Happy June (tomorrow)! A few quick updates before we hop into some big news!
The bees are off to a great start. We added three new packages and caught two swarms, so we currently have five colonies out foraging and starting on the season’s crop of honey. Plant a flower, thank a bee!
Sweet potatoes, corn, onions, potatoes, winter squash and more are in the ground. Planting is one of the busiest times of year, but it’s fun to see all the green shoots popping up everywhere after a winter of dormancy. And we’re excited to start eating!
The ten chickens and four ducks that we added to our flock this spring are quacking and thriving. They’re not laying eggs yet, but they will be before we know it!
Okay. Let’s move onto the biggest update: we bought a farm!
Buying a farm wasn’t our (immediate) plan, but some friends in Kingston decided to sell their property, and it was an opportunity we didn’t feel like we could pass up. It’s a very special place with plenty of room for us to grow and expand without (hopefully!) being too overwhelming. There’s pasture and garden and orchard and a forest and wetland and a pond with a beaver in it, and we feel very lucky that we get to be the stewards of it for many years to come. We have lots of dreams about the things we’ll be able to do and grow, but for this season, we’re going to plant the garden and maintain what’s there, and observe how the seasons pass before we decide in what ways we want to grow it.
As with all good, big things, we’re excited and nervous.
One of the things that feels both the most daunting and fulfilling about this opportunity is finding outlets for the increased amount of food we’re going to be able to produce. Because this year is a big year of transition for us, we’re sticking with the (relatively) low maintenance storage crops we’ve always done, but we’ll be excited to expand in future years. Local food has always been complicated. It’s fresher, tastier, more nutritious, and grown in ways that better support the natural environment. But it’s also much more expensive to produce: because it’s smaller scale and because the way we grow that protects our soil and our pollinators require so much more labor, we necessarily don’t use some of the automations or machinery that would make it go more quickly. It’s impossible to have one without the other. Local food often simultaneously cannot be sold for enough money to pay the poeple who grow it a living wage, and is also too expensive for many people in the community to buy it.
We don’t have the answer to any of this. We’re lucky to have off-farm jobs that allow us to do the work without making a living wage - because we enjoy it, because we think it’s important.
Many farmers participate in their local farmers’ markets or have CSAs. Another way many of us sell our produce is through Kitsap Fresh - an online farmers’ market with pickup points around the county, or offering home delivery. Many of you bought our sweet potatoes there last fall - thank you! We’re not listing anything there this time of year, but many of our fellow farmers are! The online market is open every weekend, and your order is ready for pickup or delivery the following week. Your support helps keep this marketplace available, farmers have an additional place to sell their products, and you get some yummy food out of the deal!
If you made it all the way through that: thank you. Here’s some baby goslings that hatched right on the pond at our new farm for your efforts.
