Early Bird Sign Up for 2020 is Open!

Winter on the farm is restful.  Your farmers are enjoying some much needed time with family and enjoying a slower work pace with a reflective feel.  While the days are short we have slower mornings with time for the extra cup of coffee or tea.  I have even learned how to make sourdough bread (from Farmer Adam who has been making it on and off for a few years now).  We have slower evenings where we can actually make dinner together and clean up after dinner together.  Balancing farm life with family life is one of the trickiest parts of running the farm for me.  It feels good to have a season where family can be more in focus and the farm work less demanding and time-sensitive.  

We even went on a two week vacation out to California to see the Redwoods National Forest.  We took the train out and then rented a car and drove down Hwy 1 until we got to my Sister’s house in Ventura California.  We stayed near my sister for a week where we got to eat fish tacos, play on the beach, watch seals, explore tide pools, visit a Museum of Natural History and do lots of swimming back at camp.  Vacations can feel a little like work too with three small children and all of the planning that goes into a trip and making arrangements for someone to watch the farm while we are gone.  It’s good to get away, but I think it feels even better to come home!  

We were packing out orders to local coops and restaurants for most of the winter two days a week.  Our storage inventory is getting very low now and soon, hopefully, we can be done processing the harvest of 2019 and focus entirely on 2020.  The seeds are all here, the soil mix is here and the firewood for the greenhouse is here.  We will begin seeding in the greenhouse and keeping the fires going non-stop the last week of February.  

There is still daily work in the office doing taxes preparation, MOSA Organic Certification paperwork, field plans, greenhouse plans, searching for employees and so, so, so much more!  We are also logging in CSA members as they come in.  We are extra appreciative to those of you who sign up early so that we can get spend the time at the computer in February logging in members rather than juggling the computer work alongside the farming work once the season kicks off.  If you haven’t signed up yet, but intend to, please consider doing this early!  

Another fun project for 2020 is that we are re-doing the floor in the upper barn above our packing shed in hardwood.  We plan to one day host farm events/dinners/barn dances up there.  We are hoping that it could also double as a space to cure our garlic in the summer.  This is a huge space on our farm that we have not used in all of the years we have lived here because the wild birds were getting in there making their ‘messes’ and the staircase going up was unsafe to use.  The exposed beams are getting cleaned up and it feels like we’re restoring and bringing life into a part of the farm that has been neglected but has so much potential and beauty.  

Because I have a history of making newsletters a little too long at times, I’l bring this one to a close with a promise to write again in a month or so full of the excitement and joy of Spring that I feel warming inside me.  And because I could never say it often enough, our farm is thankful to you, the locavore, the community member, the vegetable lover for supporting small family farms like ours.  We’re so happy to know you!