Summer 2023: From snow and frost to bugs and heat

Farming teaches you that nothing stays the same. Everything is in flux. In early spring in Minnesota (meaning it’s still winter), we look for any signs that spring might be coming. As the bird migration begins, we keep a list of the different warblers and other migrating birds passing through our farm. As the days grow warmer, we welcome the return of the birds who spend the summer nesting and raising young at the farm: the tree swallows occupy the nesting boxes along our fence; the bobolinks nest in the tall grasses and hover in the fields making their unique, robotic calls; and the American kestrels, who nest in a box we erected next to the tinyhouse, are raising their young for the second year. 

In our first three years at the farm, the list of birds we have seen has grown to nearly 100 species. 

We are vegetable farmers in what the USDA classifies as Zone 3b. Simply put, we are trying to grow vegetables in one of the coldest growing zones in the country. It would be redundant to say that the start to our season has been difficult and unpredictable. That’s true every year. What changes are the reasons why it’s difficult. 

April 1 is when we fire up the greenhouse to start the first seedlings. This year, we had to shovel a path through the snow to do that. At night, the temperatures outside dropped into the single digits, while inside, Heather-Marie got to work starting the seeds that will be planted in our 1.5-acre plot once the ground warmed up. 

As we moved into May the snow melted and gave way to muddy, saturated fields. All we could do was wait. The soil in the field was like chocolate pudding. 

We got behind in our planting, but finally began putting plants out into the field. 

We had two frost advisories in two weeks. We had to cover the tomatoes in the high tunnel with cloth (called “row cover”) and hoped for the best for the other plants out in the field. We made it through with few casualties.

And then it stopped raining. And then it got hot. 

Just a week later after frost advisories, the threat of frost was gone and our irrigation system was running nonstop trying to keep plants from overheating. One afternoon, we pulled back row cover to find a section of green cabbage completely scorched from the sun and dry conditions. 

The last week of May, the temperatures were so hot we had to plant in the evenings and early mornings. One evening, we went out unprepared and transplanted Napa cabbage and bok choy as the mosquitoes and blackflies swarmed us. Nothing to do but keep planting. 

With our first delivery day just weeks away, we fell into our routine: Up at sunrise (though the light in the sky starts around 4:30 a.m.), make a smoothie or shove down a trail bar and get out into the field. The app that tracks steps on my phone tells me I average about 14,000 steps a day.

Everything else in our lives is on hold. The yard needs to be mowed. The recycling needs to be taken in. At day’s end, we shed our dirt-covered clothes at the front door like astronauts entering a spaceship, walk into the house and collapse on the sunroom floor, covered in bug bites. 

And it feels pretty good. This is work that matters. This is work that leads to something. We are growing food. We are feeding people. We are building community. And we are doing it as a couple.

Now it’s early June. We have just a week until our first CSA delivery, and we are excited but nervous. This is the largest number of CSA shares Heather-Marie has had since launching her business in 2011. On top of that will be our weekly farm stand and a few other businesses that buy from us.

But we’re ready. Heather-Marie began planning for this season over the winter and has calendars and notes and spreadsheets filled with information about how much she is planting and when she is planting it. The goal is to make sure that each week for the next 21 weeks, there is fresh produce and variety.

When it comes to variety, there are few farmers who can compete with Heather-Marie’s offerings – especially if it comes in purple.

A snapshot of the 2023 growing season

We are also building a farm. Here are a few highlights for this year’s growing season. 

Microgreens. In year’s past, we’ve purchased microgreens from our friend John at Sprouted Earth Farm to give to our members at the start of the season. This year, Heather-Marie decided to try it herself. She’s talked with John and our friends at Farm Sol and has been experimenting with different seeds and different techniques. The best part of this is that we’ve been able to eat the results of her experiments. We are hoping to offer microgreens both to our CSA members and to customers at our farm stand when it launches this July.

Farm stand. Last year, we had so much fun at our farm stand, meeting our neighbors and making new friends. This year, we anticipate opening the farm stand in early July or late June once we are sure to have a good variety of produce. We are also hoping to have an expanded, covered space for the farm stand. We’re excited to have our friends from The Road’s End Ranch back selling their freshly picked strawberries for the first few weeks. 

More farm investments. This season at the farm, we have a few bigger infrastructure projects we are trying to complete. The largest of those is an irrigation system that will run an underground pipe out to each of our plots. Each of those plots will then have its own sprinklers and drip irrigation systems. This will allow us to efficiently water both our vegetables and the cover crops that we plant in beds that we are not using so that we can continue to improve the health of our soil. This project has been two years in the making and comes thanks, in part, to grants from the Carlton Soil and Water Conservation District and Lakewinds Foods Coop.

This fall, we are also building another high tunnel. The one we currently grow tomatoes in is 25×35. This new one will be 30×100. Four times bigger. It is both exciting and daunting to think about all the growing space it will provide us.  It can help us get a jump on spring planting and extend into the fall.  We’ll be able to grow almost all of our tomatoes in this tunnel and maybe even experiment with flowers — and ginger.  So many possibilities. 

Help at the farm. While the early season on the farm is just the two of us, as the season kicks into gear, we get help. Some of our CSA members sign up as contributing members, which means they show up for work days in exchange for a discount on their CSA membership. We are also welcoming a new intern to the farm this season, who is a student in nearby Moose Lake with an interest in sustainability. 

Online store. New for us this season is an online store that has made it easier for us and our customers to place orders. We hope to experiment more with the store this season, including offering the chance for people to place orders for pickup at the farm. Stay tuned for details on this. 

Our customers. Along with our farm stand and our CSA members, we grow vegetables for a number of other customers. This is our third season selling shares to Duluth’s Churches United In Ministry Food Shelf (CHUM). We also supply Mamma Roots food truck with seasonal vegetables for her creative and fun plant-based food truck. We are also excited to be selling produce to a startup project called Food Forward Duluth, a program that provides semi-prepared meals to people in Duluth’s Central Hillside. 

Farm events. This season, we will also be hosting a number of events at the farm. Some will be events exclusively for our CSA members; others will be open for the larger community. We are looking at hosting a yoga retreat at the farm and a flower arranging workshop. We’ll include more information in our weekly newsletters, so make sure to subscribe to our mailing list if you aren’t already. 

Eating locally and seasonally again

So that’s the news from the farm. We’ll begin publishing weekly updates from the farm now that the season is in full gear. 

The other evening, after a long day, we sat at our fire pit and marveled at how fast the spring has gone. Almost without noticing it went from spring to summer. Leaves are on the trees. And the lilacs bloomed almost without warning. And, of course, the bugs. So many bugs. 

And, most importantly, we are eating fresh, local produce again. 

Throughout May, our neighbors (who are CSA members) supplied us with weekly deliveries of wild ramps harvested in their woods, knowing that we did not have time to pick them. We put them in risotto. We made ramp pesto. And maybe, best of all, we put them in scrambled eggs – eggs raised by chickens who live just down the road.

As is so often the case, good, local food tastes best when it’s prepared simply.

Our life; it’s not easy, but as my stepfather Jack says, “We have a rich life.”