Deep Winter Greenhouse Kick Off!

Well our deep winter greenhouse (DWG) is up and growing! We had a fantastic turnout for our open house on October 29 and the first seeds were planted by DWG pioneer Carol Ford, Garden Goddess Greenhouse. Thank you so much to all our partners, supporters, contractors and members! This is thrilling and so important to our farm. We are full of gratitude.

Here is the open house and latest from the greenhouse in a photo update!

The greenhouse pre-landscaping around the exterior.

At the open house engineer Dan speaks about how the passive solar structure works. 

Here's a view of the air outtake at the front of the building, the circulation fan is in the middle, the intake (for hot air) is at the peak (black tiling).

We talk about how the DWG fits into our farm goals and what we plan to grow in it. Winter CSA here we come! Fresh greens during the winter - YuM!

Farmers John and Brooke.

Farmers John and Brooke, Greg from UMN RSDP.

Ribbon cutting time! Farmer John, bro-in-law Andy (construction helper, plus representing Carroll Distributing), Larry (construction helper supreme), farmer Brooke and CSA members Yvonne & Lee.

Thank you to the University of Minnesota Regional Sustainable Development Partnership for making this program possible and helping us move into the future of our farm!

Thank you to our CSA members who have supported us on our journey! We were thrilled to have members Yvonne & Lee sharing the excitement of the day and cutting the ribbon with us!

Brooke, Yvonne and Lee.

Time to talk about planting and sow the first seeds! DWG pioneer/veteran Carol Ford, Garden Goddess Greenhouse, talked about how she plants in her greenhouse, the soil mix she uses and a little bit about growing. Then she planted the first planter with arugula seed! Video on facebook.

Thanks to all who shopped our mini market, came to enjoy the festivities and learn and celebrate with us! The event was very energizing and exciting. Live music was enjoyed by all, courtesy of Dick Kimmel and Stacey Watje. Live entertainment provided by farm cat Loki.

The first planting of arugula is up and off the germination mats! Seeding will occur about every other day until the greenhouse is filled up. Right now there are baby greens and microgreens growing, as we finish setting up the growing space in the greenhouse.

Gutter planters and plastic trays on the germination mats. We are working on setting up the inside structures, farm dog Odin likes to help (in comfort, of course).

The back room will be for storage and soil mixing, etc.

Below you can see some of the gutter planters underneath the germination/planting table.

Thanks go out to event organizers:
UMN Regional Sustainable Development Partnership and the Sustainable Farming Association.

Shout out to our local contractors:
Cedar Hill Homes (Glenn Hauser, general construction); Darin Portner Trucking (excavation/grading work); Nosbush Glass Co. (plexiglass install); NU Current Electric; Pat Faerber Masonry (block work); Searles Well Drilling (water work, directional boring); Heiderscheidt Digging (tiling suppies for air circulation system); Carroll Distributing (construction supplies); Larry Knisley - what would we do without your construction help! Thank to Frandsen Bank for financing the project!

None of the big wigs came, but we got this nice letter from Senator Amy Klobuchar! :)

Cheers! We'll keep sending out updates on facebook and here, as we grow!

Where can you find us next?

Mankato Winter Farmers' Market
Saturday, November 11th 10:00-12:00am, at Drummers Garden Center

Photo Update 3.8.17

Some photos around the farm, this week! It's time to get back into our photo update routine. With nice(r) weather and thawing ground we will be getting more active outside. Dear me! You'll need some pics of the greenhouse plants in the next one - things are growing!

Ragnar's favorite place to hang out these days is on top of the cozy, warm chick brooder. He just sits there and watches when I am tending to them. They are growing fast and have their awkward young feathers coming in.

The piglets were weaned this week. One by one we are winning them over and getting them to flop down for belly rubs. Elsa, pictured, is quite happy to to be done nursing.

We have been busy canning shredded chicken and chicken stock/bone broth. Read our blog post From the Pantry :: March for other kitchen shenanigans.

Canned chicken and broth.

John is gearing up for grafting apple, apricot and plum trees for the farm, as well as teaching a grafting workshop in New Ulm this Saturday. The workshop is tidied up and ready to begin!

The first round of Sponsor-A-Tree signs are finished! We are so grateful for our members' financial support of our growing orchard. For orchard updates check out our Apples page.

Signs for our members/farm fans who have sponsored a tree.

Crazy winds have been defining the last week and the first spring storm rolled through on Monday, March 6th. The smell was delicious, but I'll hold on to winter for a bit longer. Normal temps are good for the orchard trees - breaking dormancy early/bud development ahead of schedule always comes with the threat of frost damage.

Things are growing around the farm already - chives above, rhubarb below.

Rhubarb growth.

Cedar posts for trellising.

Just around the corner is tree planting on our new land!! John and Larry have been busy harvesting cedars for the apple tree trellis system. Below, John has staked out the tree rows on the new land. (The Quonset hut is ours now too!)

Apple tree row staking on our new land.

I have been enjoying hard boiled eggs more frequently - good, easy, healthful protein! Look at those beautiful yolks.

Hard boilers.

 That's all for now, thanks for stopping!

From the Pantry :: March

Fall storage items we are still eating from the pantry:

Winter squash (some are getting wrinkly)
Potatoes (beginning to look a little alien)
Garlic & shallots
Red & yellow onions
Sweet potatoes (bought from another farm)

Summer produce items we are still eating from the freezer:

Greens
Broccoli
Shredded zucchini
Peppers
Peas
Various fruit - rhubarb, strawberries
Other items below these, yet to be discovered...

Side Track!

Redefine what you think of as eating seasonally! YOU define the season, if you start preserving for year-round/extended consumption. Part of this may also include redefining what you think these items may look like - octopus sprouting potatoes, wrinkly spuds and squash. YuM.

It's Pantry and Freezer Clean Up Time

With spring and farming season just around the corner we have been putting priority to cleaning up our pantry and freezer. Focusing on prepping items for our busier times. This is the first time we have been so successful at this, during this time of year and it feels great. 

Potatoes: Our storage potatoes may indeed last us until the summer's new potatoes come in! With our potato stock we have been making twice baked potatoes with the larger, better looking tubers. Along with these we also continue to freeze portions of mashed potatoes.

 Twice bakers and mashers headed to the freezer. This is one way to redefine how we eat seasonally.

Winter Squash: We have butternut and acorn squash in the pantry and because of the wet WET fall they are not storing as well as normal. We have been roasting and freezing portions of puree and I still aim to can some (cubed) before we are done. P.S. Another reason I have really been enjoying this is because I have been adding squash to the dog's food and they love it (well Odin loves it, Hazel tolerates it).

Chicken: We put fifteen stew hens in the freezer in November and we have slowly been putting up shredded chicken and stock/bone broth. The chicken, veggies and herbs sit in the crock for a day, before shredding and canning. Then, the bones, skin, etc. goes back in for another day to make bone broth for cooking and using as a healthful drink (which I also put in the dog's food sometimes). I'll add apple cider vinegar to help extract beneficial minerals from the bones and sometimes I toss in a beef marrow bone to increase the benefits. After it's done I strain the broth and pressure can it (then sort out the 48-hr cooked veggies/skin, etc. to throw in the dog food). ;)

Organs: We always get back our pig organs when we harvest and since we aren't super good at eating them they have sort of piled up in the freezer. While one of us likes liver, the other doesn't, so we have resolved to dehydrating these items (if they don't get put into sausage) for dog treats. This is proving a great way to clean up the recesses of the freezer.

Still on the List

Lard: crank out a bunch of rendered lard. (Try making some soap?!?)

Garlic/shallots: freeze some olive oil/garlic balls; ferment some for holistic farm management.

Zucchini: I always freeze too much! I should crank out some breads to stick back in the freezer.

Freezer excavations: what is hiding at the bottom of the freezer? (Usually way too many frozen peppers.)

Lard, beautiful lard!

What's Missing?

It's a great time of year to check in and see what you are missing - what do you need to preserve more of next season? For us, celery. Darn it! Every year we run out. Okay, I'm going for an ice cream bucket full this year! Also, we need a new salsa to put away, one type is not enough. It would also be nice to have some canned beans.

What's on your list?

Resources & Other Interesting Things...

Why is organic food so *#@! expensive?? | Ali Partovi | TEDxManhattan

Bone Broth, Broths an Stock

8 Bits of Plastic You Can Quit Right Now

A Little Help From Our Friends (and Photo Update)

While I find myself very behind in writing on the blog, everything is in tip-top shape and moving ahead as planned in the field, pasture and orchard. Plants are growing by leaps and bounds. The field is filling with varied hues of greens, with touches of golds and purples. The pasture is alive with squawking chickens and young piglets on the move. As June rears it's head today we are on the verge of CSA and a lovely season with our farm members, what we have been planning for and patiently looking forward to for months!

Tomatoes planted and staked individually.

We are grateful for our weekend helpers!

The weekend was a flurry of people and tasks on the farm. Thank you Steve and Franny for coming down and helping with cutting up the tree, planting tomatoes, mulching and greenhouse progress! Of course it was wonderful to balance the farm work by spending time with great friends. Thank you Nate and Megan for stopping by and bringing morels for dinner!

One bed of peppers with mulch.

We continue to make progress on the greenhouse as time and help allows, and look forward to making use of it this season for curing onions and winter squash. Thank you Larry for coming out a bit on both Saturday and Sunday to help with framing! Farm dog Hazel looks like she is trying to take some credit for helping as well.

The greenhouse framing for the walls.

The beekeepers stopped by to check on their replacement queen in one of the hives. They stop by about every week to 10 days to maintain the hives.

On Sunday we had more visitors coming to check out the farm and piglets, a couple local farm fans, as well as Dustan and Sara, from Sara Beth Photography (Twin Cities) who came down to photograph piglets for a project she is working on.

From the Field

CSA begins in a couple weeks, slated for start on June 17th! We push forward with more succession plantings, weeding, trellising and other task work to get ready for our first deliveries.

Lettuce heads sizing up nicely.

 Lettuce, strawberries, tender early greens and radishes are stars at the beginning of the CSA season.

Red Russian kale - tender and sweet!

 Spinach is a member favorite!

The spinach is coming along so nice!

From the Pasture

It's a little nerve-wracking having avian flu confirmed in Brown County, but our chickens are happy and healthy as can be! They as loud and silly and productive as ever.

Two chickens in the nesting box.

The pullets are now 17 weeks of age and someone laid an egg yesterday! Typically by 18 weeks pullets can start laying at anytime.

Our Buff Orpington and Silver Laced Wyandotte pullets
(young chickens under one year of age.) 

Eggs in browns and blues.

Saving the cutest for last - the piglets have arrived!! May 22-23rd the ladies farrowed and we now have 20 piglets running around blessing us with their cuteness. We are constantly impressed by the instincts of sows and what amazing mothers they are.

Piglets at 9 days - active, alert and going everywhere with mom.

Piglets are active and alert right from day one. They are sticking close to mom and learning along side of them, digging their noses in the dirt.

Baby it's Cold Outside

It has been a while since I posted about farm happenings. The throes of final CSA harvests, apple harvests, family activities, fall canning and projects took hold and the weeks went by. Here are some tidbits from the last month and an update on what has been going on.

Fall carrots were dug with the last CSA boxes and they were big, beautiful and tasty. We put away carrots and parsnips in our pantry, layered in slightly damp sand, to feed us fresh into winter. It is our second year giving this preserving technique a go - hopefully it will be more successful than last year. Hey, dedicating yourself to local, more healthy eating is a learning curve, right?! We learn new tips and strategies each and every year, and we are still figuring out the best storage situations in our basement.

We packed up the last of the CSA boxes mid-October with a delicious diversity of fall veggies. Finalizing the season is always a bittersweet time. We have enjoyed a different pace and other work in the past few weeks.

Week #18 CSA box.

We wrapped up CSA and then we continued to wrap up the apple season with our late fall varieties - Jonathan, Prairie Spy and Regent. The following two photos are the final harvest of the season - we make the most of our "farm trucks."

We harvested over 3,000 lbs of table apples (first quality) this season. You can more than double that weight with our baking apples (second quality)! The pigs enjoyed the spoils of our final harvest as well!

Field season ended with tillage, final harvests of brassicas (broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts), parsnips and carrots; removal of fencing; and the planting of garlic. Garlic planting was very exciting this year as we planted our own homegrown seed.  This is important, because our garlic will continue to be selected year after year and acclimate to our site, improving our stock, as well as saving us money.

Above: preparing for planting by "popping" the garlic - separating individual cloves from 33 lbs of garlic. Below: garlic and shallot spacing marked with our homemade dibbler, garlic laid out for planting. A nice layer of straw tucked these alliums in for the winter. Strawberries are also mulched over winter.

The end of CSA and our major harvest work gave us time to catch up on a little canning, which we were unable to do during the season this year. Homemade spaghetti sauce with local organic ground beef, foraged morel mushrooms and ARF veggies; apple butter; salsas and apple pie filling topped the list. What did you put up this year?

Attention turned quickly to our handful of important fall projects: winter shelter and pasture for the pigs; greenhouse; insulating the chicken coop. Below you can see the footings being put in for the 12'x16' pig barn, which is being built at the high school by a class.

The fencing was completed as the snow moved in and we spent a couple very cold days finishing it up! I am so very excited about this addition to our farm - it is a very important part of our pasture system. This allows for much improved winter and spring conditions (spring is so sloppy wet), separate farrowing areas and a small paddock that may be closed off if conditions require.

Market has continued at the New Ulm Community Market with the last of our apples and it was a great place to feed the need to connect with our community members :) They are still working on building their membership and furthering progress towards opening their doors full-time; I hear they will be having a Christmas Open House event of some type.

Brooke on apple delivery!

What lies in front of us now? Finalizing the planning details for the greenhouse, looking back at the year and planning for next, fall cleaning (my version of spring cleaning) and inside projects. Tweaking and tinkering for next season. Musing on new ideas. Reading, yes, more reading!

Winter shall bring you more animal photos and some updates on what I do during the "off season." As I do my winter work I am super excited to look out the window from my desk and be able to see the occasional pig on pasture :)


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