Vernal Equinox, 2017. The gusts of a cold, strong wind suggest that winter lingers on in northern Minnesota. But the sun also shines today, this first day of spring, and snow melts from the roof. The sap slowly trickles from the waking trees to our sap tanks, and the creek sounds melodious, a surge of water below the ice from recent melts, creating hollowed chambers that fill the Crow with mysterious and delightful sounds (sounds that a prick-eared puppy, eyes focused as a fox, tilts his head back and forth at in endless curiosity). Today the sun crosses the celestial equator on its way north along the ecliptic. All over the world, days and nights are equal (at least approximately so). Given how unequal much of the human habitation of this world insist it remains, the confounding political times and confusing nature of people, there is something about this celestial equality that sounds beautiful to us.

Amidst the madness of these times, we continue to carve out our quiet footprint on this earth, a beautiful boreal land where our farm and sugarbush take shape in the form of a livelihood filled with the duality of hope and frustration, worth and hard work, play and sacrifice. This season, we begin our focus on maple syrup expansion, with fall plans for new lines that access a mostly untouched 40-acre parcel, and this spring, we tap additional trees, Cree taking on role of sap collector for the 100 new bags hung in lieu of mainline access, the dips in the land not always working in our gravitational favor.
 
While expansion brings the potential for more product, additional sales, we find ourselves worrying about the season, whether it will be kind to us or not, the return on investment felt in a short order of years or internalized for a decade. That is the nature of farming, made more risky in the face of a changing climate, where our trees uncharacteristically woke up in mid-February during the week of 50-60 degree temps, which followed an earlier thaw in January. We do not pretend to know the long-term impact these early freeze-thaw cycles have on the sugar maples, but we have seen the short-term impact on other species in the bush - the frogs that wake early from melted vernal pools, only to be deceived by the return of freezing temps, the vibrant choral sounds quieted as the population seems culled. Over the coming  decades, will the trees and frogs adapt? Or will the composition of species simply change? We ask these same question of ourselves. Will we adapt? Will we change? The questions, when posed to the human species, takes on more meaning, more metaphor.
 
While our 30-year sugaring history (mostly recorded before our involvement by our mentor Phil) provides context to feel anxiety about the season, there are far too many nuances and ecosystem complexities that make or break a sugaring season to suggest we should anticipate a poor year. Overall, we have hope and are in high spirits. Our trees are healthy, the cold that has followed the thaws seem to have rejuvenated the trees, and the bush sits in the highlands, an area that is colder and snowier than the surrounding lands, offering protection, insulation, an insurance policy of sorts. That chapter - whether we have a good or poor season - is yet to be written. 
 
For now, we continue to plug away in preparation for the first sap run (we technically already had an early 300 gallon sap run, but because the temperature swing was a 45-degree change overnight, it now sits as a “sapsicle” in the bulk tank). We look forward to long nights stoking the evaporator, little to no sleep (which does something good for the soul), the smell of wood and heat mingled with brisk spring nights under the dark sky, brilliant stars, as we have long talks or work in silence, listen to classical    music (we were never fans before Phil but now we are), the occasional hockey game, French Canadian accents making the game more endearing to us (or perhaps that is just Jason who brings out his excellent Jacques Lemaire accent whenever a hockey game comes on). But most often, it's just us and the wind, the crackle of fire and mating calls of the saw-whet and barred owls, the occasional northern lights that sweep the sky.
 
We reflect often on the duality of this livelihood - the reward of what works and the frustrations felt by what does not - coupled with the increasing risk that the farming community, and other natural resource based businesses face. We reflect upon this world, this very confounding time, and find that we can’t decide if staying put on this footprint of a farm and sugarbush, work in the woods and on water, trying to do good with our relationship to the land and people and food, will be our peace amidst the confusion, or if it will be our undoing.
 
We think about losing the madness we often feel by heading over the mountains, to begin again, the west a powerful force that is always calling Cree home. But after deciding to not apply for an ideal Colorado job, one that could have offered the opportunity for limited dual residency to continue some of our enterprises in Minnesota, we understood with an elevated clarity, that this chapter too, the writing of our farm, is not finished. The west could have provided much that we crave. But so too, could it have diminished the values that drive our purpose - the connection to land and seasonal cycles of nature, working our enterprises together in a loving marriage, deep and meaningful relationships with those who support us, making a living from the land. The idea of sending Jason home alone to manage “operations” in Minnesota lost all meaning to us. The Colorado job felt right, the timing, and ultimately our desire, was wrong...a telling tale for our future.
 
So we continue to write this book, leaving us with a combination of emotions - resolve to figure out what our next chapter of the farm and sugarbush looks like (we do not think it is more of the same), relief to not give up on this beautiful little life and livelihood we've created here, sadness to have bypassed change and a move back west as Cree still senses that she will never fully feel like herself here, and acceptance in the fact that she must continue to try, and that effort, one she is familiar with over the past decade, has in its own right, been very rich and rewarding.
 
With this elevated clarity, we plan for the future, think creatively about niches for our enterprises, and  feel positive going forward. Finances will keep change somewhat contained, and time is needed to learn and explore, but we’ve got some ideas simmering, not quite ready to breathe air on yet, but that are keeping us up at night. For now, we approach this season much the same. We will continue CSA, the changes we made last year had a needed, positive impact that gives us energy to continue to be vegetable producers. We thank those of you who stuck with us through the changes, the most notable, a shift to Saturday delivery. We will continue with this delivery day, and hope it will continue to work for you, and for others we encourage to join our farm. Sugaring will see some expansion, which feels really good, and with hopes for good production, our maple syrup may find it’s way into a few new  markets to include a couple mountain markets in Colorado (good for our quality of life to do some business out west, Minnesota is after all, the most local it gets for syrup given our states western edge of maples), and in a lager at the request of our very local Castle Danger Brewery!  We will continue with laying hens for eggs, spring transplant sales, and wreaths, three of our smaller but highly beloved enterprises of the farm. We hope to increase our value-added products - jams and jellies, canned and pickled vegetables - for Julebyen and other off-season markets, and we hope to do more direct sales of vegetables, something we had good intention of last season, but given our introvert nature, didn’t have an efficient communication system set up to actively reach out when we had excess product (it may be time to be better at Facebook, something only Jason has dipped his toe in and Cree has long lacked a desire for, given how much time she spends on a computer for other non-farm work). And finally, we hope as we always do, that the 2017 fishing season will be a good one and that Jason can find his way, amidst the hectic nature of our lives, onto the lake more often and when the fishing is good (last season was a very poor year with little fish to market due to a collision of perfect storms,  literally, and two emergency surgeries in New York for our greatly loved and cared for cattle dog, Ruby Mountain, right when the fishing season got good). 
 
Given these descriptions above, perhaps it seems that little is changing. We go about this season, much the same as the season before. There is a comfort in continuity. But so too, do we wear our values on our sleeves, they are too great to fit in our chests, and constantly seek metamorphism to ensure that the decisions we make are aligned with our values, taking us in the right direction. For this to happen, change is constant in our lives - a slow and steady movement. Jason thinks that perhaps we will “arrive” some day to that place of contentment, a life made complete by that which works. But Cree is not so sure it works that way, at least not for people like us. It seems that it is the acceptance of this tension, the acceptance of the constant duality of our lives, that allows us the contentment we seek. With age, we grow more accepting. 
 
On a more urgent note, in the duration of this writing, the sap run went from a trickle to a pour. The sun and its great power to warm is stronger than the gusts of today's winter wind. It is the vernal equinox, the first day of spring, a day of celestial equality and hope that inspires a personal kind of reflection. But with 1000 gallons of sap now collected, it is time to put down the pen. Our real work has begun... 

The spring planting season bares a burden on farmers that is difficult to describe. It is a beautiful but stressful dance, bringing a season to life yet battling the conditions that hold it back...keeping seedlings and transplants alive and strong against the fluctuations of temperatures and frosty nights...working the field to prepare it for planting while holding off, requiring patience for it to drain its wetness, not wanting to cause damage to the tilth and structure of the soil...wanting and at times needing to plant, the transplants demanding new ground, more nutrients, but being delayed by weather and a too cold clay that is only ready when it's ready.

We’ve experienced our share of burdens already this spring; the season to date has not been a simple or efficient one. We feel the weight of this challenge; an overwhelming anxiety that we seek certain relief from. Is this spring harder than last, when we battled variegated cutworms and significant flooding? Maybe not in the physical sense. But emotionally, we feel a bit battered this year. The extremes of our weather patterns, a by-product we believe, of far greater issues we face worldwide that will become increasingly more difficult for farmers who work with a nature that always bats first, are a challenge that takes its toll. It feels less about the physical impact of the individual year (though tell that to us in the day-to-day thick of things!) and more about cumulative effect; three difficult springs in a row is a lot to endure. We feel it. Our farmer friends feel it. We know some who faced severe flooding last year who did not recover, as well as farmer friends in southern MN who dealt with severe drought, who have given up this year. It is a tough time for farms. A scary time even, as we hedge our bets against a climate that evolves with more risk.     

But we do endure it. As much as there is hardship, there is also life! There is no question that things are significantly delayed this season, but if we could simply rid ourselves of clocks and calendars, look to our land as the bearers of time, we do not feel behind. Rather we plant crops now with the Marsh Marigolds, lovely yellow spring blooms that parallel our planting season from year to year. This hasn’t changed despite they bloom (and thus we plant) two weeks later than normal. While we don’t feel in sync with the calendar, we feel in sync with our landscape and wildlife that surround us. We have trees, some birch, ash and sugar maple, slower to wake-up than the aspen, red maple, and balm of gilead, that are just now pushing out leaves. The forage is finally greening up. The woodcock has just returned. We saw our first baby fawn (they must have been born awhile back but we haven’t seen any until this morning which is weeks later than normal). The scent of lilac finally fills our senses; the truest indicator of planting season!

Beyond the natural plant and wildlife of our landscape, there is growing life at the farm as well. After finally seeing the land dry up enough to work it without fear of damaging it, and the threat of frost seemingly past, we have made tremendous progress with planting these last two weeks. We are about 75% planted and continue to work hard with each day. The strawberry rhubarb, 60 crowns that laid dormant for an excruciatingly long time (we wondered if they died) finally surfaced! The spring greens (lettuce, kale, and mesclun mix) are growing, albeit slowly, but are growing none-the-less.

As for the best news of life on the farm, we are finally keepers of chickens! We now raise 99 Bowven ladies who grow and eat and poop and lay eggs at the farm, adding fertility which is life in and of itself. Bringing the chickens onto our land in early May when we yet had snow, wet, and dormant conditions was a difficult transition for us being new to chicken husbandry. So far, we seem to be passing the test having sadly lost only 1 chicken. With the greening of forage and the land drying up, we are now able to move their ranging coops on a daily basis, which has made all the difference in the happiness of our birds and our ability to feel good about bringing them to our farm. The chickens have added to our overwhelmed nature this spring (100 chickens is a lot of chickens!), but they’ve also given us a lot of enjoyment and a certain happiness. A farm feels right with animals. We appreciate the cooing.    

It is all extraordinarily delayed; things are growing slower than normal. But it is happening. The land, the farm, even we are waking up! The tinges of summer, a couple hot, humid days last week, remind us that hope is well alive at Chelsea Morning Farm and that greener days are ahead.     

Photos from left to right (top row): 1) Tasty Jade cucumber seedlings germinating in the high tunnel, 2) A close-up of our Bowven laying hens when we first brought them to the farm in early May, 3) The laying hen shelter complete with mesh fencing for good air flow and polycarbonate roofing for additional natural light. (Second row): 4) Cauliflower tranplants in the field, 5) Our secret garden raised beds with lettuce greens growing, 6) Kale growing in the high tunnel. (Third row): 7) Our Bowven's on greener pasture, 8) Both laying hen shelters which have 50 birds in each and get moved daily, 9) Red Express, Tendersweet and Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage with Napa Chinese cabbage under white cloth remay to help organically-control flea beetles and peppers planted just beyond the remay.  

A lush, beautiful snow falls today, hiding the impending signs of spring that a-wait just around the corner, instilling relaxation in the quiet white charm of Chelsea Morning Farm. The snow is good for the sugar maples, good for the dry landscape we entered winter with. It is good for our psyche; so much to prepare and do for the growing season that time, whether real or simply perceived by a winter made a bit longer with another snowfall, is a blessing. The list is mounting, spring is almost here and with it, a flurry of activity as we prep for the flow of sap, the birth of seeds, the thaw of land, the welcoming back to water as ice sheets no longer impose danger to a boy and his boat. But not yet! Today, we hunker in and relish another snowfall. Today, time slows down. Or does it...

It is a wet snow, the taste of mist in the air. As we walked in the midnight clear, the snowfall done, the landscape a serene and utterly quiet loveliness that brings pause to all the unspoken life questions, we are aroused by the clean, moist scent of water mixed with mud, soil coming alive as the frost slowly moves out of the earth, moving quickly to the scent of trees soon to bud, life emerging from winter dormancy; a rich, damp and undeniably alive scent. There is darkness to the winter yet, but spring is moving in, adding voice to the earthy darkness. Time is not slowing down; our clocks spring ahead. A quickening is before us as we prepare. Our list is long.

It is an exciting, if not overwhelming time, for the farm. We order seeds, contemplating new, improved varieties and added diversity. Will our soil handle our new crop choices, Sorrenti broccoli-raab, Golden Nugget squash, Antohi Romanian peppers, Vitaeverda cauliflower, Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed lettuce (how could we deny a name like that)? Will our season be long enough to ripen the Blacktail Mountain watermelons, an heirloom variety of high-altitude Idaho, a season with similar constraints to our own? Will the new Defiant tomato defy our landscape, a farm of the far north, or will they defy us? We enter every season with the same questions, the same concerns. We farm on the edge. We farm with faith. We enter each season wiser from the previous years’ experience, more confident in our decision-making, better able to read the land and observe the ecosystem in response to what it needs of us, more aware of what we ask of it. Yet humility remains our constant companion.

The land was good to us last season, an amazingly bountiful year loaded by crops that we eagerly passed on to CSA members, with a soil that felt rich, dark and soft. We survived the flood, water covering our crops, an overwhelming thankfulness to what could have been bad. We recovered from the cutworms and hope that this colder winter sends them back to the southern reaches of our state where they belong. We feel a deep desirous wish for similar abundance and luck this season. We do our part as farmers, cultivators of the earth, adding compost, analyzing soil, rotating crops, to make it so. We focus on land health, building land resiliency, a necessity in this time of changing climate, new trends. We focus on time, the long-term and day-to-day commitment it takes to be competent farmers; Jason will be limiting his off-farm work to very minimal if any hours and will farm full-time this season, a rewarding and necessary change as the work of a growing farm demands more with each passing year. Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So we make this change; financially scary but right in every other way, and we place great expectation on it. In this decision, we have met a goal; one that has been a long time coming.

We take full advantage of this snowfall, spring visually hidden by a winter wonderland, staying inside to work on CSA decisions and communications. We anticipate tapping of the sugarbush to be at least a week out, seed-starting in the greenhouse about two. We work on our farm financial plan; investing income into wealth generating expenses, not necessarily paper wealth, but biological wealth. We begin the record-keeping and paperwork for organic certification. We attended the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Services (MOSES) farm conference. We read Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web. We take on new work opportunities; Cree is serving as an Agricultural Disaster case manager for farmers who were deeply affected by the flood last June, a short-term position that provides immense challenge and thus reward. We continue to explore livestock; laying hens and sheep. With the mentorship of farmers David Nortunen and Chris Duke, we create a grazing plan for our land, something that will help us make decisions about whether livestock is right for our landscape and life; a slower way to make decisions, but it adds clarity to our process. We want our decisions to be right. What would young farmers do without mentorship?

All these activities lend themselves towards a farming season that is upon us. We grow excited about its potential. We grow excited to reconnect with you, the members of our farm. We hope you will join us for another season of growth, another year of journey towards the bountiful rewards that we reap from the land.   

As I type and watch the sky darken with rain clouds, a certain desperation fills my senses. Rain will be a blow to an already soaked landscape. My hope is that the clouds pass with only minimal rainfall. Better yet, they simply pass. Before sharing news from the farm, I ask you all, particularly our Duluth and North Shore CSA members, is everyone okay from the flooding? We have members, over 100 families, scattered throughout Duluth and the North Shore, many whom live in some of the hardest hit areas. Please know that as we deal with our own heartbreaking loss due to the fire in Colorado, along with fears from the impact our farm will feel from the flooding, that we deeply feel for any of you directly and indirectly affected by the massive amount of water our region experienced.

There is destructive patterns hitting our country hard this year and unfortunately, these patterns are extending themselves to our farm and the farms of our partners who supply specialty crops to our CSA. This is not the positive news that I would love to share right now. But know that despite these patterns, there is hope. That we feel and see hope on a daily basis, whether seeing the bean and beet rows emerge intact from the lake that was our field, the gorgeous rainbow that filtered over all of our skies on Wednesday, the yearling twin moose calves I’ve seen with two different mama’s making me believe that the easy winter was kind to the declining population, the reality that we will enter July not in the drought of our past five years, the fact that there will likely be strawberries when just days ago, the season felt sunk. Hope is a treasure to a farmer; it is what keeps us going.

Variegated Cutworms and Forest Tent Caterpillars

The first damaging news to share is the destructiveness that caterpillar species are imposing on our crops this year. We suspect that you may be aware of this challenge due to the news articles that were highlighted in local papers and the egg masses many of you likely found on your own homes. Variegated Cutworms, Yellow Striped Armyworms, and Forest Tent Caterpillars have invaded the fields and forest of NE MN. The Variegated Cutworms and Yellow Striped Armyworms, new species to northern MN, are nocturnal and live at or below the soil line making them hard to find. Unlike the other cutworm species that climbs the stem of plants and cut it off at the base leaving it to die, the Variegated Cutworm and Yellow Striped Armyworm, along with the Forest Tent Caterpillar, feed on leaves consuming most of the plant material leaving little left for the plant to survive. For forest species, the trees are big enough to survive the defoliation. In vegetable crops, particularly young, freshly germinated plants, the survival and recovery rate is low.

This is the first time we’ve experienced this destruction which leaves little room to know what to expect as the caterpillars continue to munch their way into pupation. What we do know is that we are NOT alone. Our network of Lake and Cook County farms have been communicating around the issue for more than a month; advising on attempts to combat it, group sourcing organically-approved controls, and sharing outcomes and the emotional impact that this has had on all of us. In addition, we have checked in with Food Farm, Stone’s Throw Farm and Northern Harvest Farm, CSA’s south of Duluth, and they are also in battle with a reported loss of over 600 broccoli plants and greenhouse crops at Food Farm. No, we are not alone. But that is little condolence as we think about our members and the immense desire to provide you with the best and abundance of crops. 

So what are we doing about this? Lots! We have not quit the battle with this army of worms. Our main defense is hand-picking caterpillars off crops and keeping an organically-approved treatment regimen utilizing Btk and Pyganic. Before planting our 2000 tomato plants, we picked off around 6 to 20 caterpillars per plant before putting them in our field. When we planted squash and cucumber seeds, we found a cutworm in nearly every other hole we dug and destroyed them. Currently, our lettuce and other spring greens, one of our proudest crops year after year, is being hammered the hardest. We pick and pick, hoping to gain an edge on this fight, but the greens are currently our losing crop. In a 2-day window of picking, we easily found 40 caterpillars in every 4’ row; many of them so tiny and hidden in the soil that the population returns within a couple days. What we are planning to do this evening is night pick; since they are nocturnal feeders, we will wake after midnight and pick by headlamp to see if we have a greater impact on their population. As if farmers weren’t tired enough!

The Btk and Pyganic treatments are naturally-derived and organically approved, listed by the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI). We are being proactive with these expensive and time-consuming treatments, staying on top of a schedule that is made difficult due to rain (which washes the treatment away). As organic farmers, we are pleased that there are some controls that we can utilize to help the combat. These controls won’t kill the pests in whole, but will hopefully knock the population back just enough to let us get ahead and get us through the season with less loss of crops. That said, as organic farmers and one’s who practice Holistic Management, our goal is to not simply replace nasty chemical controls with more benign or naturally-derived chemicals, but to better understand the organism and it’s role within the ecosystem, so that we can disrupt it’s lifecycle and habits in order to minimize the damage. Forest Tent Caterpillars and Variegated Cutworms will prove difficult at best with this holistic approach, but this quest for knowledge and understanding is the ongoing story of an organic farmer’s life. All in all, we will continue to be proactive and vigilant. Our main hope will be a normal, cold winter that pushes the Variegated Cutworm back to southern MN where they have natural predators (they typically can’t survive the winters of NE MN) and for the 10-year cycle of Forest Tent Caterpillar to hit its peak (possibly next year) and begin to decline for another quiet decade.

Flood Impact

As if our fight with caterpillars wasn’t trying enough, the flooding definitely dealt another blow of harsh and risky reality for the farm and its members. Given our location along the North Shore, we don’t think it will come as a surprise that we were hit hard with water. We received close to Duluth’s rainfall at 9.71” with all roads around us closed due to wash-out or flowing water. At midnight on Tuesday evening, the field was under water. We went to bed in a dramatic state, fearing that all crops would be lost.

As we watched the water recede the following day, to our great surprise, many of our crops held. We believe this is directly due to production and management choices we made this season to improve our ecosystem function to include sub-soiling our land, adding 30 yards of compost, and raising our crop beds (we will share more about these highlights in the future). The field is currently too wet to fully inspect each crop; to work in a field this wet will do more long-term damage to the soil than what the flooding itself caused. For now, we look out to see rows of crops, stunted and waterlogged, but rows none the less. From this point on, the real test will come as the plants decide if they can weather this storm or will succumb to root rot and fungal disease, common to flooded fields and prolonged periods of wetness. Our hope is the plants will weather the storm. That life isn’t going to throw us more than we can deal with this summer. That we have positive outcomes out of a tough start to a season.

We are hopeful! And with that hope, the rain clouds that threatened when I started this post have passed with only a nominal shower. The sun has come out. Farming is a risky business; it’s a beautiful thing to have our CSA members sharing the risk with us!

A cool April morning, chill in the air, reprieve for the sugar maples from the warm, sunny days of an early March thaw. We watch our land wake up. We see the slow sap trickle downhill towards collection. We hear peepers on the pond, Crow Creek flowing. The dirt is drying out. We feel a sense of enthusiasm mixed with concern for a season that breaks weather rules for what we have come to expect of our North Country. Days ago, anxiety over a diminished syrup season. But today, we look to the week ahead with cautious enthusiasm and hope. Freezing temperatures return to our nights while days are warm; ideal conditions for a sugar operation. The sugar maples and the sugar makers recharge in the anticipation of sap flow and the delicious boil towards maple syrup.

While we do have hope for sap this week, we do not expect a miracle run this season; a tough year for all sugarmaker’s in MN and WI who have worked extra hard for little to no sap. We feel blessed for what we’ve been given and what may yet come. Our sugarbush is high in elevation and held onto its snow later than lands around us; we are consistently colder than most areas. As the spring progressed, we knew that if anyone could get sap, we could, and we were fortunately correct. While currently at 25% of syrup from our average years, a tremendous economic loss that we can barely comprehend, we at least have some syrup. Farming friends in WI have had none.  While we won’t have our traditional presence in Mount Royal Grocery of Duluth or Buddy’s Mercantile of Two Harbors, nor will be able to stock new shelves at the Whole Foods Pantry in Ely as we had hoped, we will be able to take care of the syrup needs of our CSA members and this feels good! Please know that every time you eat a pancake smothered in our syrup this summer, that you are one of few enjoying pure, fresh maple syrup from the stoic and beautiful maple trees of our region. What an awesome thing!

As the syrup season soon comes to an early close, we will turn attentions towards our farmland and vegetable production. With great enthusiasm, we make plans for our 2012 CSA season. Onions, peppers and tomatoes are already started with cole crops of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower soon to follow; thousands of babies we nurture strong to eventually turn loose in the heavy clay that is our soil. While the warm spring has caused havoc for syrup enterprises, it is hard to not let the early spring fill one’s senses with a contagion of hope and optimism. More, our winter was spent better understanding our land’s ecosystem and engaged in holistic, regenerative education around land health. While we consider ourselves lovers of lifelong education, we never anticipated the amount of knowledge we would acquire this winter. From this knowledge, we feel empowered to try new approaches and do new things.

For example, we are searching to buy a chisel plough (or sub-soiler) as a sustainable method to break up compacted clay layers which allow plant roots to scavenge deeper for nutrients. We will create greater raised beds to aid water drainage; an ongoing issue for us farming on clay. We will focus compost hilling around crops that are heavy feeders such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower in hopes that we can see better production this season. We are incorporating a foliar feeding schedule of organic fertilizers (fish, kelp, and other natural products) to balance the nutritional needs of our plants. Through this plant health approach, we aim to increase the amount of beneficial sugars produced in our plants that make their way to our soil through plant root exudation; something that only healthy plants produce. These sugars are food to the unimaginable amount of life that exists below the soil surface. That life, in return, is what creates stable organic matter to continue to keep our plants healthy. With our efforts, we hope to help close this loop!

We are focused on keeping our soil covered as much as possible with cover crops that aid soil fertility. In particular, we plan to utilize a cover crop of ‘tillage radish’ (a field of daikon radishes) mixed with yellow sweet clover in the adjacent field for which we will prepare this year for future vegetable production and rotation. The tillage radish with its thick, penetrating taproot will break up and aerate clay layers while the yellow sweet clover’s long fibrous roots will stretch deep, fixing nitrogen and giving microorganisms something to eat which eventually, through the miraculous process of waste elimination, builds organic matter in the soil.

And finally, before we plant the field in radish and clover, we will welcome new life to the farm! This spring, 100 chicks will arrive and will be pastured on the field this summer, eating the hay crop and releasing rich, nutritious manure, adding fertility to an organic farming system that thrives when animals join our human efforts to improve the land health. With hope for healthy chickens and good production methods (and a Ruby Mountain cattle dog whom we must teach to care for and not eat our new babies!), we will begin offering egg shares this coming winter.

These new developments, coupled with our cultivating tractor bought last season and our never-ending quest to be good, competent farmers is driving a certain excitement and enthusiasm around farming this season. This positive emotion after last season’s tough growing conditions is exactly what we need. Farming, a difficult trade so dependent on weather and nature being on your side, requires a certain eternal optimism. We are happy to report that our spirits are high!

Cree and Jason Bradley