HPF friends, hello! Whatta week. The photo above is the sun shining through the rain, the calm after the storm, the benefit reaping after the pain. Okay, that's a little dramatic. Here's the story. 

Our neighbor's corn field is about 30 feet from our flower and veggie fields, and we have a little bit of a buffer (need a hedgerow made with various native bushes and trees) but not much because we've only been here for a few months, etc. Anyway, he's just farming the way he knows how and it's that time of the year - when you spray the young corn rows with herbicide that targets and kills all the broad leaf weeds like dandelion and lambsquarter and pretty much all of our flowers. He sprayed on a calm evening and tried to keep the boom low, and be conscious of our transitioning to organic field. Inevitably on our windy ridge, we got a little bit of spray drift, especially in the lower part of our field nearer to his.

This is what almost all the newer baby plants looked like. Little yellow spots appeared everywhere over the course of two days. At the time we didn't know that he had sprayed. Maybe he did it in the night? Anyway, as you can imagine, we were freaking out just a little! What is this disease or fungus that's spreading through our field like wildfire?! Is everything going to wilt and die? I sent out emails to the UW and UMN, and called in all my resources and connections to help us figure it out. We had visions of our fields that we're working so hard to cultivate and build soil and improve beneficial insects and native life being so far gone that we just couldn't farm them this year, such an important one. And then there's paying our mortgage. 

It's hard to convey the depth of feeling, and the complexity of issues around this whole situation. It's touchy. Our neighbor farmer is doing the best he can. He's helped us and we've helped him, and we're trying to be good farm neighbors. With a very different philosophy and methods. Our little 16-acre oasis on a windy ridge is unusual in our "neighborhood" of 300 and 400 acres of conventional corn and soybeans, and dairies of varying sizes from 50 cows to 5000.

Sigh. It's complicated. There's also a possible setback to our organic certification. 

What should we do? Our answer was feed the plants tons of fish emulsion frequently and plant a better buffer. Oh and send in our plant tissue to UW for an analysis of nutrient deficiencies,etc. The plant babies have perked up already. And we had a few good soakers yesterday that washed away much of the residue. 

Really, we just continue doing what we're doing. Farming, using organic methods. We have no choice; we're all in on this farm dream. 

We continue to try to build bridges and offer an alternative to the norm.

Today is my one-year anniversary working for MOSES (Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service). I'm an organic specialist and I answer calls from all different kinds of farmers in many different areas, and many different places along the sustainable farming spectrum. It is my privilege to talk to so many farmers, and hear their stories, joyfilled or heart-breaking. As I learn more and more about organic certification regulation and reality, I realize more and more: organic agriculture drives conventional agriculture. Conventional agriculture has changed in whatever little way it has because there are brave, innovative, hard-working farmers instilling change on their plot of land. Be it 8500 acres of corn, wheat and sunflowers on the Kansas high plains (talked to him yesterday about grain storage), or 3 acres of diversified market produce in Ohio (talked to her this morning about organic certification forms). 

It is our privilege to be a little part of this community. We will continue to do the best we can.

And then there are the flowers. 

And the baby watermelon?! Earl's little hand gives you perspective even though he's in perpetual motion in the field.

Be well and happy this beautiful July! Stay tuned for deets on a "Come meet Humble Pie Farm" part-ay!

xoxo
J,M+E

Good week to you dear friends of HPF! Hope you're having a lovely one. Our first CSA deliveries went out yesterday and we're beginning to deliver to all you. We're trying to be wise and not over-commit, even though we'd love to offer flowers all around if we could. Thanks for being patient.

We're rehabbing land that's been in conventional production for years; sprayed with chemical fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides, and it's proving to be challenging in some areas. Residual herbicides may be an issue, and weed seed banks, fungi and disease that were previously managed with chemicals are rearing their heads. We need to farm this land to pay our mortgage, and so don't have the luxury of resting the soil in a cover crop for a year or two to build health and organic matter. We just have to feed the soil with the organic inputs we have, foliar feed our plants with fish emulsion and hope for the best. Managing all this, and farming in a completely new location with somewhat erratic weather and wind, we're having a wild ride. 

This is where it becomes so important and meaningful to support beginning small family farms. The statistics don't point in our favor; between 2007 and 2012 the number of farmers in the U.S. with 5 years or less went down almost 24%. Those with ten years under their belts fared a little better. We have a lot of farming experience prior to buying our own land, and knew what we were getting into. But the variables (weather, soil, etc) are killer, and our stress-level is high. Our markets that we can count on make all the difference. Thank you for that!

Here's a glance at the farm this week. Everything is on the brink of bloom. It's exciting to see all these lovely blooms in our new beds.

 Strawflower coming on

Larkspur too

 And sunnies of course

 Cerinthe

 Heirloom dianthus

 Amazon dianthus

 New harvest queen Sarma

 Lilies getting ready

And the infrastructure is somewhat functional...

 The compost bin and hydrant

 Inevitable coffee cup, tricycle and bucket drying station

A little oil for the delivery van

 Not-yet hung order whiteboard

Airing up the gator tires, nevermind it has no battery

We're glad to be your family of flower and food farmers. No matter what the ultimate outcome of this whole endeavor, we're glad of that, and grateful to be putting in our hands in this dirt. The honey bees, bumblebees and hummingbirds are making more and more appearances, and we think they like us around too.

Breathe deep and be well,

J,M+E

Hello HPF friends!

New logo by the super fabulous and my eldest friend Ruth. xxxx

We're rocking along, keeping our smiles on and trying to focus on the good in each busy day. 

The sky is big here on this windy ridge. It's wonderful to be able to see so far, and watch the weather roll in, and roll out.

We're on the verge of flower harvest. Yeehaw! We actually harvested just a bit today, pulling a half-bucket of snapdragons out the field. We hope to have a few bouquets this week, and we think our first real delivery will probably be Tuesday, June 21.

Lilies                                                       Dragonsnaps

Sunnies attending the sun.

So then we had to clean the pack shed, and finish our cooler.

         And wash buckets!      

 

This is the inside of the cooler. It's a cool 42 degrees. Can you tell what we still need? (hint...it's a light)     

Clean packshed, double woot! Just waiting for some flower bouquet makin' rock star dance party fun to fill it up!

And then we got to hang out with these goofballs we get to call family this past weekend. Super fun!

Hope you get to hang out with your goofballs this beautiful June, and see you soon with buckets and buckets of HPF flowers.

xxoo J,M+E

 

This sweet new-to-us place is coming alive. With giant beautiful blooms of all sorts that will become apples and wild plums and other delicious things. The other morning Earl woke up and said, "mama, just listen to those birds!" I've been thinking about place a lot. And what it means to been in a place and love it and know it really well. I've been transient so often in my adult life that I hadn't really bonded to a place as an adult before our last place. I think people used to be much more rooted, now we can travel and up and go wherever we want. There is a beauty in that. There is also a beauty in being in one place, invested and rooted. 

No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.

- Seneca the Younger

I sent this quote to Mike last week. It's very windy here on this beautiful ridge, and a windy year anyway, and we are learning how to protect our charges from the wind, but also use it to our advantage. We're thankful for the wind that's teaching us to be better farmers, more of what really matters, and the raw beauty of its strength. We are definitely not in a sunny valley, but we have an incredible view, healthy, strong plants, and less bugs and disease (we hope) as the winds blow them away.

 

My phone camera was doing this weird postage stamp thing, and I didn't have time to figure it out. These are our newly planted beds in the glow of the sunset.

We have two functioning greenhouses, and many, many, many beautiful, healthy plants. We have a new cooler in the works in two weeks or so. We have a great new employee, Sarma, and wonderful volunteering family and friends. We have a pack shed in progress. 

We've gone all in on this dream of a farm life that is dependent on our skill and experience and knowledge, yes, but also on so many other variables that are out of our control like increasingly inconsistent weather, and new soil and new geography. Now we're in the reality all that excitement last year led up to. It's proving to be something on our hearts and minds.

We're all learning how to do new things like go off-farm to work, and off-farm to childcare, and how to plant in clay-based soil. We learning how to rest in the newness and the unknown and appreciate our bits of time together. We're learning how to better ask for and find what we need. We're learning how to problem solve together in the little bits of time we have, make a decision and go with it. We're building a foundation. We're building soil, the foundation for our beings. It's uncomfortable often, and a beautiful surprise sometimes, and all, at best, building our character. 

The crabapple and apple trees are stunning. They're unpruned, and need some care, but we got a lot of apples last year and they were delicious.

Nettle and ramp pizza, and dandelion green salad all harvested in our neighborhood. 

Yu-um.

 

 

We hope that you will all come to our place, our new farm, so you can know it a bit too. We're a little further off the beaten path, but we'll make it worth your drive. We love it here and are finding our way. Soon we'll have loads of flowers, and vegetables too this year! Mid-June we hope to start delivering to the Twin Cities.

Mwah,

Jennifer, Mike + Earl

We're in operation on our own little bit of hallowed ground! Those sweet babies will be the dianthus in your bouquets in June!

As you know, April 2015, we found out we would have to move by the end of the season. Our known Minnesota soil was a bit out of our price range, so we looked across the river in western Wisconsin and found a beautiful 16-acre farm on a ridge above the Eau Galle river valley. We had a wonderful loan officer through the Dunn County FSA office, and along with her, a team of professionals, family and friends supported our journey to farm ownership. We moved across the river into our sweet 1930's farmhouse, outbuildings and our very own Hersey silt loam soil fields in October 2015. We feel so fortunate, excited and nervous, of course, to farm our own land.

It's looking amazingly springish around here, complete with lots of mud.

The chickens and the compost and the trees and the grass are singing a little song of early spring.

Earl and his Oma are back in action, especially loving the wonderful Pierce County Nugget Lake park right down the road.

Seeding tables.

Seeds and seeds in hoops and hoops. We have little hoops in the bigger hoops for heating efficiency and cost. This season we may not even need it with these warm temps.

So very excited to share another season of flowers and food with y'all. See you sooner than later friends!

Be well xo,

Jennifer, Mike and Earl