Crop List: Cosmic Mix, Purple Viking Potatoes, Carrots, Thyme, Bok Choy, Cucumbers, Summer Squash, Leeks, Maybe Sunflowers and/or Tomatoes

The garden is still alive and flourishing without a killing frost.​​ The sunflowers have slowed down, just because we plant varieties that bloom before this time of year. Jed mowed the potato vines on Thursday 9/9 so we should have cured spuds by the end of next week. Our fingers are crossed. We are concerned because the greens are not really laying down and dying! They are fighting to keep growing in this mild weather. So in some ways, we are ready for a frost!
Speaking of curing, the garlic is almost ready. We have begun sorting and cleaning what was harvested into 2 classes: Seed (the biggest and best) and the "Rest of it". The "rest of it" is what we give out in our CSA and sell at the markets. We save about a third of the crop every year for seed. Garlic should start showing up the end of this week or next.
​We put the pigs on new pasture yesterday. They are eating our cover crop from a section of garden that is now in the resting phase of our rotation. It was garden for many years and this spring was planted with wheat, winter peas, vetch, rye, oats and barley to rejuvenate the soil and out compete the weeds. We planted a diverse mix of plants so the soil is offed something different from each plant. The pigs will till it in. Next spring it will then be planted to pasture for the cows and chickens to graze for several years. The pasture grass will grow a deep root system to aerate the soil while the cows give it some extra special goodness with their manure. Eventually it will be garden again. If you pick up at the farm, you can see the pig pen directly south of the veggie shed. The pigs will be running around in growth over their heads and creating trails until they have it all munched down.

We have Breakfast Sausage!! We have been waiting a loooonnnggg time for the butcher to catch up and we are finally restocked with some sausage. The only flavor we have right now is the Breakfast. It is seasoned with white pepper and sage. It comes in "bulk" (not formed in patties) one pound packages. If you know you want me to reserve you some, send me an email and I will put some in the cooler for you with your name on it. I will send as much as I can fit in the coolers. If you have not tried our sausage before, give it a try and you'll taste for yourself why folks are so excited we are finally restocked. We are now taking cash, check and Venmo at the pick up sites.

Crop List: Cosmic Mix, Fingerling Potatoes, Fennel, Holy Basil, Dill, Summer Squash, Cucumbers, Maybe Tomatoes, Sunflowers, Green Beans and/or Sugar Snap Peas

We had a very light frost at the farm on Saturday (9/4) morning. The cucumbers look pretty sad, but they may bounce back. The summer squash looks a bit better and also may still produce. Any day in September without a killing frost feels like a gift in the Tetons! The garden is still growing wonderfully and there is no more frost in the forecast as I type this.
Once September hits folks start asking: How many more weeks of veggies are there? We don't know, Mother Nature is in charge. Our goal every year is to make it 16 weeks. Some years we go longer. At this point I am confident we will make it at least 16 weeks! (In 25 years there was only one year that went 15 weeks, 24 years of shares have been 16 weeks or more!) It really depends on the weather and how fast we can get the garden cleaned out. If the summer squash keeps going, we will keep harvesting it and put off pulling in the carrots and potatoes until we need to. Once we get a killing frost and loose the summer crops we put all our energy into cleaning out the garden. Right now we are just in a holding pattern. Savoring the summer bounty until it's gone and we lean fully into the fall crops.
The cold nights do wonders for the carrots. The longer they stay in the ground, the sweeter they will be when you get them! Cold nights stimulate sugar production in veggies...which is why Cosmic carrots are way better then any you will ever get from California!
Keep checking the newsletter and I promise to update you about how long the shares will go.
We are starting to dig small samplings of the potatoes. What we are distributing now are "new potatoes". The "new" means that they have not cured for storage. The skins are really tender and peel off easily...your fingernail will do the trick. These spuds are meant to be eaten on the quicker side and kept refrigerated until you do so. 
Getting storage potatoes harvested involves a killing frost! After the above ground green vine part of the potato plant freezes it sends a message to the tubers to "suberize". This process toughens up the skin and is what makes a potato "cured" or storable for the long term. If we don't get a timely frost, we mow the vines to kill them and encourage the beginning of the suberizing process.
In non-organic production if the plants do not die naturally from a frost they are desiccated or vine killed with an herbicide.  After a field is sprayed the farmer puts up a lovely skull and crossbones sign to keep people from walking in the field. After the vines are sprayed, farmers are instructed to refrain from feeding them to livestock. The earth has been rendered toxic and dangerous...but in 14 days it turns into food for humans! Potatoes are one of the crops on the Dirty Dozen list of the most sprayed fruits and veggies. 
We put our potato seed in the ground, water and weed them. We treat them with some Biodynamic applications of quartz crystal spray, bison field spray, red tourmaline and horn manure. At some point we may mow them. They are clean real food, and we will never hang a skull and crossbones at the farm...unless we become pirate farmers.

Crop List: Cosmic Mix, Spicy Mix, Arugula, Spinach, Tomatoes, Sugar Snap Peas, Basil, Summer Squash, Cucumbers (Slicer or Picklers), Maybe  Sunflowers, Beans and/or Radishes

I have toyed over the years with writing this newsletter. I try to keep it positive here...teetering on romantic, but maybe you could hear the exhaustion in my voice last week. So I am going for it. Farming is hard. Really freaking hard. 4 o'clock in the morning trying to save a cow's life hard. Not enough time in the day to play with my kids hard. What are vacations? Type of hard. No one has time to cook dinner with all these amazing veggies hard.
Jed works 95 hours a week. Seriously. I just did the math. Not for a week or two, here and there. But sustained for about 6 months. Then he works about half of that in the winter. Outside. I manage to work enough for it to be a full time job, with 3 kids and no childcare...so the kids choose to stay home or join in now that they are older. When they were young they just came with us and it was great...most of the time.
We don't do it for the money. The return on farming is a joke. We are lucky enough to live in Teton Valley but can not afford to build a very modest family home at the farm, so we drive back and forth. Our money is not spent on traveling. The last time we were all away from the farm together on "vacation" was for 3 nights in 2019. We have managed to go camping in the summer once for 2 nights and there was that family wedding in August of 2009 when we left for 4 nights. I'm serious, that's it for summer vacations in 20 years. We went on a 2 week family visit in 2013 in February, just so the kids could go to their grandparent's houses. Leaving is darn near impossible with the animals and plants to take care of.  If we leave and something gets missed, someone or something can die, which can instantly wipe out years or months of work.  Jed and I take turns taking vacations in the winter so we can get some time off, that way one of us can stay to take care of the farm. I think our kids would like us all to be together.
For all the love, blood, sweat and literal tears that we put into growing food we still need to make a living. We go to the markets and people complain about the cost of our food. How much do you think we should make an hour? I figure we make about $12.82/hour. Would you work at a job for 25 years if that was your prospect? There are reasons young people are not getting into farming. The ability to make a living is one of them.
The weeds. OMG the damn weeds. We need to double our payroll just to take care of them, and that is unaffordable.
I am not telling you all this so you send me sweet emails letting me know how much you appreciate what we do. So many of you have already taken the time to do that. We feel the love and gratitude you share, and yes it keeps us going. We want our community to know how hard it is, just like we want to you know your hardships, because we are community. We want folks to stop rolling their eyes about the cost of food after they just stood in line at the market talking about the next vacation they are taking or where they just returned from. We know our food costs more. It is not subsidized. We aren't using chemicals to save labor on weeding. We want to pay our employees enough that they can live here. The farming system in this country needs to burn down and be rebuilt. We know this is not your fault. In fact we know you are part of the solution, because you are here. Supporting us. Reading this. Listening. Thank you.
So why am I writing this totally depressing newsletter? We just need you to know. We need you to know how hard it is. How messed up it is. How much it needs to change. We need you to set your friends straight when they say food is expensive. Yes, it is. That's what it costs, and it should cost a heck of a lot more, but we don't want our food to be completely inaccessible so we try to find a balanced point. But most folks spend more on their phones per year they they do supporting local farmers. We know lots of you are struggling to make ends meet and to keep your housing. Thanks for making us part of your tight budget. We also know so many folks are in much harder situations then us. But like I said, we just need people to know the reality of what we are doing. We just want you to know.
We work more then most, for way less money then most, with more passion and commitment then most.  We are dedicated and will keep going and there is still nothing else we would rather do. Thank you for listening and supporting us.

Crop List: Cosmic Mix, Spicy Mix, Spinach, Sugar Snap Peas, Kale, Cucumbers, Summer Squash, Tomatoes and Maybe Radish, Sunflowers, Romaine Lettuce, and/or Bok Choy

​We may have had a record summer squash harvest. They were heavy and there are a lot of them! Helpful hint...summer squash is the easiest veggie to freeze for the winter. Just grate it in your food processor and then freeze in bags in proportioned sizes. Shredded frozen squash makes great zucchini cakes in the middle of winter. You can also make zucchini bread and easily freeze that!
If you need some Reggae inspiration (don't we all!) and a great song about Cucumbers, please check this out!
https://youtu.be/lL42O2p1nx8 
​We are in the "dog days of summer". As farmers we just keep our heads down and keep going. It is exhausting. I never want to wish summer away, but it always easy to see how working at this pace is not sustainable.
We have our organic inspection on Wednesday of this week. There is so much going on I am keeping the newsletter short! 

Crop List: Sugar Snap Peas, Summer Squash, Head Lettuce, Kale, Basil, Bok Choy, Maybe Tomatoes or Shelling Peas

Let's get the bad news out of the way. We have no Cosmic Mix this week. Our first 2 crops did not fare so well. The 3rd crop of it is looking good! We could have harvested it for this week, but then we would have had another mediocre harvest. We decided to hold off until next week and use our time more efficiently. We think next week it will be big and bountiful!
Pea picking is on! The crew is spending so much time harvesting peas right now. Shell peas and sugar snaps. We know you love them. We love them too. We will never be able to harvest enough to satiate the CSA. They take a lot of time to get off the vines and are one of our more labor intensive crops. We know many peas don't even make it home and are enjoyed on the drive from the pick up.  We even had a farm dog years ago who would find the ripe ones and eat them off the vines. How can that crunch be resisted!
Speaking of crunch...have you noticed the shift in the shares. We are past just leafy greens. The veggies are starting to have more texture, snap and weight.
Water. Everyone is asking us about water right now. We love your concern. As of now, we have water! A "call" was made by the folks out below who have older irrigation rights and get to take the water when they deem it time. The call was "futile" because the water in the creek is not flowing enough to make it to the main artery and then out of the valley. Some years we have to shut off to determine if it will make it out of the valley. But this year with such low levels we did not have to take that break. Our irrigation company, Trail Creek, has stated we may need to take turns using the water because the pressure in the pipes is so low, but we have yet to hear. While this is not ideal and will result in less water, we will manage.
Water, Sun, Air and Soil. These are the elements we survive by. Each is so precious for growing food. I think about each of them in turn. Water is at the forefront right now. The water that comes to the farm is amazing. It is Teton snowmelt. We are so close to the source and the water is so pure because of it. We know it makes a difference in the flavor of the veggies. Often when I think of water my mind goes back to the film "What the Bleep" from 2004. It touches on Dr. Masaru Emoto's studies of how our emotions affect water. He has found that the structure of H2O molecules can change when certain intentions are directed at it. Love, compassion, hatred, anger all change the molecular structure in different ways. I find it fascinating, and completely empowering.
Okay...I'm going to get out there. Quit reading now if you need to.
I like to think about our collective Teton Mindset. If we are walking around saying things like..."It's so dry", "we need rain",  "what a crappy snow year, there's no Pow", "I'm sick of snow, when is spring going to get here?" the water around us absorbs that energy. The water takes it on and moves through our space and out into the world. If the water is receiving the energy of "it's so dry" maybe it receives that message of dryness and keeps it dry.  This is where the empowerment comes in. Our language affects the energy we put out. So in my far out Cosmic thinking, I believe if we change our thinking (energy) to "rain is welcome", "snow is welcome" "spring is welcome" it moves water through our space and sends it out into the world feeling loved by the People of the Tetons. I think the rest of the world could use that love too. If studies have proven that water absorbs our emotions, I believe we should be conscious enough to give it emotions we want to share with the world. I believe if we make an effort to choose emotions and thought patterns to make water feel welcome we can collectively change the weather patterns. And guess what...Even if I am completely wrong, the only thing that changes is you spent some moments thinking about how you address water in our ecosystem. Which seems to me like a win anyway.
So call the water in. Welcome it. Picture rain falling. Smell it in the air. Feel it on your skin. Hear it dancing on the puddles. Take a moment to taste it in your veggies and send it some gratitude.