Negotiations and Tomato Lovesongs

The negotations of August are endless. We try hard to have realistic, 8 hour days for our crew, and we try to keep them out of the heat as much as possible, but we've had some nine hour days this week as we try to protect crops from the heat with irrigation and shade cloth. Our crew isn't that easy, so we focus on efficiency, cold drinks, good training, and lots of popsicles.

Our harvest list increases with this weather now, literally every week for awhile. All the hot crops we love are coming in: sweet peppers, tangy and sweet frying shisito peppers, a mountain of eggplant (great for grilling), salad mixes, so much that we started bringing it in from the field with our tractor, overflowing buckets of cherry tomatoes, young new potatoes, green beans (even some pole beans), tomitillos, jalapeno peppers, napa cabbage (great for kim chi), and literally a lot of other surprises.

One of these is tomatoes. We seed them in the greenhouse in March and April and each week, they get hours of pruning and trellising. Now many of the heirloom varieties are over seven feet tall. The bush varieties you can see from driving up next to our new greenhouse, are getting more bushy each week and one of the innovations this year was a new trellising technique. Some are supported by a single, 100 foot long stainless steel cable that hangs from the bows of one of our moveable caterpillars. With an abundance of basil, cilantro and other herbs, now is also the time to think about pesto. We will start to have heirloom and roma tomato flats at the farmstore now too. 15-20 pound flats are $45-$55 and farm members, please take your 10% discount! And don’t worry, we’ll start an order system for salsa kits soon.

Tomatoes - by the flat!

For those of you who have been following us for years, you might remember that first photo of us transplanting tomoatoes out into the field -- when we didn't have a reliable tractor or any season exstension structures at all. That year, in year one or two, we planted all of our tomatoes in the field. It was a warm spring and a warm fall, so we got lucky. This is a hot summer and cool spring, but you don't need to worry. They were planted very early this year and they thrived in our new greenhouse. We harvested 200 pounds of tomatoes of yesterday and Sabrina and Tyler are about to go out and make the rounds, and we will literally have more and more every few days. We only plant tomatoes once a year (unlike greens that we plant more than 30 times per year), so each year the tomato crop marks a serious commitment to our farming life. In a way, it’s a livelong to you, and to us.

For farm members, tomatoes are in abundance, so whenever you come to the farm (or see us at market), there will be plenty. And, thanks to some extra farm help this past week, we cleaned a small mountain of garlic, so, garlic is both for sale, and, since the cleaning is so so much work, farm members, please feel free to take 2 heads per week from now on! Also, thanks to doubling down on our flower planting this year, and good management with our garlic, and farm fan Nan's garlic drying warehouse, we have the first braids ready. Garlic braids are a real fun project, and some of them Sabrina has woven with hangers for your kitchen.

We'll see you today at the hosted farm pickup from 3-6 (for greetings and questions) but, everyone (including farm members) are welcome anytime.

Bulk flowers — for drying, weddings, celebrations, or literally anything else — are now available. Just reply to this email (or email us for details — farmers@sweetroot.farm)

A sneak preview of the mountains of edible garlic braids.

The Harvest Tide in the Season of Fever Dreams

It was everything and perfect, and absolutely terrible, all at once. That’s how I remember my last bout with a serious sickness. I was sneaking past logging tycoons on the island of Malaysian Borneo with a band of forest resisters, documenting illegal forest practices and then, in the evenings, or right at sunset, we’d get back to our camp by following the trails that mattered, walking and floating down and up rivers, catching fish along the way and snacking on fruits. And then, a day or two later, lumbering out of the forest on multi-hour river boats that droned so loudly you wish you had remembered ear plugs I remember the first wave of dengue fever hitting me. Fortunately, I had several friends that day that helped get me out of the forest, through airports, and to some medical care in Kuala Lumpur. I remember waking in fever dreams, swimming through the forest rivers, and wondering about the fate of the communities I used to work with. Would logging overtake the forest? Would semi-nomadic people become food secure? I spent years thinking about this question, and the journey took me to many continents and ultimately, despite all my optimism, the evidence didn’t look good.

I haven’t thought of that until just a few days ago, when it was time to harvest our garlic. A 3/4” thick slab of steel we farmers call an undercutter bar, with the help of a farmer’s weight on the back dives below dry rocky soil that we’ve been trying to get just right, just for years. I’ve been tuning up our tractor, because we’ve been tight on maintenance time all season, in the previous days. New air filters, battery, a couple of gallons of oil, one entire tube of grease, and a freshly cleaned out radiator were enough to get us by before the starter gets changed next week. The Kubota roars, loader than a small plane, and off Mary and I go, with that steel plunging, and the earth rippling behind us. With everything loosened, it’s an easy pull and it looks like a decent crop: 7 bins that we truck over to our farm member’s garage. We keep the crew working until they are exhausted at around 10:30 pm (we brought them back to work after a full day, at 6pm, to finish this push) and then it’s just us, debating about what to do with the last garlic: fretting that it’ll heat up in the bins overnight, breathing a sigh of relief, almost crying because two years ago, when the weed load was too high and the garlic couldn’t undercut, we missed all kinds of timing and the garlic, long after we had moved in many times, and many people had spent dozens and dozens of hours cleaning and tending to it, well, some of it rotted. That won’t happen this year; nor did it happen last year. Everything and nothing, all at once.

Looking at what we call our garlic warehouse, that honestly, if we hadn’t happened upon it by complete luck, we’d be in real real trouble, it’s amazing how many people it can feed. It’s enough pesto for a literal army, especially with this years’ back to back basil; Sabrina cutting loads and loads, just a seas of basil and a little knife flashing in the sun with a tint of purple hair in the green, moving, river.

But then I woke up, I muddled through tractor work and harvests on Friday, prepping that harvested garlic ground for cover crop (there’s just enough time to tarp and get in a fall cover crop), but not more than a week or two to spare, and then I kind of started collapsing when I was picking peas on Friday night. At some point, Mary trooper-ed past me; with bins of eggplant or peppers strapped to her. It was all terrible, all at once. I stopped, brought in my harvest, and went to bed. While I slept, she finished the harvests, and made 40 bouquets, before falling into bed beside me. My first COVID test was negative, and I drove the truck to market Saturday, but that was all I could manage, before I and went home and slept. By Saturday evening, I had tested positive and we knew that this would be a challenging week.

I spent the rest of the day sleeping, in a dreamy fever harvest river. I found myself worrying about the mountains of floating cucumbers, peas, zucchini that simply might not be picked — and if they aren’t — the way the plants can shut down, not tended to properly, relieved of their fruits, they often cannot make more. I’m not sure if our crew, the majority that don’t have any seasoned farming experience, understands this.

Our bounty is impressive, and it’s perhaps one reason we’ve been completely over-run at our used-to-be-small farmer’s market. We bring the market trailer loaded, the mini-van full of flowers, zucchini and cucumbers (we had to air up the tires recently to make sure they could support the load), we purchased more booth space from the market coop, but we were never prepared for the intensity and we wonder just how many more staff we’d have to add to make it seem manageable or sane.

We tell ourselves that you’ve got our back, we know you do. We tell ourselves that we will need to evolve, grow, and change. We spent long evenings talking about how to make the farm better, how to wonder if we could afford to double our crew size, and if we want that, and if you’d want that, and if they would want that. And we worry, in some kind of teary-fever dream, that we’ve just lost that magic, as we strive to be a real business.

But, we can still do some things. We still have that packshed to build — and that will solve a lot of our issues. We are afraid about how we will find the time to do that but we can build things, grow things, fix things, create things, bubbling ourselves out of fever dreams, better than we have imagined.

I’ll see you on the other side of Covid, but our crew is pulling in extra hours this week to bring in the harvest in full force. We’ll be stuffing the farmstore full tomorrow for the hosted hours, and member pickup, but will not be hosting in person, to minimize our risk of passing this to any of you. Though Mary has continued to test clear, if you see her she’ll be masked in case she is the next farmer to go down. We’ll be leaning on our crew more than ever this week, and it would mean everything to me if you come out to the field tomorrow to thank them tomorrow, since Mary and I are still learning how.

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At the farm today, we will have a ton. Our crew is harvesting all morning, so for best results, do not come until about noon. We will have mountains of peas, onions, salad greens, basil, cucumbers, zucchini, salad turnips, about 40 other crops, and a real solid amount of tomatoes along with a decent amount of eggplant and even some peppers. We aren’t doing our regular Tuesday hosting today with Noah down from covid (today he’s symptom free), but someone from the farm crew will be stocking our farmstore constantly today. The field looks really great, so feel free to wander.

Noah motors down a bed of salad greens, adjacent to the garlic harvest, to stack one of 7 bins of garlic on to the farm trailer to head to the garlic curing warehouse.

"I'm running out of room for...everything..." It's a late June market, one farmer low..

Dear Farm Friends,

Welcome to full-on summer.  The official start, the summer solstice and the longest day of the year slid by in a blink this week, one of many long and super-packed days.  After the long slow spring, it’s almost as if summer surprised us by arriving after all—several times this week someone in the farmstore comments in amazement “wow, there is so much in here!” and then we all remember that it is after all late June and agree that it’s about time.

The market this week is going to be a little crazy.  Noah will be there, with the largest trailer-load of produce yet this year: everything from all the baby greens, to big heads and bunches of greens, cabbages, lettuces, carrots, beets, radishes, to cucumbers, celery, and *strawberries* which I know from photo evidence that he and Sabrina were still harvesting at 10 pm last night—talk about taking advantage of the full long day of sunlight.

I managed to put together bucket-loads of flower bunches for market, but will not be there in person today, as I’m over 600 miles away in Oregon attending the first gathering of extended family since we lost my mom in late 2020, and am so grateful for the team back at the farm keeping the crazy SRF ship on track without me for a few days.  It’s the first time one of us has left on a market-season weekend since my brother’s wedding 6 years ago, and there is a lot more going on at the farm now than there was then! I spoke to Noah just before posting this email, calling to make sure he was Ok setting up for market and all he had time to say was “I’m barely going to be ready….I’m running out of room for…everything! This is the craziest things I’ve ever done.” I can’t quite agree that a late June market solo tops the three flocks of laying hens (sometime soon we have to tell you all the story of how we ended up with a third flock a few weeks ago, the heritage breeds that are bringing you the new fun colors of egg shells), the innovative chicken barns on wheels, or many of the the other truly wild adventures in Noah’s arsenal, but it is quite a feat.

Please come to market today, bring your big baskets to fill and your patience, as Noah and Adrienne will also be training a new market helper in the thick of all this. (Also, someone please check that Noah ate something other than coffee; I’ll pay back any breakfast burrito deliveries with flowers and farm goods over the season.)

For you, farm supporters, the meal possibilities are endless with this summer varieties coming in—stir fries, veggie fajitas, salads with all the toppings. One of our staples last week were quinoa bowls combined with all manner of veggies on top: steamed beets, carrots, broccoli, and greens, tossed withs one dressing and smoked salmon was a fave . The radicchio love continues, and we heartily agree with all of you who have been combining those lightly-bitter greens with some local bacon or prosciutto and warm mustard dressings! It’s time to savor the first zucchini and summer squash, simply grilled or sautéed with a little salt. As the first of lots of things come in, we encourage you to keep the prep simple, just slice those cucumbers, and eat slowly, savoring the smell, the taste, of true summer. Our favorite recipe for the strawberries: pick up berry with your hand, put it in your mouth, bite. Really, local food is pretty simple.

We still have spaces in our weekly flower subscription program which will start this week on Tuesday. Subscription bouquets are about double the size of market bunches, picked up in a mason jar ready to go in your home, and feature all the best blooms of the week from the farm.  You can sign up here to save your space!

Thanks for all of your support from near and far,

Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm

p.s. Last week we were spared any hail damage, but friends at Fern Co/ The Sour Doe Cafe, and Bleeding Heart Flower Farm, as well as several other Stevi farms and many home gardens, suffered heavily. We know from our own devastating hail smash in 2019, how it can feel like the end of the world. We also know that we recovered, our farm fought its way back out of that incredible amount of crop loss with new skills and strategies (hello, winter greens), and we trust they will too, in part because of the incredible community of local eaters. Please continue to support all of your local producers both financially and with kindness and appreciation for all the heart and soul they put into the work.

Love Letter to Raddiccio

Dear Farm Friends,

Don’t let any rain in the forecast dissuade you this weekend….we have a full and beautiful harvest coming with us to Bitterroot Day tomorrow, and we’ll be there no matter the weather. We have all the baby greens, big bunches of kale and chard, the first few little heads of cabbage and Napa cabbage, lettuce heads, carrots, beets, radishes, scallions, herbs (including the first basil, cilantro, and a flavorful bunching celery we are just loving), and one really fun new crop for us: radicchio.

The story on this elegant “bitter green” at our farm is that Sabrina, who developed as a farmer in western Washington, came to love it there, as many in the region do. Seattle has a chicory festival, and we know several farms who have annual tasting/ research trips to Italy to learn about new raddicchios! They seem to be one of those crops that inspire a deep devotion, perhaps bordering on obsession. We may be getting infected a little bit ourselves.

We had had radicchio in the crop plan a time or two, but never really succeeded. We totally messed up the timing one fall and they never got big enough to harvest. Other times we missed the seeding date and had to cut them out of the plan. But when the three of us sat down in winter to discuss growing plans and we each took a turn thinking of the top few things we wanted to not miss out on this season—the things we had to make sure to make time and space for, no matter what else happened—for Sabrina, one was raddicchio. We are pretty excited to have made it happen as a team, and will be bringing the first batch, in the form of some beautiful frilly heads of frisée and some bunches of large leafy Italian-dandelion types, to market this week.

The rest of this week’s newsletter is really all Sabrina’s work, a detailed and meal-idea-rich love letter to these greens! Take it to heart, this is a farmer who knows what she’s talking about, and that pasta dish is truly heavenly.

And if for whatever reason you don’t make it to market, plenty of veggie goodness will be in the farmstore all week.

Originally bred in 1400’s northern Italy, radicchios (a loose term also covering chicory, endive, and frisee) have  been used not only as a delicious addition to a wide array of dishes, but has also touted health benefits ranging from digestion aid, liver support, and even according to Pliny the Elder, insomnia. They are lightly bitter greens, growing in a diverse range of styles, including bunching dandelion types; big, full heads of electric green frisee; and the classic burgundy softball most often seen in grocery stores.

A relatively new flavor to most Americans, these bitter greens (BUT not too bitter, we should note, don’t let that word scare you!) are an excellent addition to your favorite dishes and salad. They’re sturdy, but not tough, meaning they traverse well between raw salads where they add punch and loft, to cooked pasta and rice dishes where they balance out heavier fatty or umami flavors. 

One of our favorite farm crew trialed recipes is for a hearty pasta and bean dish that was originally based on pasta i ceci- but is now far removed to no detriment. A forgiving dish we’ve used many types of pasta including gluten free ones, different beans, or even mixed in tomato sauce instead of alfredo (because sometimes your farmers forget to go grocery shopping and just have to make due). 

The basic formula is:

• One pound cooked pasta of your choice

• 2 to 3 cups of cooked beans (this is a great way to use up leftovers!) Pinto or great northern are our favorites

• Jar of alfredo sauce (or your personal favorite from scratch creamy sauce method)

• Finely chopped radicchio or chicory to taste

• Seasonal additions (we love sliced peppers, dried farm chili flakes, caramelized onions, grilled and chopped garlic scapes, get creative! Clean out your veggie drawer!)

• Extra spices (We’ve found store bought sauce never has enough black pepper or garlic. Fresh basil or sage would not be amiss)

Once the pasta is cooked and drained we throw it all in a big pot and hope we added enough sauce to coat everything, mixing on low heat until the sauce is incorporated, the greens have just begun the soften, and the beans are heated enough.

If you’re a little intimidated by the idea of a bitter green, chop up a bunch of the dandelion type and mix in a bowl of regular salad. The flavor will happily hold its own against intense toppings, so embrace the bitter with a side of crisp bacon pieces, cranberries, gorgonzola and your favorite balsamic vinaigrette. 

Cooked slowly on medium heat with just some butter, salt and pepper, the greens also make a memorable and delicious addition to loaded breakfast bagels- think gooey sunny-side-up eggs, slices of avocado, a hearty slab of cheddar, and perfectly crisp bacon or slices of thick ham.  

This week we have the beginnings of a frisee flood. This lightly blanched, frilly head chicory is great cooked with mushrooms (perhaps with a dijon honey dressing?), tossed with warm roasted potatoes and fresh herbs, or as the classic Salade Lyonnaise- with fresh frisee, chunks of bacon, and a poached egg on top; bonus points if you emulsify the vinaigrette with leftover, still warm bacon drippings. 

Theory, practice, and pesto.

Fresh off a weeding, North Garden Blocks 1-3 are looking good.

In a barn-office cleanup last week, Noah pulled a battered legal pad from the stacks. The top page was covered in cryptic notes: letters, numbers, columns, boxes with “seed” “growth” “harvest” “tarp,” arrows and X’d out attempts at making it all align. “What….is this?” he asked, laughing only harder when he saw the answer to the question, the top of the page clearly titled “Cilantro Theory.”

You might not think cilantro needs a unifying theory, but when we sit down in the winter to figure out how it all fits together, there are questions like “how many beds would we need in order to plant and harvest 30 feet of cilantro for a continuous weekly supply all summer and into the fall?” I confess to geeking out a little bit (ok, a lot) at a challenge like this and I did in fact spend one whole piece of paper diagraming the sections, the weeks of growth needed, the turnover time. The conclusion of the Grand Cilantro Theory was that in theory we could have three adjacent beds, each divided into four 30-foot sections. Each week one section would be seeded, one section would be harvested and tarped to let the worms digest it down for the next round in another 4 weeks, and the other sections would either be growing or being harvested. And, in theory this 12-foot by 120-foot cilantro plantation would keep you all evenly and perfectly supplied with the fragrant herb for the season.

A famous line on our farm is “And how’s that workin’ out for ya?” That was the response Noah got from his old friend Forest Pritchard, author of “Gaining Ground,” when Noah explained, while catching up at a friends’ wedding, that he wanted to scale back on the international consulting work and grow food for us and other people.

So, how’s that Cilantro Theory working out for us? That’s the thing with farming, and maybe with life. There’s theory, and then there’s practice. And then, as we’ll explain in a moment, there is cilantro pesto. Because Cilantro Theory got shaky early on in the game: the first succession, transplanted as soon as we could get into the field got, a bit weedy. OK, let’s be honest: last Friday the chickweed in that area was so thick that despite perfect sized crop, we brought no cilantro to market because the thought of harvesting it through the weed forest was so daunting. We did a big old weeding this week and boom, a lovely batch of cilantro for the farmstore! Three or four days later (today), Flora was harvesting in that section and noticed some stems starting to bolt….the theory was starting to fall apart again! We were nowhere near harvesting out that first section before it got too far gone. She jumped ahead to the next section, which yielded lovely bunches for market, but what to do with the remaining 20 feet of almost-perfect-but-on-the-cusp-of-bolting cilantro? It all needed to go immediately if not sooner. The answer, we decided, was pesto. Whenever the cilantro in our home garden threatened us like that, we cut it all quickly tried to use it up, and nothing absorbs a big batch of herbs quite as well as pesto.

So this week at market and the farmstore, you’ll find BIG bags of pesto-grade cilantro. Not perfect, but perfect for making a batch of super-flavorful pesto, sauce, or whatever you might like to do with cilantro in quantity. There are many recipes out there for cilantro pesto, but we generally wing it, blending the cilantro with some olive oil, lemon juice, salt, whatever nuts we have on hand, and maybe some hot peppers or chili flakes, until we reach a taste we like. Some recipes will tell you to separate the leaves from the stems, but we usually do it stems and all (Do we look like people who have time for de-stemming? If you do have that time, by all means go for it, your pesto will be smoother; if not, don’t sweat it.) It’s a great way this week to make something delicious out of a theory that went a little off the rails. And for the anti-cilantro crowd, don’t worry, there are many many other things coming to market in startling quantities as well.

We know enough from our fast-accumulating years of farming to know that theory and practice can end up looking very different, and not just when it comes to cilantro. We always have to be ready to adjust, to adapt to the reality that emerges on the ground. Theory: we can’t hire any crew with dogs because Malaya is a queen who will extract respect by force and could never tolerate another dog on the farm. Practice: Sabrina, the most qualified applicant when we desperately needed help on the farm, came with sidekick Willa, an exuberant herding-type dog of exactly the sort Malaya loves to hate. Pesto: a handful of dogfights, a few moths to learn each other’s vocabulary (Willa’s herding snaps aren’t real fighting-words, and yes Willa, Malaya will kick your stubby little butt if she sees you touch her stuff, so be stealthy about it at least), and we have a functional if ridiculously mis-matched pack of farm dogs, and a rockstar farmer on the team who in just a few short months will celebrate an unheard of milestone at SweetRoot, two whole years as a member of the team.

It’s a good week for a moment of Sabrina appreciation: she harvested a HUGE amount of this week’s market offerings single-handedly today while the rest of worked on bed prep and planting, and pulled off the majority of the work for those garden-start packages that people picked up last weekend. She also had a birthday this week, so if you see her zipping by with a loaded garden cart, or a tractor bucket full of goodies for the chickens, give a big happy birthday shout or, even better, a round of applause. As we continue to develop as a farm, to explore the theory of what infrastructure we need, how to build it and also keep our sanity, what size crew is right, etc.., and work out the practice of farming, we are incredibly grateful to have her as a part of the core team. From the determined quest for crack-free heirloom tomatoes to the ever-expanding unusual interests (anyone else out there ever taught yourself to play the hurdy-gurdy?) to the ability to grab three frightened quail in one handful to rescue them from the hoop-house, to the creative artworks many of your are currently wearing or carrying around on your feedbags, we are grateful for everything Sabrina has added to the farm.

Roots Theory is holding so far, and market will have beets and sweet, sweet little carrots. The above photograph is from our second planting; so if it looks a little small, don’t worry — we are harvesting out of one of our unheated high tunnels (our name for a greenhouse) now. An innovation to our moveable caterpillars this year is overhead sprinklers that run down the central steel perlin. These sprinklers are connected to a low-voltage controller that waters these roots a few times a day.

And what else will be at market tomorrow? It’s not just cilantro in the big bags…we also had a patch of second-cutting spinach that was too good to just flail mow, so we have big one-pound bags of that for cooking (saag panner, anyone?), plus kale and chard and mustard greens bunches, boc choi, carrots, beets, scallions, radishes, salad turnips, mint and parsley and head lettuces the size of your head, fresh pastured eggs…and more. Come on out and see us; the season is really getting started now, and the market trailer will be loaded.

With grattitude and big greens,

Mary and Noah, and all of SweetRoot Farm

Cover crop in the front corner gets a first mowing with the flail mower on our walk-behind tractor; these crops are feeding the soil to prepare for winter caterpillar tunnels full of greens.

Farmer's Market #4: the Field Greens Have Arrived.

The season really starts when we leave the tunnels and begin harvesting greens from the field. Seven beds a week, rain or shine, now through October. We shocked some new crew by pointing out they now know what they are doing every Monday and Thursday morning for the next 5 months; this is the rhythm of the farm.

Good Friday Night, Farm Friends.

The market trailer is parked in position for loading tomorrow morning, and the cooler holds some sweet new treats: the first bunches of beets and carrots, a hefty pile of our favorite red butter lettuce, some mini-romaine heads, bundles of chard, kale and collards, beautiful full-size boc choi. We’ll have radishes and salad turnips, and all the leafy greens : from sweet mild spinach and salad mix to zesty arugula and spicy mix. It’s the final hurrah for the mild spring mix, so lovers of that blend, be sure to make it out this week. The rain will all be over by market morning (says the eternal optimist and the obsessive forecast-checker, both), and it should be a great day for getting out, greeting your neighbors, and loading up on good veggies.

Members, you are starting week 4 of your farm feedbag, and you should have no trouble this week filing it up! Get to market fairly early if you are intent on those carrots or beets. More will be on the way, of course, and we’ll be sure to harvest more for Tuesday’s hosted pickup time.

We won’t have any starts at market, but will have our extra tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, and winter squash starts available for purchase at the farm along with the first pickup window for folks who signed up for the garden-starts packages. Mary will be there to get gardeners sorted, and answer questions (don't worry, she hasn’t really been banned from market, but this spring has included a lot of catch-up work on Saturdays that she has been leading).

Continue on for various recent scenes from the farm over the past two weeks. But first, a few off-farm thoughts:

It can be strange to write about our excitement for beets and carrots, our thrill at the thought of feasting soil microbes, or the challenges of trying to teach ourselves how to train and lead a team through a season of doubts and worries, when we know that the weight of grief and loss in communities affected by recent acts of violence is so much heavier than anything we carried here this week. Like many, we don’t know what to do. We continue to carry the compost, the carrots, the harvest totes. And we try to hold and care for our community at large as well. Thank you for being a part of it.

With greens and grattitude,

Mary and Noah, and all of SweetRoot Farm

Have you found any morels yet? We are long overdue for a tromp in the woods, whether fruitful or not, but we were lucky enough to be gifted a bag by some farm members. If you have any, however you got them, we highly recommend this simple dinner: sauté them with some onions, butter chard or kale/ chard cooking mix and a couple of eggs. It stands alone, or pairs with a good slice of toasted sourdough (try a loaf from The Sour Doe, just down the block from us at market!)

It’s been a few weeks since the last newsletter, because, well, it’s just that time of year. As you can imagine, a lot has been going on. Last week we spent the post-market afternoon getting the winter squash ground ready for planting on Sunday, to make sure the plants didn’t get overgrown in the greenhouse. 15 beds of winter squash and pie pumpkins (well, and one bed of ornamental gourds just for fun) now occupy the middle of the “middle ground” field. Tomatoes in the big tunnel are growing enough to get pruned and clipped to their strings; the second wave in the “caterpillar” tunnel settled into the ground last week.

It may be hard to imagine, but this time of year is not just for planting the things for spring and summer. Winter eating prep starts now: this week, this was in the form of mowing down our overwintered cover crop blocks with a new flail mower for the tractor. As we have learned the hard way, the mower on our BCS walk-behind tractor has its limits, and it is easy to grow a hefty and satisfying soil-feeding stand of rye that will stop it in its tracks. The new tractor flail, though, chopped the tall rye to a juicy green pulp no problem. After mowing, we water the block and then cover with a silage tarp to give the worms and soil microbes the perfect warm dark workspace to digest all that down to create a seedbed for the winter storage roots—whose planting date will be here before we know it.

Behind the scenes of small farm greens harvest: repairs and maintenance on the Quick Cut Greens Harvesters by Farmer’s Friend, LLC. We always just refer to our harvester as “the friend” and this week we cut apart a couple of older friends that luckily had broken in different places, and Chuck’s Welding just down the road was able to weld the parts back together into a good-as-new friend. Thursday morning, with the heat coming in, we were able to run two friends at once and get many cart-loads of greens stashed away in the cooler before it got too hot.

At their annual vet checkup recently, all three farm pets (Malaya, Zukes, and Radish) free-roamed the exam room together, providing emotional support to each other and much amusement to the staff. Malaya’s excellent health for her estimated 12+ years of age was attributed in part to her lifestyle on the farm, of “getting to just be a dog all day.” She does take it seriously, this job as a farm dog, but her collection of footwear for napping on is getting a little out of hand. At the peak, she had lovingly relocated 7 shoes and boots from the mudroom to her favorite bed by the barn without making a single matching pair.

Spinning Greens - Back at It and the Market Trailer Leaves the Farm!

Above, the new tool of the week. We’ve needed one of these for a couple years now to speed up our workflow. One of our spring greens mixes dries in a fish basket that spins in a converted washing machine that’s been converted with a timer and other features to help our washing and packing go a lot more smoothly this year.

You guessed it, or perhaps you didn’t, because you’ve been supporting us all along. Tomorrow is the first farmers’ market. All week, we’ve been tightening bolts, adding some small updates and improvements to our market trailer, and getting through enormous lists on our white board: from huge plantings, regular direct seedings (we’ve been seeding greens for 11 weeks in a row now), bouts of weeding (with hoes, by hand, and with our flame weeder), and doing enormous amounts of bed preparation as we get ready for larger field plantings. New tools, being designed and built are going together in the farm shop. We also greeted new crew this week and, also, Sabrina came back from vacation. And, our farm FEEDBAG MEMBERSHIP begins tomorrow as well (if you are a member, see below).

It’s been a real wild spring, and with a larger crew and with the packshed to figure out how to finish - our large crew needs that space (it’s a time and labor issue, mostly), and with some of our production and equipment really dialed in, it feels like it could be one of our wildest, biggest, craziest years yet. We are so glad you are with us.

Although our last plantings of fall carrots did just sell out a couple days ago, we’ll have a large variety at market for this early in the season, in addition to boatloads of eggs and flowers.

Flanked by row cover which protects young transplants in our north garden, Mary, Flora, and Tyler transplant our second succession of peas.

Tomorrow, if you are a farm member, we look forward to greeting you! We’ve got new feedbags for you. If you are new member, we’ll give you a brief orientation, and then turn you loose. If you can’t make market tomorrow, from 9-12.30 (and don’t worry, you’ll get an email), we’ll see you at the farm during our regular Tuesday hosted farm hours from 3-6pm (and after that, you can come anytime).

You can’t miss our market trailer. It finally got a new coat of stain, and, market crew Adrian and Alexis (you may be in Poland, but you are still crew) will especially appreciate this, we put in some internal shelving and organization for all the behind the scenes gear to help keep us ship shape. Our flow will be a little different this year as well (left to right, instead of right to left). Don’t worry, we’ll help you.

One of our two new SRF greens spinners, converted from a washing machine and outfitted with a food-grade fish basket.. Over the next few days we’ll be adding a lid and an emergency stop button. All those greens dry in about 2.5 minutes! With keeping our crew hours to just 40 hours a week this year (and with some overtime pay after that), it’s our hope that we will be able to get to more things on our list this year.

One of the surprises at market will be tomato sales (we have lots, thanks to garden starts this year and a new, wonderful space to work in). There are still a handful of garden packages still available and as of Saturday night we are closing signups. So, if you haven’t reserved your Salsa, Sauce (or Pizza), or Salad garden, the details and options are here.

And, our 12 week Bouquet subscription begins in just a few weeks. There are still about 12 spaces left. Get the details and signup here.

See you soon,

Noah, Mary, SweetRoot

Secret Photos from a SweetRoot Past

I woke up today with the electrical inspector phoning me with a list of corrections. Apparently they had already been in our greenhouse, opening up boxes, fiddling with wires, checking my work. It was a really terrible way to start the day since it basically comes down to a couple of days of corrections, money, and my interpretation of the national electrical code, advice I’ve been getting from other local electricians, and the inspector. It’s going to cause me to lose almost one whole week of time (and believe me, there are so many other things the farm needs from me now) so I thought I’d try and reset things by wiring — excuse me — writing, about some amazing unexpected things that have happened on the farm over the years.

First, important quick news. Since we partially shut down our farm road (Bell Lane) on Sunday to replace a culvert, we’ve decided to extend both the Eggflood 2022 Sale and Early Bird Member signup. To signup for the membership or the eatership, start here. Now, onward with these crazy images from the farm archive….

1. Magic between farmers. We never realized how much mentorship we got from our friends Ian and Ellen, but when we helped our neighbors put up one of their structures, and then attempt to pull plastic on a very windy day, we learned early on about collaboration and the magic of season extension. They inspired us to build - and even bend the steel — for our first unheated high tunnels. We’ve since adapted these tunnels, with some of our innovations, to make them moveable.

Noah signals to friends that our helping pull the first plastic on one of our tunnels that we later adapted into one of 5 moveable caterpillars on our farm.

2. Mentors. We’ve had so many mentors over the years. In this photo, Mary’s dad helps with doing some deconstruction back in the days before we owned 2 sledgehammers and a sawzall.

3. Carrots. They’ve become one of our favorite crops. It became even more possible to grow them at scale with a farm-built root washer (also pictured). Not pictured is an under cutter bar that mounts on a 4wd tractor that straddles our 30-inch beds to do the majority of the digging of the storage varieties.

4. Reclaimed materials. Yup, that’s a photo of Mary, taking down her parent’s woodshed roof that we later converted to our first packshed. In case you wonder where we get this trait, the backstory includes the fact this roof was reclaimed by her grandfather from a farm building damaged by a historic storm Oregon, so our uses of it gave it a third or fourth life! The second photo is a pile of plywood we trucked in from another roof, in Spokane two years ago. That has become the sheathing for our new packshed.

5. Row cover. Row cover is one of our biggest tools. In this photo, Mary uses just the right amount of tension and true grit to get this second, 30 x 120 foot piece of heavy fabric on top another one to prep for a hard September frost. We usually do this with two people, in perfect non-windy conditions, but, in this photo she’s doing it solo in some very windy conditions.

6. Irrigation. About three years ago, we ran water to our high tunnels and with it, we added wires that connect to 24 volt valves that connect to various places on the farm. Some of this irrigation is automated, and it paved the way for us being a reliable, four season farm. This also paved the way for reducing our water usage overall; the farm continue to convert more crops to drip and micro-irrigation.

7. Malaya. On the hardest of farm days, our husky, that came to us as a sick stray ten years ago, continues to brighten everyones day. If you haven’t met her, she usually is found sleeping near the side of the barn, patrolling for handouts on farm member day, or digging under the crew outdoor tables, biding her time until her next snack. She sleeps inside with us at night but loves being out in just about all weather, to keep tabs on everything happening on the farm.

8. Laying Hens. I think laying hens made us a farm that develops, design and builds and learns to fail. We’ve had many versions of moveable chicken structures until we settled on our insulated mobile pasture barns. We currently have 4 mobile barns and a flock of two different ages.

9. Bitterroot Ingenuity. This was one of our many low moments on our road to developing a solid pastured laying hen operation. A few years ago we had one 65 mile per hour gust that flipped one of the barns. In the photo, neighbor Mike Weir and a host of helpers have righted the barn topside with the help of a crane and a landing platform created by a full dump truck of tires. It all worked, no chickens were hurt, and we’ve since welded outriggers on the big barn we call The Evergiven and changed our design: we now bolt the deck solidly to the frame. This particular barn has an interesting story; it was actually completely decommissioned many years ago by some farm members in one, 10 person, 4-hour workshift, and then entirely rebuilt, but that’s another story.

10. Partly because of the mishaps of building, and learning to work with affordable, yet sometimes difficult re-claimed materials, we’ve become a farm that builds. Pictured below are two stand-outs from projects, our market trailer and the inside of one of our cabins. During that one spring we built our small insulated crew cabins, we actually took a loan from one of our favorite restaurants (Dan and Mona, who run Bouilla) and we gradually paid off the balance over the course of the summer.

11. Small Tools. We’ve also become a farm that sources — and builds — a lot of our own tools. Here, Mary operates one of our quick cut greens harvesters, powered by a portable drill.

12. True Farm magic. With the help of our community, 4 years ago, we put up a yurt that is our personal haven on the farm. While our current building project has become way more stressful — since we have a community and crew that depends on us more than ever — we couldn’t have continued farming without basic shelter, and it still amazes us, and inspires us every day, that we got that project done. I think this gives us hope and helps us keep going. Without it, we couldn’t.

And, finally, you didn’t miss it. It happens just once a year. Until Thursday night eggs are $1 off ($5/ dozen). Come stock up or just come visit. Feel free to pickup your own copy of Sabrina’s artwork as well. Copies are available in the farmstore.

Note: Early-Bird pricing ends Thursday night. If you signup for farm membership and drop off your check, please grab a dozen eggs on us!

Spring Re-emergence: member sign-ups coming, farmstore still abundant!

Pre-spring bed prep: spreading organic alfalfa hay on beds that will get transplants in 4-6 weeks. This gets chopped with the flail mower, watered in and covered with a silage tarp so the earthworms and soil microbes can start incorporating it into the soil.

Dear Farm Friends, 

Spring is just about here, and you may be wondering why you haven’t heard from us in a while.  Don’t worry, you haven’t missed the farm membership signups.  We have just been….well, it’s long story.

In short: the month of February was a black hole of fear and uncertainty, some of the worst weeks of our faming life. In a massive surprise, a state building official was adamant that our greenhouse and packshed did not qualify as a farm building, and we could not use it at all unless we went through a commercial building permit and inspection process. We did not know for a while if we could proceed with our farm year; this infrastructure is core to all of our plans for growing.

We eventually reached a somewhat satisfactory resolution after much phone calling, research, advice seeking, and advocacy that ate weeks of our farming life. We do now have a pathway forward classifying this as farm building. It’s still not straightforward, as it puts some limits on what we can use the building for, and will take another round of problem solving  but we were at least able to fire up the greenhouse and start our early starts. 

The first few rounds of greens had to make do in the old nursery which was also doubling as the greens-washing area. The new greenhouse, with more reliable heat, better seals, and some automation of venting and fans, is a really exciting improvement.

As we play catch-up from February, a few things are later than ever, but still on. Perhaps most important: We will open up the farm membership signups, just in time for the first official days of spring! Farm members, watch your emails for the advance sign-up form; you’ll have a few days to renew your farm membership before it opens to the general public. Folks who are interested in signing up for the first time, please watch for another email next week! 

Local winter food: stir-fry of carrots, onions, garlic, and greens = quick and easy dinner.

There are plenty of exciting developments and good news for you as we head into spring. The ground prep and transplanting are well underway, and all kinds of starts are popping in the greenhouse. The farmstore still has greens along with the storage carrots, potatoes, and so many eggs! We’ve started planting micro greens to help fill any potential gaps between the overwintered and the spring-planted greens, so as soon as next week we should have radish and pea shoots in the farmstore.

The SweetRoot ladies are always working. With the warmer days they are hiking all the way across the pasture to find the alfalfa hay, the new weed shoots, and the good digging spots.

We do have one special request for help, and this is a new one for us: finding a space for a seasonal farm-hand. We are hiring a larger crew this year to make the work sustainable for everyone, but do not have enough on-farm housing to accommodate everyone. We think we have an awesome team lined up but we are looking to help one of our employees find a space to rent in or near Hamilton for herself and her dog as they relocate here from Vermont. They have lived with roommates and in tiny houses before, and are mellow and friendly. If you or anyone you know has a space for rent or room for a new housemate with dog, please let us know and we’ll put you in touch. Additional benefits to this kind of housemate include copious amounts of farmer-grade produce brought home to share, and first-hand tales of behind the scenes life at SweetRoot! 

As always, we want to thank you all for your support and encouragement. We are so looking forward to feeding you again through the coming year.

-Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm

January: The Month in Photos and Winter Greens Update

As I write, we are harvesting, and at the same time construction on our new build, The Foodshed, continues. It’s huge project and now as the real work on these final interior phases start, we couldn’t do it without your support. We thought we’d share some behind the scenes photos from the past two weeks, when we’ve been a bit too busy to send out newsletter. But first, a harvest and greens update!

Harvest Update: Winter greens are seasonal, and right now, most of our fresh greens are going to our farm members. We continue to be inspired by the demand of winter greens in our valley, and every year we manage to feed more and more of you with them! But if you’ve come to the farmstore recently , you may have noticed that greens have been spotty in our coolers. We just haven’t had quite enough in our harvests to keep the shelves fully stocked all week long.

Don’t worry, there are still some fresh greens available each week, and they will continue to be more abundant as the days get longer. But supply will be sporadic for the next several weeks, so there will be days with no greens on the shelf. While we were harvesting well over 100 pounds per week a couple of weeks ago, we are just harvesting 1/2 to 1/3 of that now. If you don’t find fresh greens available, there’s still a ton of other stuff: eggs, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, beets, winter squash, garlic, our own roasted coffee, and even some organic cotton hoodies. For this time of year, our small farmstore is still pretty loaded.

It’s very hard to say when there will or won’t be greens available each week. It’s only our third year of winter growing and we are still figuring out demand, honing our techniques, building our protected spaces, etc.. It’s also complicated, because we planted (and planned) for the winter farm back in August. If we have a special surprise harvest, like a decent size pulse of spinach, we will let people know via facebook, or we feel like it’s market-level scale, we will send out an email to this list. In many ways, winter farming is tricky. It’s expensive with crew, protected spaces, and some extra tools and systems (it’s also the reason for our build, photos below), but we have to admit that we are addicted to it. It’s exactly the kind of tricky complex, satisfying sort of challenge that drew us to farming in the first place…just even mores. Also, if we weren’t entirely committed to winter farming, our current build (that houses a new farmstore and walk-in coolers) would literally be about half the size. Our farm is serious about investing in good four season systems.

What do we do with all those craft gourds that didn’t sell? They get fed to our laying hens, via a distribution system we call squash-ball. If you are familiar with our radish baseball photos, these are even more dramatic. Sabrina, of course, turned out to be a real home-run hitter in her first squash-ball season. In addition to giving ourselves a solid round of fun on a deep snow day, now whenever there are melty windows, the hens find a few new patches of gourd seeds and pulp to feast on.

All of our mobile henbarns finally got names. Mostly so we don’t mix them up and another way we are implementing systems. Behind the scenes, a six page manual has been written to help simply the consistency of care for the laying hens. The name above, the Evergiven, for this 8x40’ titanic is apt. The roofline is still not entirely straightened out from the big tip it had two Septembers ago. Outriggers have since been welded on to the base of this barn so 65-70mph wind gusts should not be problematic. We hope. It has not yet been irreparably stuck anywhere on the farm, but we do navigate the narrows carefully with this one.

Left to right: Sabrina, Noah, and Ed (farm member and builder), install a custom piece of farm hardware that will be the attachment point for the inflated roof for our new nursery.

Will (not pictured) and Noah roll out the second layer of plastic on a frosty roof on Monday with the help of Rueben and Mary as a ground support team. We just had one warm, calm window to do this crucial task this past week. And while it was easier to drop hundreds of pounds of greenhouse plastic down, rather than pullup, the roof was so slick we no longer recommend this method.

The new greenhouse roof, is inflated to a giant bubble with a small motor after the two layers of plastic have been safely secured to the structure. While the old nursery will house some of the first seedlings soon, we will move over to this new structure as soon as possible. We are giddy with excitement at double the amount of space for seedlings.

We’ve needed the new nursery for about three years now. Last March and April, we got so tight on space so flats of young plants went into the pathways of a high tunnel for protection (they’d been sitting outside to harden off, but were getting smashed by 6” of snow). Other nights we had to scramble when our reliable pellet stove wasn’t so reliable. The new space features a large powerful heater and some basic low tech automation, including some rollup sides and automatic venting and cooling. The heater is mounted in the photo along with some custom SRF hardware. One special cool note — all that shiny metal tubing and roofing in the photo is reclaimed, repurposed from other steel structures in our region to reduce the footprint of our build. And, nearly all the lumber in both the nursery and the packshed is also reclaimed, from 20-200 miles from the farm. The reclaimed tin roofing, for the nursery sides and the top of our structure came from a bit farther afield, but it was also reclaimed.

In addition to improving systems, and building a real sustainable facility that streamlines our operation, this is the season for repairs. Vehicles get worked on. Compost piles get turned, hard to find spare parts get purchased from all over the internet. Above, we still aren't quite sure why a simple hyrdraulic line took a few hours to repair, but it did. Turning compost piles is extremely hard on our 45hp, 4wd tractor. It’s even harder when a hydraulic line ruptures and sprays Noah in the face.

On a snowy day, the whole team, including Sam (in the orange hat) harvests the last of our winter mild mix from one of our moveable caterpillar tunnels. The spinach in the foreground is re-growing and will be abundant later this spring. Due to a ton of precautions and safety protocols, Sam is the only person on our team who came down with covid. He was on vacation and although he’s well on the mend, he’s about to wrap-up his winter contract with the farm. It was great to have his help to share our workload with the winter farm membership this past season.

On a sunny day, hens from the young flock launch off the sundeck of The Evergiven.

The New Year is a Perfect Time to Eat More Squash....and sign up for a Winter Farm membership!

Happy New Year, farm friends.

I’m not quite sure what should mark the start of the farm-year. The first garlic sprouts emerging? The first panting of new greens? When the ground fully thaws in the field? Making the seed order? The winter solstice, or spring equinox? January 1 can seem a little arbitrary, but some numbers changed on the Gregorian calendar this past week, so welcome 2022, we’ve started a new harvest log!

And yes, in fact we are still harvesting. The greens in the tunnels didn’t love the sub-zero nights, but mostly they hung on just fine. As things don’t really grow much during this month of January, it’s all about keeping the greens alive and holding in the ground, and harvesting sections in sequence. We have different beds mapped out for harvest on various different weeks, to supply the farmstore and our Winter 2 membership. This is the first week of pick-up, for this 5-week term, and we’ll pack some extra of everything to give folks a chance to sign up through Wednesday morning; we have about 12 spots left, if you’d like to join in, and you can get all the details and sign up here with a simple online form. Winter 2 members will feast on carrots, beets, cabbage, radishes, potatoes, garlic, onions, winter squash, and a weekly dose of fresh greens, from kale/ chard cooking mix this week, to mild winter salad mix, spicy mustard greens, baby tatsoi, and more.

We didn’t exactly party it up for NYE; Noah hit the road for a trip to pick up the used walk-in cooler we bought way back in the summer, while Mary held down the fort and the chickens through the coldest night we’d seen in a while.

We’re still working on that whole “rest and recover” part of winter, starting with eating well—if you’re looking for a whole new taste idea, try out the savory squash pancakes we just discovered, described here.

Scroll on for some photo glimpses of what the farm looked like last week, and we encourage you to keep the farmstore in your routines, we’re still open, still stocked up, and still so glad that you all are such good eaters. And good local-farm supporters.

Thanks so much,

Mary and Noah

Though there are lots of complex details with winter farming (mostly about timing of plantings in the fall, actually), some of it is also so basic: put blankets on when the nights are cold. When they colder, add more layers of blankets. What may surprise you, though, is that in order for this to work, the blankets (which shade as well as insulate) have to come off each day and allow what sunlight there is, to hit the leaves and the ground; the soil, warmed even a few degrees during the day, is the heat reservoir that buffers the greens, with the blankets on at night. This cover/ uncover rhythm dictates our winter days, but is how we still have fresh greens in the farmstore and for members. Friday’s 12-below-zero low, and some of the cold cloudy days that followed, were a challenge but most things seem to be perking back up.

Even with multiple options for getting indoors, Malaya prefers to keep tabs on us all from her outdoor nests. Despite in the tight northern-dog curl, closed eyes, and layer of snow, her ears are tuned for any hint of fun and excitement. New Year’s Eve markes the anniversary of her joining our lives, so she did get an extra big chewing bone.

In the farmstore now, for a short time only: lettuce! Lettuce is actually one of the wimpier of the baby greens in the cold, so we cut everything we had before the sub-zeroes, and it’s stocked up in the farmstore. Our other, brassica-based salad mixes will continue for longer into the cold, but if you are a straight-up-lettuce fan, now’s the time to snag a few bags. The next round will be sometime in April.

Perhaps the new year starts when the compost is finished? This pile will be beautifully aged by spring. Periodically during the winter we turn it to fold in the moisture from rain and snow, to keep is simmering along through the season. A newer, younger pile give off steam even on the coldest days, as a our team of microbes works hard breaking it all down.

Squash-soup season continues. Sometimes all it needs is a handful of sautéed onions, garlic, ginger, a few cups of leftover squash, a few cups of broth, and a dollop of curry paste. Eat the spicy-greens and garbanzo beans salad on the side, or throw it on top of the soup.

Happy Winter, and a Chance to Signup for Winter Term 2

Happy Winter, Farm Friends.

The sun was settling into its far-south peak as we finished the daily rounds of covering the greens inside the tunnels yesterday. From the kale and chard, that low light illuminated a suite of soil-care practices in surprising beauty: cover crop that will soon die back but provide a little protection for the winter ground and re-sprout vigorously in early spring; composts -both finished and new; bales of organic hay for the winter chicken-pasture, and of course the unheated tunnels that help us keep live growing roots in the soil year round. As we settle into winter, hoping for good stretches of rest, stories, recovery, and connection (but of course also with ambitions and a bit of fretting about how to get done all the dark-season building and projects), we are so grateful for this land, the seasons, the billions of seen and unseen lives that make up the ecosystem of this farm—including you, dear eaters.

We can hardly stop at the hardware store or take a short walk with the dog in town these days without hearing a warm greeting and, most likely, a member of our community raving about the greens, the eggs, or the deliciousness of the roots they just got from the farm. We love it.

Other than slow and fitful progress on the new packshed space (starting with the nursery on the south side, because after all, each season starts with seedlings), we have to confess, we’ve done little to no holiday preparation for ourselves. We joke about grinch-y farmer presents, like decorating a tree with bolts and greenhouse hardware, stockings full of T25 torx bits and ratcheting wrenches, wonder how a load of nice compost or a ready-to-go chicken barn would fit under a tree, speculate as to whether to trip out to buy new winter mud boots counts as festive. Except that, um, we do get kind of excited about fasteners, bits, and shiny new greenhouse parts. Someday we may have to publish a small-farmer gift guide, the things farmers get excited for might surprise you.

If you are also perhaps behind on your holiday shopping, and your recipients are good-humored, perhaps a head of garlic or an onion in the stocking? In all seriousness, a big salad bowl of locally grown greens is a gift, in Montana winter. We hope you’ll include some fresh local food in your holiday feasting; the farmstore is open and well-stocked even in this darkest part of the year. We are stocked with, well, really almost everything. Spinach is on a short vacation, hoping to be back mid-January, but mild and spicy salad mixes, baby boc choy and other stir-fry worthy greens are here, tokyo bekana, leaf-lettuce’s cold-season cousin, and plenty of carrots, beets, onions, garlic, potatoes, radishes, winter squash and more. Even the hens are on their game, with plenty of eggs for you.

The hardy winter greens: tatsoi, leaf cabbage, baby boc choi, spicy mustards, vivid pac, and red pac choi.

But in other farm gift options, for yourself or for others, we finally got in the sweatshirts, printed locally with Sabrina’s artwork, the farm-in-a-beet logo that also adorned this year’s feedbags. Members who pre-ordered, we have sweatshirts set aside for you labeled with your name, and we are happy to report we have extras for anyone to purchase, ($50 each for the organic cotton and recycled fleece zip-up hoodies), about to go out in the farmstore. We have kind of been living in ours since they arrived, and love them. The front, under our farm initials/ abbreviation (SRF) includes three words that encapsulate many of our hopes for the farm: Food. Story. Love. Truth be told, that was the one thing I hesitated about on the sweatshirts—can we really claim that this year? Food, other than a few hiccups and an aphid apocalypse in the brussels sprouts, we did well. So much food. But with frayed nerves, short on time and often short-tempered, skipping newsletters many weeks, were felt we were falling short on the other two words, the connecting elements and a huge part of the magic of the farm….we want to be better at hearing and sharing the stories, of growing a place for people to love. But the origin of these three words (another story, perhaps for winter) involved focusing on what we want, what we hope to become. And so there they stay, above our hearts, the reminder of the core for our farm: food, story, love.

Our biggest winter gifts to ourselves, if we can manage them, will really be the times for deliberate slowing-down, a walk or ski in the snowy woods, an evening to just sit and read. Thanks, so much, to all of you who have dropped by the kind cards, sweet gifts, and well-wishes for us and the farm critters.

Seven years ago, on a full moon just days before the solstice, we closed on this land that would grow into SweetRoot Farm and become our home. We had no idea what we were getting into, and seven year in it is still a developing adventure. Thank you all for helping us grow.

We wish you a wonderful winter season and plenty of good eating,

Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm

Photos from the Week before Freezeup

It’s been an other big farm week, friends. Some big hauling, some big building progress, some big thoughts and plans. And some big harvests, too! It was a week short on time for writing, but we thought we’d share some photos and meal ideas at least. Read on to catch up on the farm happenings, and maybe get some And good ideas for dinner, too.

Who scaled compost mountain? Mary’s field-biologist eye is still active, and she’s often the first to spot pest and disease problems in the greens, or interesting natural history like fox tracks in a trace of snow near the tunnels while closing. The analysis of this trace: not the fox, but probably Zukes racing up the almost-finished compost pile in the night, his tracks enlarged by each step breaking through the frozen crust.

Nothing motivates the final digging and cement pour of the season like thinking it might finally be ground freeze-up. Last Saturday night found us busting out all the party gear: shovels, rock bar and cement mixer, to pour small cement footers for what will someday be a welcoming shady porch to the entrance of the new farmstore, housed in the front of the new packshed. To make this big late night work shift before temperatures plummet a bit more fun, we nicknamed the new orange cement mixer next to the Kubota “The Party Machine.”

Doesn’t matter what the task is, Zukes is involved. Sometimes the best way to keep him safe is to just have him drive the tractor. He (and all the farm pets) are still riding high from the package of treats some farm fans delivered recently.

Ribs on the new nursery went up, and got tied together with the first purlin this week. The process required multiple people on ladders, and a lot of lifting of heavy steel. Some members of our team don’t love ladders, but Zukes says the higher the better. Hopefully by late winter, this space will be filled with starts, and he’ll probably still be finding the highest perch in the place.

Some radishes that were getting a bit wimpy in storage went to our least-picky customers, who had no complaints. Now that they are finally laying eggs again, they deserved a colorful treat.

Things we didn’t know we would want (didn’t even know existed) when we started a farm: macro bins. Pallet-sized foldable plastic crates strong enough to hold 800 lbs of onions or winter squash, and stackable—now that’s exciting! Especially when purchased used from an orchard in the Flathead that is scaling down. We got enough for us and a few for farmer friends down the road at MGVC, so we can all pile up the storage crops higher and higher next winter.

Sneak preview: the first-ever organic farm hoodies…..members who ordered these back in spring can now pick them up in the farmstore! Folks who might want to get one now, stay tuned for the next email, we’ll release the details.

We’ve been eating well….link to this curried squash bowl on the table blog, here.

For your tables, there is good news on the egg front: the girls are back on their game, a solid 22 dozen eggs and climbing each day, so the egg shelves have not been empty in days. We have been celebrating that by rekindling our egg-on-top habits with noodle bowls and soups, dusting of our omelette making skills (stuffed with greens, onions, and garlic of course), and even have a frittata planned; it’s been a while. We expect to be well stocked with eggs now all winter long and well into next season.

Other meal ideas: as days and nights get colder, we double down on roasted roots, roasted squashes of all sorts for side dishes, and of course all the soups. A customer at the farmstore this week reminded us of the classic "zoppa tuscano" with kale, potatoes, sausage, and a creamy broth. We dusted off a seasonal cookbook and found a host of simple squash soups ranging from fresh ginger to savory squash-based chilies (farm members who picked up a bag of dried Peublo chiies and coriander this week, try mixing those in to a squash and bean chili!)

And we are still in love with all the winter greens....the mild mix is going strong for fresh salads. We were tickled recently when, as we sat down at the Brewery, Chef Toby brought us each out a plate of the simplest salad, our greens with their grapefruit vinaigrette and a sprinkle of grated cheese. We agree that these light, crunchy, non-lettuce greens are great with a citrusy dressing. If you want to play up their Asian-green flavors, try a ginger-soy or shitake based dressing, and adding a pile of grated carrots, radishes, and salad turnips. Some smoked salmon, grilled fish, or diced chicken makes it almost a meal of its own. In addition to the baby greens, we are adding more and more heads and bunches of mild greens like baby boc choi, tatsoi, "vivid pac" and Tokyo Bekana leaf cabbage. All of them are great raw salad additions OR stir-fry ingredients.

And of course for those who love the spicy heat, remember that mustard greens love cold weather. The farmstore is loaded with both big spicy bunches of large greens, and bagged baby-mustard mixes (the spicy mix has a new addition this week, wrinkled crinkled cress, for a peppery-floral addition to the heat, which we just love).

We've also been doing up the warm grain bowls, layered with greens of course, and have a new recipe up for a curried squash version.

However you eat it, thank you for supporting it all.

Noah and Mary, SweetRoot Farm