Saturday mornings, for the last year and a half, have been off to market days for us.  Our little town has been blessed with the opportunity to build a thriving year round farmer’s and artisan’s market, and having somewhere to bring winter produce to sell during the off months of our CSA program is really great.  Growing food year round has been a fun and satisfying part of our farm adventure here in Oregon.  And for us especially, having moved from the much colder Midwest, being able to grow so much out in the open through the winter has been amazing.

Here in the Willamette Valley, there is so much that can be grown out of doors through the entire year.  Winter hardy greens top the list, but root crops like carrots, beets, turnips, and rutabagas can also stay in the ground and be harvested from through the winter, and the really fun stuff is the overwintering sprouting broccolis and cauliflowers that are such a treat come the end of the cold season.

The only hitch, for us at least, is the space winter growing requires.  To continue harvesting in the same quantity as we do for the rest of the year, we need to have winter vegetables in a lot more ground than we need for that amount in warmer months.  Since things aren’t growing at all for a good twelve weeks of that time and growing slowly for the rest of it, we have to plan differently.  With much of our usable growing space wet (albeit highly fertile) from December through May, we still haven’t been able to grow as much as we would like.

This year we were really excited to use the dry acreage we are leasing near town to grow more for winter, but are now equally disappointed because those vegetables attracted foraging deer who ended up eating everything we planted there–kales, radicchios, chicories, red mustards, chard, perpetual spinach, turnips.  They kindly left the arugula and green mustards, but being so far away from that space, it felt hard to protect those crops and we aren’t necessarily keen on putting up deer fencing over there right now.  Here at our place, even when we see some deer activity in the winter, we have the easy protection of our dog to keep them at bay.

And so, the winter growing part of our operation is still the part we still struggle with.  Many people are amazed that we have what we do at market but we know that we could have a lot more.  And people really, really love our winter greens.  Growing them out of doors in the cold produces the most wonderful flavor, and to be eating something so fresh and alive in the coldest months is awesome, we aren’t coming close to meeting the demand for them.  Even as we get ready to put up our first hoophouses on the farm, we don’t want that to be our main solution to having more to harvest for the winter market and ultimately, for a full season CSA too.

A puzzle we are working on–just as there are always are in the farming business–but one we feel we can solve.  That is part of what keeps us on our toes and ever humble in the work we do.

This morning, the sky was on fire, Mt. Hood so breathtaking in the sky against those colors.  It will be a beautiful market day.  We are heading out now with some delicious greens, thankful for what we do have and for yet another Saturday to visit with the community and continue “farming” year round.

All around the farm, the golden brown of autumn surrounds us.  Summer plants have died and are in various states of decay, the leaves are well on their way, shouting out in bright yellow before falling quiety to the ground.  Always on this farm, we live up close and personal with this cycle–the cycle of the seasons:  growth, death, decay, re-birth.  That this cycle is matter of fact, that it applies to all that lives and breathes this fine air of life, this truth permeates, so to speak.   The more shocking truth that we have come to know as we spend time out here is that everything we are engaged in at one time on the farm is also always playing itself out on the other end of the spectrum too, at the same time.  We are in a constant state of duality.

Life and death, or death and life as it is at this time of year…ever present, side by side.  Just as the summer crops turn to mush and the leaves crinkle and dry up, there is an explosion of green in the fields.  So much green, much like in the spring, only darker and sturdier are the leaves, full of the promise to feed us through the cold.  The brown billy goat smells up the farm with his inate drive to make life now, just as so much around him dies away.  Next spring, those baby goats will liven up this place, just as the tender and bright green shoots of spring brighten the bleak landscape of winter once more.   And in spring, while all that life is exploding, we will be planting and planning for the coming winter again, sowing crops for harvest half a year away.

When my parents passed away,  I found this all so comforting.  In an abstract way, it really is.  It does allow one to feel connected, even in death, to something grand and beautiful in design.  Still, this fall I can’t help but feel a distinct separateness from this.  Human tragedy seems to superceed this design.  Is there comfort to be found in knowing life goes on with or without us, with or without our hopes and dreams?  I don’t know.  In the face of inexplicable human sorrow, where do we search for meaning?

Fall is the great time of turning inward.  The spark of thoughts germinating inside as we lived more loudly through summer are finally given air.  There is so much this month for my family to be thankful for, this farm and our lives are so truly blessed.  Yet, at the same time we are faced with loss and deep wells of compassion for our friend’s and loved ones we know who have suffered unbearable losses in this life.  This duality is so confusing, and yet, in the day to day workings around here, we work and play as ever we did.  Like the earth that forever puts forth both the blossoms of life as well as the blankets of dying leaves, we live both sides of the coin simultaneously.  The deepest joys coupled with the deepest pains; we feel them, let them shine or burn the center momentarily depending, but mostly let them lie on the periphery while we continue with the day to day. 

Such mysteries I can not understand on this beautiful fall morning!  All I know is that wherever we are on our paths today, most of us have only things to be thankful for.  Let us not give weight to the small things–the intermitent pests on the crops, the unpredictable weather, the hard day; these things matter little in the grand scheme.  My own personal harvest is so bountiful and beautiful, there has been no great suffering.  Why?  How?  I can’t say, but it is selfish to do anything else but feel those blessings and let go of the rest.  I am saving my worry for others.

I actually shudder to admit that this great slowing down time on the farm, the wonderful quieting of that raucous din that is summer around here, is proving to be neither quiet or slow after all.  September came, and suddenly I am so busy with homeschooling and activities for the kids and trying to squeeze a little bit of time out of all of that for taming the wildness that summer inevitably created inside our home while we worked and played outside for a season (which doesn’t make sense when you think about it, does it?),  that I have had little time to give to my “office” and “writing” duties for the farm.  Ideas come and go, poignant and thoughtful or just simple and funny, but I rarely have the time to sit down and put them to pen (so to speak!).

I keep thinking that with just one day to get things organized, a day to breath so to speak, I could get on top of this schedule and find the missing time; but the reality is that this  life will always be busy, or rather full, what with six of us and a farm in the cards, so the busy part all comes down mostly to a state of mind…and then just a little bit of good planning.  I am making a point to find the moments to breathe, and learning to live with certain piles until that grand day of organizing comes.   In the meantime, we take the time to stop a day of cleaning and wood chopping to carve those pumpkins with the small folks, we scoot the pile of school stuff out of the way and gather around the first fires in the woodstove with our board games and our books or various musical instruments.  I say the heck with it all and pick up the knitting basket instead of the vacuum, because life really is short, and the days, even shorter.  This fall has been glorious, with so many perfect, shiny golden days, with the bold colors of trees exploding before they go to bed reminding us to celebrate it all and the less showy but equally soothing colors of decay all over the farm our companions.  Busy isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Maybe this winter will bring with it some quiet?  Or more likely than not, it won’t, and so we will just have to continue practicing our graceful walk though this life one day at a time…with just a bit of stumbling along the way.

After waiting patiently through an entire summer, we finally made it to the beach as a family a few weekends ago.  And much like the time until then was filled with many good intentions to get there that never worked out, the trip itself went nothing like we had planned. 

The camping the night before–scratched.   Because really, we should have known better than to plan to camp over an hour from home after a full day at our Saturday farmer’s market. 

The early morning meet up with our friends, whom we were supposed to camp with the previous night, so we could still spend some time together–nope!  Busy baby boy was not a happy car traveler that morning and they were ready to head home by the time we arrived. 

And the Farmer’s one and only chance to surf this summer since he is still borrowing surfing  equipement from those friends–missed!

After what seems like a year full of plans not seeing fruition, arriving that day at the beach to a gray sky and that chill coastal breeze instead of a nice sunny day (like the day before), layering on our warm hats and jackets, and saying good-bye to our friends–I couldn’t help but feel a bit defeated as we walked down to the beach.

What a year!  We made a plan last winter, took the leap, and instead of dividing his attention by working off the farm from late fall to early spring as the farmer has always done, he stayed here and kept things moving forward.  And it was a good plan, one we feel worked out well for the business.  We moved the CSA back to its original, more traditional structure, and took the commitments to our farm at the beginning of the year, spreading the farm income out more evenly over the course of the whole year.  We expanded the CSA to close to what our first year CSA number was, only this time we had enough good soil to grow in and enough years of growing vegetables for a CSA under our belt to make it a wholly positive experience for both our farm members and us farmers.

This part of our plan has been a real joy this year!  We love the CSA and all it brings to our farm!  So many great members, connections, interactions!  So much great food to share. 

The real kicker for the year was the weather, and the fact that making the farmer’s markets, and the income generated from them, a necessary part of your farm income lacks all of what the CSA doesn’t.  The cool and wet, extra long spring meant crop failures and lower yields…all of that is lost income.  And markets are truly unpredictable and fickle at times.  Come September when our farm is producing the most food of the year, the markets are almost always quieter and slower while everyone adjusts to the change in seasons, the start of school, and the end of summer, not to mention the abundance of their own or their neighbor’s home gardens.  As with every year since our start, the business grew and had many successes, but the growth was not quite as much as we had planned, and the buffer we needed against the unpredictable affect of weather and farmer’s markets on our business was not as great as we would like it to be. 

There have been stresses, mostly financial, and a busier farmer;  less days to play and enjoy the summer as a family, less help in the house and with the children (one more, no less).  It was a year so different from last that even though we have been through growing pains in the process of building this farm business before, it took me by surprise, and I don’t think I really wrapped my head around it and settled in until just last month.  As much as I find myself chanting words like embrace, let go, and enjoy under my breath when I am talking to new mother’s, thinking all the time about how the easiest thing to do with a new baby and your new motherhood when it seems challenging is to just let go of everything else and be with that little person, knowing so well myself what they can’t know yet, that the time when they need you the most will go by so fast, this summer I found myself with expectations of our lives not being met and spending time worrying about it instead of heading my own advice.

But that day at the beach, after everyone let go of the expectations we had for the day, after we built a little fire and centered ourselves around it, we ended up having  the most amazing and satisfying day.  The children built driftwood forts, stuck their toes in the very cold waves, flew kites, and didn’t stop for one moment to bicker or cry or otherwise not jsut have fun.  The baby dug right in and explored  that sand, so happy, so cute.  The farmer played around with his mandolin by the fire.  Later he and the baby napped.  And I just sat there watching them all, my beautiful people, thinking about how simple and easy and wonderful we have it, together in such a beautiful place.  Then I took some pictures and read for longer in one sitting than I had the whole year–bliss!

This day that had seemed to be almost impossible to get to and was not turning out as we had planned, ended up being so perfect.  All it took was a little bit of letting go to enjoy it, to embrace it as it was.

And that is just what I have needed to do all summer long.  Choosing this life—to be family focased, to do work that we really love and think is important but that is equally challenging and as it is rewarding–it requires that we be the kind of people who can make do.  We have to be completely frugal, in a way that might seem a little crazy to some (and does to me at times, believe me!), we have to give in to the long days of work summer holds for us, to let go of having things in any old way we might like them and embracing the difference in what we can and can’t do depending on the land, the weather, the season, the work to be done to bring the food to both our table and yours, and the tending and care four small people need at every given moment from us.  But the fact of the matter is, we are make do kind of people, so this hasn’t been that hard for us to do. 

This summer, as busy as it was for the farmer and as tight as the belt needed to be cinched and aside from my own slow acceptance of the kind of year it was going to be, the children never skipped a beat.  Their expectations in life are family togetherness, time to play, play, play, to spend time with their friends sharing joy, for good food at our table as a family, stories upon stories to read, and the occasional camping trip and day trips to the creeks and lakes around us.  There is very little else that they clammer for.   They are happy little farm kids, and thankfully, they have not felt too much sting from the slow but steady pace we have been at as we build up this farm. 

This isn’t to say that every year as we plan, we plan according to our vision of the farm, which undoubtably looks a bit more secure on the financial end and allows for at least one day off each week during the summer so that we can come together and relax, together, even at our busiest times.  More time for hiking and camping, definitely.  A tad bit more freedom to make time for getting together with our friends and family, yes!  But what else do we really need?  Not much. 

For the rest, I think we can probably make do, as long as we have each other.

Sometimes, the best way to turn it all around is this.

I hate that the stress of a challenging farming year can spill over into our family lives, but it does,and that’s just the thing about stress…it doesn’t know when to close the door itself unless we manage to muster the strength and shut it ourselves.  So in the midst of things, if I find myself grumpy and tense, I know that if I can just manage to get everyone into the car and to the creek (or lake or hills or whatever such local), then the miracle of children in nature and water gurgling and sun dappled leaves will take over and just like that, everything will be fine.

It helps when total strangers, a few different times this last week when we were out on just such, completely necessary escapes, stop me to say these words, “you have a beautiful family”.  In those moments, and all of our moments really, this is the greatest truth there is and all I need to remember.

Out at the creek with them tonight, I realized that keeping myself sane with moving water and river rocks and a sideline view to their discoveries (rocks and crawdads and mini snail-y things, oh my!) was the most important thing I could do for them this year. 

So no matter what, we will get away.  No matter the nitty gritty–which I mostly choose to ignore here as well as out and about in our community anyways–I will ignore it for these precious moments of simple escape with my little ones as often as possible too.

And I won’t even worry too much about the sand and river grit this little guy is getting into his mouth!

I have been feeling preoccupied.  Too preoccupied for summer; sweet, wonderful summer, so late in coming it feels like it is half-way over.  Things like my daughters fall and subsequent head ache, staying on top of our fall planting schedule, making sure our oldest is here or there for all of his recent activities, worries about bills (hey…I’m just being honest here), to do lists a mile long, weeds I want to get now before they go to seed, and the dreadful realization that I am just not going to get to the beach before August shuffle around upstairs jockeying for some attention, crowding out the voice I want to hear that says

“enjoy each and every moment of sun now!”

Expanding the amount of space we are growing on and the CSA have left the farmer preoccupied in a different way.  He is working his tail off this year with little time to spare.  After having settled into a good routine over the last few years, it has been hard to readjust to a more intense level of busy again.

But the thing is, even though there is a lot going on, that old adage about making hay while the sun shines is just as true.  All this sun is precisely why we are so busy, so I know I just need to take it all in stride.  And as cliche as it sounds, it is just as true that this isn’t a dress rehearsal.  This is the one and only summer my baby will be this little, my children just as they are right now.

The beauty of the passage of time, the fourth child coming, is that I have learned this lesson all too well.  Less will get done this year.  Less housework, less yard work; but who cares?  I also remember being this busy with the last little babe, starting the farm going, stressed and frazzled and preoccupied.  It is now just a part of our family’s journey together, but I don’t want it to be like that again.

So although the thoughts will still be there to think about and the weight of the season will be what it is, I am thankful that by now I have learned a little bit about letting go.  I can’t do it all.  But I can make sure we are having lots of picnics and trips to the creek.  I can sit and let the sun warm my skin, feel the breeze on my face, and watch small hands beside me explore the world.  I can do the dishes at least most days even if I can’t do them after each meal.  A one hour morning nap while all the big kids are fresh and new is the most productive one hour of weeding ever.  And putting special things like camping trips on the calender mean that they will happen even though they haven’t yet.

And I can manage a decent summer and a growing farm business and four wonderkids, if I only just let go a little bit.  It is the one piece of advice I most want to give to new mothers or those who still have little ones four and under.  Trust me, the sun doesn’t shine forever.

In honor of the longest day of the year, the busy farmer worked his longest day of the year!  We were all tucked in for the night before he came inside, and as I laid down I thought of generations of farmers celebrating so much daylight with dedicated servitude to the land.

The kids and I celebrated in our own quiet way,  staying up late to watch the sun set on spring.  To welcome summer, we made a list of all the summer-y things we were looking forward to.  We don’t really need to make such a list to make sure these things happen–all of our summer to do’s are simple and routine parts of the season for us–but writing them all down helped get us excited for a season that felt so long coming this year.

We are ready for:   a trip to the beach!  surfing!  a swim at the creek!  some live music!  strawberry shortcake!  garage sales!  the zoo!  the amusement park!  blueberries by the handful!  fishing!  running through the sprinkler!  painted toenails!   blackberry cobbler!  Crater Lake!  hiking and camping without rain!  wild abundance!

Things like a trip to Hawaii were added in by silly children who are so blissfully unaware of the limits of reality and reason!

I have to say that I am feeling much more quiet and reserved about this particular summer than ever before.  I think the worry and waiting that this spring brought with it in the fields has caught up with me.  The thing I am most ready for is the abundance that warm weather brings in the fields.  The surety of the harvest.  Living seasonally is a wildly fulfilling way of living, but it also means that it isn’t always summer.  Some years, the less giving seasons hurt a little more than others.  But really, these sentiments are all too dim for such a bright and sunny summer morning.  So with the light of summer to hold onto, I will just shake off what is over and done with.  Good-bye spring, welcome summer!

This morning, even though the farmer usually starts harvesting for tomorrow’s CSA and market first thing, we lingered over our cups of coffee talking greenhouses.  This is a topic that often comes up, but it is at this time of year that we think about it most.

When we started farming, we used a small little house constructed of pvc-pipe given to us by a friend.  We covered it it in recycled plastic sheets removed from another friend’s large hoophouse when he was replacing it with new plastic.  It was a fine size for using as a place to start our seeds in late winter/early spring, and that was what our immediate need for a greenhouse was.

Every spring, though, when the winds would rise, and usually before our starts were all planted out, this flimsy little greenhouse would get ripped apart.

The last time this happened, the plastic we were using was finally too shredded to reuse.  And so we had to take all that plastic to the dump:  we could hardly stand it!

Since that time, and always really, we haven’t been able to decide how to fit the use of plastic into our vision of sustainable agriculture, or our original driving principles of permaculture, which aims to create a permanent agricultural system.

There has also, however, always been reality to deal with too, and the truth of the matter is that season extension is pretty important in many ways, the most significant being, we want to provide as much food as we can year-round for our community.  Just as strongly as we believe in sustainability and permanence, we believe in eating locally.  For all of you to be able to continue eating delicious and fresh, locally grown food in the winter months is just as important as is is during the abundance of summer.

And we really, really appreciate farms like our fellow farmer’s Denison Farms at the Saturday market, who with the use of lots of hoophouses are able to bring a wonderful variety of foods year round.

We also, quite honestly, need to be competitive, and every other farm in our area uses some  hoophouses or grows partially on black plastic.  Our crops grown out of doors and in the soil will always be behind those grown in these conditions.  We have a small amount of crops covered in mini hoophouses in the field, using more recycled plastic from old greenhouses, but we could easily  see the benefit of having so much more covered.

Two winters ago, we built this wood framed passive solar greenhouse off the south side of our machine shed.  We didn’t want to hassle with that flimsy pvc framed house blowing around in the spring anymore, and we had reached a time when we needed more space anyways.  The intention with this greenhouse is to ultimately cover it with glass.  For the first year, we again used the plastic we had around.  This year we replaced that with corrugated fiberglass that came from a small greenhouse we helped remove from someones property.  This will be somewhat more permanent until we get all the glass together and installed.  This is the kind of greenhouse we always envisioned.

Inside, we have been able to play around with a layered system, providing multiple uses beneficially.  Underneath the tables we use for starts, we scattered straw innoculated with elm mushrooms.  Last year we used the space to brood our baby chickens at the same time we were germinating most seeds and this added warmth to the greenhouse at a cold time of the year.  This year we switched to water barrels to collect the sun’s warmth and bring up the temperature inside.  We added a wall to the west end and created a mini space inside of the larger space to keep extra warm in order to start our warm weather crops like tomatoes and peppers.

The farmer is experimenting with growing carrots in large pots, has peas growing up the unused wall, already harvested a small crop of bok choy with no flea beetle damage, and has the basil that will stay in the house all summer potted up.  It has been fun and useful and we only which it were bigger.

This morning we started talking in earnest about doing just that, making larger versions of such a greenhouse.  The farmer is tired of me pushing him to consider moving towards getting some hoophouses, but I have always felt pretty stongly that we needed more space in season extension.  So, we are going to draw up some plans and figures and just go with our guts on this one.  To actually build these, we will have to get some funding, something we have yet to do formally in our business venture.  But we feel that it will be worth the extra cost to keep both our idealism and practical business needs happy.  If it seems doable in the end, and the finances are there, we will hopefully be building these this winter!  Then next spring, no matter how long the cool and wet weather seems to last (we ended up starting a fire last night!), we will have a warm and dry–and even spring pest free–place to grow more food.  That is a happy thought!

Filed under: challenges, farm, farming, greenhouse, local food, newsletter, seasonal eating, spring Tagged: farming, newsletter, planting, seasons, spring ]]> http://growingwildfarm.com/2011/05/27/thinking-about-greenhouses/feed/ 0 growingwildfarm greenhouse 1 greenhouse 2 greenhouse 3 greenhouse 4 greenhouse 6 http://growingwildfarm.com/2011/04/23/beginnings/ http://growingwildfarm.com/2011/04/23/beginnings/#comments Sat, 23 Apr 2011 16:03:11 +0000 growingwildfarm http://growingwildfarm.com/?p=934 ]]>

Hooray!  Today marks the beginning of another CSA season, our fifth.  This week we have been thinking back to our first year, the beginnings of Growing Wild Farm.  We were happy to realize that a third of our members are founding members, folks that have been part of this farm experience since the beginning.  Another third have been with us for almost as long, joining in our second or third years, and about another third of you are just starting with us this year or joined sometime last year.

For some of you, the start of another year is old hat and our history is part of your own history of eating with us.  For our new members, though, we realized that some of our story may be unfamiliar, so we thought we would briefly share it today.

So, how did Growing Wild Farm begin?

The seeds of our farm started to germinate  within the first year of our marriage.  We, admittedly, married and started our family while relatively young by today’s standards.  The farmer was just 23 (I was 25) and up to that point we were still pursuing other interests.  When we met, one of us was going to be starting a graduate program in literature and philosophy , the other was focused on making music.  We really didn’t have the kind of clear ideas about how we were going to make a living that many people do.  We were both idealists and at that point, we were happy to be doing what we loved and money was not a concern.

But together, we quickly realized that we wanted to start a family.  Long story short, after starting a family and beginning to grow our own food and becoming friends with someone who had spent time working on a CSA farm out here in the Pacific Northwest, we decided that this was the work for us.  It would fulfill both our need to make a living to support our family, as well as our own personal need to do work that we loved and that held significance to us, all while keeping us together as a family.  Having been introduced to Wendell Berry in college, the idea of local foodsheds had always stuck with me, and I had always imagined living in the country in a self-sustaining kind of way.  Once we began gardening, the farmer quickly found that he loved growing food, building soil naturally, and creating diverse and alive spaces where our crops flourished as well as provided a balanced ecosystem for wild things as well.

We read gardening books and permaculture books and some that pertained to commercial growing, moved here to Oregon, and began looking for land.  In many ways, we were so naive!  We had started our married life in Colorado were we knew we could never afford land, spent time in my home state of Nebraska where land was very reasonable, then moved here knowing that land was not too over-inflated, but it was still high close in to the community we had found in McMinnville.

So while we looked at properties closer to Sheridan and Grand Ronde, much farther away than we wanted, Grandma and Grandpa asked us how we would feel about buying something together.  There were many things to consider, especially since Oregon’s land use laws make it hard for you to have two residences on a piece of land with only one pre-existing home.  In the end, we decided we could figure this part of it out down the road since they would be staying in California for a few more years, and we all agreed it was a good idea.

Time was of the essence since they were selling a home to re-invest in the farm.  I was nearly due with our third child.  They came up for a week or so and there was a whirlwind of looking at properties and deciding on one that week!  It was not the long and drawn out search for our “perfect” property by any means, but it was going to be such a benefit to us all, and we would have some land to start our farm, so we were excited!  So that year we closed on the property on my little girl’s due date, she was born a week later, and we moved in when she was two months old.

The farmer started transforming this place even before we moved, planting our first orchard as soon as the farm was ours, coming out to water them while we coddled our new little baby at our home in town.  The rest of that year we walked the property, drew out a map of what we thought the whole place might look like one day (and we are always surprised, when we pull this out, how things are coming together so much like this first plan!), and we started to envision our business.

Again, we were naive in so many ways!  We knew we wanted to be a CSA farm primarily, while doing our one (at that time) local farmer’s market, as well as selling a little to restaurants.  This model has still proven to be the best fit for us and for a sustainable farm business.  However, not having grown food on such a large scale for production before, just having grown a home garden and selling some of that abundance at a very small Nebraska farmer’s market, we were not fully prepared to begin offering a CSA that first year….we just didn’t know that until after we were knee deep in our first season.

It was very hard and frustrating and, quite honestly, humiliating.  We took our permaculture growing method of sheet mulching and tried to apply it to our larger growing space on soil that was heavy, heavy, heavy clay, sold 50 CSA shares, and got really excited to be living out our dream.  That year, getting vegetables to grow in that soil was like trying to pull teeth that weren’t loose.  It hurt.  We kept our chins up, and worked really hard to meet our obligation to our CSA members.  We bought organic fruit from other farms to round things out.  By the end of the year we were exhausted and relieved to be done for the year.  We even ended farmer’s market two weeks early.

The farmer went back to work landscaping for the winter and we re-thought everything.  The truth was we didn’t want to do anything else at all.  We knew this was the work we were meant to do, we loved it and the life of living on the farm.  WE BELIEVED IN IT.  We knew that nourishing our community and the land we were stewards of mattered.

And so, despite that first year, we went forward.  We rearranged our farm model slightly, slowly building back up to this year, where we are right back to the plan we started with.  We have transformed our soil and are now growing on more land, all of it in good health.  Around our third season, we joked that we had completed our two year internship and that we were starting our business in earnest.  Now, in our 5th year we are happy to have a thriving CSA, two markets to attend with one year round, and some great local restaurants who like to buy our produce when we have it.  The farmer has even been able to retire from landscaping and is now a full time farmer!

We have had many growing pains along the way, but that comes with any kind of good learning.  We have been stretched and molded by the work we have done.  We have grown as our farm has grown, and found a home not only on our farm, but through our farm, in our community.

So, hooray!  Today marks the beginning of another season of eating together.  This year, you will share with us the delicious flavors of each season, of food that tastes unlike anything you can find in the store, full of life and nutrition.  We will welcome you to the farm, we will celebrate together this summer.  Each week, we will see each other and share small news with each other, all while communing together over the gifts of the earth, the beautiful produce grown on this farm.

photo courtesy of Jim Jaillet

That’s what we are, all of us I know; but when it starts to feel like the days are whirling by too fast, I start to feel a real love/hate relationship for this place and e-mail and facebook and the whole world wide web.  Who really has time for it?

We didn’t have a home computer for so long, until just four years ago.  And as much research and reconnecting and keeping in touch and writing about our lives here on the farm (and any other random thing that comes into my mind) as I can do now with such ease, I can’t help but feel a bit of a love affair with those days without.

Even something like getting our farm newsletter together sits me in front of this thing for longer than I would like, while three munchkins race around me and one more either sleeps or nurses in my lap.  And yet, as much as I daydream about taking a sabbatical from this screen, the benefits of it all mostly make up for the time it takes away from moving and breathing and seeing in 3-D.

This year is the first that I have really kept up with this blog, the first where we semi-regularly kept a farm facebook page updated, the first that we gathered a contact list and e-mailed our lovely customers almost every week before farmer’s market; and the truth is, we have seen results.  We have gathered more and more regular customers, and most importantly, we have deepened the connection that these folks have with us.

One of the beautiful things about selling nearly all of our produce to someone we interact with face to face is that we get to talk to them.  We get to know a little bit about everyone, learn from them, be inspired by some, and genuinely look forward to seeing them each week.  Still, sometimes we are busy at market!  And this is good, but it limits talking time.  Our spaces on the computer allows us to share as much as we want…or can find the time for…and this broadens people’s understanding of who we are and what we are doing here on the farm.

It’s a blessing I should be thankful for, and I am.  Just like I am really also thankful for silly places like Facebook where I can share the smallest moment that touches me deeply and gives me pause, because how often do we get to speak with our friends those tiny, but significant, thoughts that we have in passing when the sunlight is just so, or the colors of the world just right, or the space around you so filled with Beauty.

Or Chaos, or whatever, from a good song to what’s for dinner.

It’s just that it is busy sometimes, and I need my space.  That is why I will never, probably, be writing here, everyday; but, building connections through computer time will continue to be significant and important.   When Andre’s father came to snap shots of The Market this week, things had only just gotten started and our table was already well shopped.  All of these things that are keeping us busy, busy, busy…they are all really good things.  We wouldn’t want it any other way.