well after dark on Monday, I can hear Noah running a planer, a sander, table saw and occasionally the chop saw as he pushes towards the finishing steps of this final chicken barn. If you remember last week’s pick-up, the barn was barely framed up, so there has been a lot of progress, but there’s still a ways to go. The chicks are getting impatient to be split between the two barns, as they are growing larger every week. It is also embarrassing to admit, as I was telling Sabrina as we finished packing members’ root bags this evening, that this is, if you count every awkward coop, the tenth chicken housing we have built in our time together. That’s not embarrassing, I guess, just the fact that for ten out of ten generations of chickens, we have uniformly, every time, had time pressure from the poultry that were to be housed in said building—either arriving in the mail, outgrowing their brooders, or for some reason needing a home ASAP. You could call it a tradition or a bad habit, I’m not sure which. Honestly, we’re trying to reform. On the whole, chickens over the years have gotten vastly easier, and we’re working on new, better traditions.

This week’s theme might be the funny combination of embracing traditions and forging new pathways. We are, like many, forgoing many of our normal Thanksgiving traditions and travel in order to keep everyone as safe as possible this year. We’ll miss seeing family, telling stories, playing games, and being forced to take some time away from working. But it’s been a good opportunity to ask what traditions we adapt or re-create in different form, here in our tiny farm household (farmhold?) of three. We’re planning minimal farm work (just the chicken feeding, egg collections, and covering/ uncovering of crops in the tunnels), a walk in the cold morning with the dogs, and a lot of the day spent preparing and enjoying foods the farm has grown. We’ll try to talk to family who are distant, and maybe I’ll recruit Sabrina and Noah to a round of my family’s long-time favorite game, Banangrams. We haven’t solidified the menu, but my reaction to not being with family seems to be to double down on making all the favorite foods. There will be pickled beets, and there is a good chance the pie to person ratio will be 1:1. We’ve tried to build this weeks membership share in a way that lets you create a plethora of delicious veggie dishes to complement whatever type of feast you decide on.

As Noah and I are notoriously bad at celebrating holidays, it’s a big responsibility to be left to our own devices for Thanksgiving. As we continue in our winter-farm membership theme of gratitude and challenge, we challenge you this week to create a new twist on some your traditions. Maybe you’re adapting them to current circumstances (my niece and sister worked out the best way to play Bananagrams by Zoom, if anyone needs tips), maybe you are preparing a wholly different type of meal but keeping the giving of thanks; maybe you are bringing difficult topics of history and justice to the table; maybe you are calling up that great-aunt to get the recipe for her special dish, and to just connect; maybe you are releasing yourself from all expectations and eating your spinach and carrots straight out of the bag while absorbed in a new book. Whatever it is, we’d love to hear about it, and we hope that the food from the farm can be a part of it all. We’ll be here working on our habits and traditions, too.

Keep reading to learn what’s in this week’s share, get lots of recipe ideas, and start your meal planning!

With gratitude and winter spinach,

Your winter farmers: Mary, Noah, and Sabrina

What’s in the share this week:

Yukon Gold potatoes. We saved these specifically for you for this week, to have the best mashing variety in case of traditional Thanksgiving feasts. They are also a great one for soups (try a potato-kale soup with sausage, or a creamy potato soup made by blending leftover mashed potatoes with a good broth, some cream or yogurt, some sautéed garlic and onions, your favorite cheese and lots of black pepper).

Salad Turnips: the bag of little white round roots are not radishes this week, but the much milder cousin, salad turnips. We like to just snack on these raw, so consider slicing or quartering them and serving them alongside carrot sticks with your favorite dip. Or slice or grate them onto salads. They also stir-fry and roast nicely, so the options are endless!

Carrots: you may get some purple and red carrots in your mix this week. We upped it to 2 whole pounds this time because the carrots are so versatile for eating raw in many forms, or for roasting with other roots, throwing into vegetable soups, or as a special side dish, honey glazed carrots (recipe courtesy of partners at The O’Hara Commons….you can substitute non-flavored honeys too, of course).

Cylindra beets: First, yes, they are supposed to be shaped like that. This variety of beet grows long and narrow, instead of round, which does make them look funny but is actually a beautiful asset when cutting them up, as you get uniformly sized slices. Try them simply steamed, roasted with butter, or for a special bright sweet-tart side, try the refrigerator pickle recipe below, adapted from the big-batch canning that we do when we have time. You’ll have a hiatus from beets next week as we make room for other items, so you can also save these up for next week if you’d like. The quantity in this week’s share should make a batch of the beet pickle recipe below.

Spinach: a full half-pound bag, so you have plenty for both salads and for cooking. Spinach is our favorite green for making hearty full-meal salads and we highly recommend saving some for late in the week, for leftover Thanksgiving salad: top it with roasted turkey, dried cranberries, toasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds, even leftover stuffing. Spinach is one of the greens that is really much happier in November than in July, so take a moment to notice the sweetness, the bright green, the cushy textures of this in-season winter spinach.

Kale bunch: for kale-potato soup, or massaged kale salads for the rest of your week, or sautéed with scrambled eggs. Kale, like spinach, gets sweeter with the frosts, so we think it’s especially good in the winter.

Spicy salad mix, aka Asian greens mix: If you like arugula, mustard greens, and salads with a little zip, try the bagged greens mix for this week straight up in a raw salad (you may need to chop or tear the leaves, as some are a little large). If you aren’t a fan of the heat, use the spinach for your raw green, and give this mix a light steam, sauté, or chop it into soup. Cooking takes the mustard-spice out of the greens, leaving you with a flavorful and much milder-tasting green. For something in between, make a pizza with peanut sauce instead of red sauce, diced leftover turkey or chicken, and chopped Asian greens tossed in sesame oil. Bake till crust is to your liking and greens are slightly crispy.

Pie Pumpkin: if yours is round and looks like it has a fancy little mesh net over it, you got a Winter Luxury pie pumpkin. If yours looks like we slipped you a vastly overgrown zucchini, you got a New England Long Pie pumpkin. Don’t worry, they really are both pumpkins, and both are delicious heirloom varieties. For either one, bake them by cutting in half, scooping out the seeds, and baking at 350-400 till the flesh is soft. Scoop it out and blend it, then use in your favorite pumpkin pie recipe. Or, for a completely different direction, either can work great in this recipe for pumpkin and chickpea soup.

Herb Packet: we didn’t quite make it to Scarborough with this one, but we came close. This week’s herbs include sage, rosemary, and thyme, dried on the farm this fall. We recommend using them all together as a blend: rub the sprigs between your fingers to separate the leaves from the larger stems, and crush into smaller pieces. Combine them all with softened butter and rub on your turkey if you’re doing that (or put them into the stuffing), or sprinkle them on some roasted veggies. Or, to bring a hint of traditional Thanksgiving spices to your salads all week, try them in this salad dressing recipe:

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon mustard

1/8 tsp salt, or to taste

1/8 tsp pepper or to taste

1-2 teaspoons SRF herb blend (sage, rosemary, thyme, and by all means add parsley if you have it)

1 Tbsp chopped onion

1 small clove chopped garlic (optional, omit if not a raw garlic fan)

1 Tbsp cranberry sauce (also optional)

1 Tbsp honey or maple syrup (adjust to taste)

blend it all together with an immersion blender. With dried herbs, try to make at least an hour in advance to let the flavors blend.

Pickled Beets, Adapted from the Ball Blue Book Guide to Home Canning and Freezing

The original recipe was for much larger quantities for canning, but we’ve used this pared-down version to make small batches for throwing in the fridge, where they’ll keep longer than you’re likely to be able to resist eating them. This is a favorite holiday side dish, and one that can convince even the beet skeptics to try them.

1 1/2 to 2 lbs beets, cooked, peeled, and cut into bite-sized pieces (directions below)
1/2- 3/4 cups sugar (or equivalent in your favorite sweetener)
1 stick cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon whole allspice
3/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup vinegar
1/2 cups water

To cook beets: wash and drain beets, leaving the root tips on and a little bit of stem on top (if purchased in bunches). Cover with boiling water and cook until tender. When tender, drain off the water, run beets under cool water till cool enough to handle, then slip the skins off, and trim/ chop into pieces. Combine all ingredients except the beets, simmer 15 minutes. Add the cooked beets, and simmer another 5-10 minutes. Allow to cool, then jar up and store in refrigerator overnight or for several days before serving, to let flavors permeate the beets.

Final P.S.:

A note on packaging: one benefit we are realizing of packing these winter shares, vs trying to sell each item individually through the farmstore, is that ability to pack items together, to dose out beets or carrots in any increment, and to save a few rounds of plastic bagging. (we estimate that each week the shares are eliminating 100-150 small plastic bags from our flow). Of course, that does mean that your beets and carrots have been co-mingling, and we apologize if that is disturbing to anyone in your household. We should also mention, for your safety, any bags that are re-used have been stored for many weeks (most for months, actually) to ensure that they could not be carrying viable virus. If you want to return bags for re-use, please place them by the egg-carton return. The green bags can be composted, at home, or returned to the farm to compost.

Unusual Gratitudes.

Hello, Farm Friends.

Earlier this fall, trying to gauge how much time we had to finish up a harvest, I asked Joshua, a growers co-op driver, when he was usually at Lifeline Creamery these days. ). He texted: “Usually no longer exists.” Boy, if that doesn’t sum up this season pretty well. In a normal year, the week of Thanksgiving on the farm is a wild mix of fun and frantic: we’d be planning how to draw the maximum people to the farmstore for a festive Tuesday hosted day, relishing the cozy crowdedness of members and farm supporters picking out food for their feast-tables, and at the same time working through a stupidly ambitious list of projects on the farm in order to be able to travel west to spend some time with family for possibly our favorite holiday. I believe one year we even arranged for our entire family’s Thanksgiving to be on Friday or Saturday so we could finish our garlic planting. This year, if we were to travel, there would be a terrifying pressure to finish the last best mobile chicken barn—if you’ve been to the farm at all this week you’ve seen it’s making great progress, but still isn’t quite move-in ready.

Like many, though, we are showing our care for our loved ones this year by keeping a distance—we’ll be staying right exactly here at the farm for Thanksgiving this year, with just us, and connecting as best we can remotely with the folks we’ll miss. But the disappearance of “usually” doesn’t mean we have any shortage of things to be grateful for. We’ll be feasting well, if small, and we’ll take some extra time for gratitude. Here’s some of our list, this year, and we encourage you to make your own, shared or private, in this season of gratitude.

We are grateful for: ~ this work we have, to provide real food for our neighbors and friends ~ the trust farm members place in us to feed them for all the weeks of their membership ~ our continued health and ability to work ~ the crew that has joined us this year and helped us grow both food and ourselves ~ specifically, this week we both said farewell to and celebrated Alexis, her full six months of working with us through such a wild season ~ the creativity of our crew, from Sabrina’s art to Alexis’s farm poetry ~ greens to harvest now, greens for later even in the winter ~ all of carrots stored in walk-in coolers that were harvested on time this year ~ the ability to rent walk-in cooler space as we earn and build space for storage on the farm ~ the relentless passion for our farm eggs ~ the fact that in January egg numbers will go up again ~ a safe warm home ~ the ability to see at least some family, safely, this summer ~ all of the gifts that arrive as surprises on the farm: cookies, dog treats, tools, the little red van, ready-to-eat meals, firewood, clothes and gear that find someone on the crew to fit, maple syrup, honey, beers in the cooler, huckleberries, venison, more cookies, a locally grown turkey, packages of nuts and bolts outside the shop, our favorite kind of peanut butter ~ the gift of so many weeks of her summer from niece Kayla, our small farm hero, when we were short on crew ~ a camper that we borrowed but has been donated to the farm ~ the tidal wave of flowers that hit the farm this year ~ a visit from singer/song writer and first ever crew member Margo Cilker ~ bunks of reclaimed lumber from Home Resource ~ amazing cover crop and compost production ~ an endless supply of masks from farm members and gallons of sanitizer from CFAC. The list could go on. We hope you, too, can take some time to find what you are grateful for.

The humble but grand thanksgiving feast. A pumpkin, SRF salad, carrots, bunch greens, radishes, beets and potatoes.

And we hope that you can turn a stay-at-home Thanksgiving into one that is delicious, festive, and celebratory. To help you and to help us get some good farm food out to you all in a streamlined way, we are offering a Thanksgiving special pre-packed bag that you can pick up all in one go; we can even run it out to your car for a no-contact pickup if needed. We packed some bags for the farmstore this weekend for those of you who like to get ahead of the game, which you can just swing by and purchase.

Or you can contact us to order one to pick up on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, for those who want their goodies as close to the holiday as possible. For $25, the giving-thanks bag includes:

2 pounds purple potatoes, 1.5 pounds carrots, 1 pound of beets, a half-pound of radishes, a bag of our winter salad mix, a bunch of kale and medium-large pie pumpkin or winter squash. This won’t supply the 30-person all-the-cousins Thanksgivings we loved, but we think it’s a nice diversity and quantity for a veggie-focused celebratory meal.

And of course the farmstore is also open and well-stocked for whatever assortment of veggies appeals to you. We have the very last round of cauliflower stocked, along with spinach, winter salad mix, spicy salad mix, kale, cabbage, beets, carrots, seven varieties of potatoes, pie pumpkins, winter squash, radishes, salad turnips, boc choi, and a lot more.