We hope you aren’t thrown off by our new look. One of our big projects this winter is to improve our blog and website to make it easier to understand the products we offer, where we sell, and how to contact us. In the weeks to come, we’ll be adding some new pages, so look for those. We will have information up soon about our 2010 main season CSA program. As well, we will be posting information soon about jobs and internships with Barking Moon Farm this growing season. We will be looking for 3 interns and a couple of hourly folks, so stay tuned for job description and application information.

We delivered the 3rd winter CSA box this past week and most everything did okay in the big freeze of December. We did lose some things like chard, celery root, arugula and some winter squash, but we are still going stong with lots of sweet carrots, greens, onions, potatoes and other storage crops.

We’ve begun checking things off the enormous list of tasks to accomplish before markets begin again in March. Some of the big projects include building a new propagation house (the pad is in, we’ve mulched and seeded around the base and pipe bending and construction begins later this week). We’ll begin fencing another acre at our leased property in a couple of weeks (yes, we keep growing in acreage….) Other big projects include: crop planning, pack-out expansion with extended roof, gravel & more tubs, and upgrading our irrigation system. This week, we begin the first round of salad greens and other early greens in the greenhouse for the first deliveries and markets in March and April. I can’t believe we are already going back into the greenhouse. June is going to be here before we know it!

We’re looking forward to a new year and growing season full of creativity, joy, abundance, community and lots of veggies!

Winter has set in on the farm. We had our first winter CSA harvest this past week and included a bountiful amount of food including carrots, potatoes, rutabaga, spinach, winter squash, onions, salad mix, romanesco and cabbage to our 20 wonderful and supportive members. We really like winter farming although we’ve been fighting freezing temperatures on the farm for the last couple of days.

I (Melissa) was invited up to Washington recently to talk about the southern Oregon League of Women Farmers for my OSU Extension work. We stayed at the old farmhouse at the Mt. Vernon Research Center, which was great and after a nicely attended talk to the faculty, staff and local farmers, we got to spend some time visiting farms in the Skagit Valley, Olympic Peninsula & the San Juan Islands. We had a great family vacation on top of that. As farmers, we can only travel during the winter, so it was nice to take some much needed relaxation time while also mixing in farm related business. Anyway, we brought back some new ideas to the farm including some marketing and winter storage tips, but most notably we got really excited about integrating more grains into our system, which we will begin doing this next year as we are participating in a small grain trail as part of a Western SARE grant. Josh is going to trial some wheat varieties for our poultry flock–more on the homestead scale, but we hope to increase our grain production as we take on our more leased land and figure out economics, scale & equipment, all things that will be addressed in this SARE grant. More details on that to come this spring. Anyway,  western Washington is a special place and there are some great farms up that way. Thanks for hosting us!

Here’s a link to an interview about our farm on the Return to Tradition blog. Check it out. Thanks Matthew!

We’ve been enjoying some November down time. It has been cold and wet, which is fine with us. Stay tuned for some new developments on this website in weeks to come. We hope to have high speed internet installed at our farm within weeks making it much easier to get blog updates up on the web. For now, enjoy some pictures that market customers took for us. Most of our marketing and harvesting comes to an end next week, except for our winter CSA program, which begins in December. We look forward to exploring this new venture on our farm.

A market customer photoshopped our romanesco cauliflower into an Andy Warhol masterpiece.

Master farm apprentice Mark at one of the last farmers' markets of the season.

We just love fall around here for so many reasons. The farm starts to slow. The weather shifts. The trees change colors and our valley is full of oranges, yellows and reds. We are canning and putting away fruit and veggies for the winter. All of the storage crops are harvested for the year including potatoes, winter squash and onions. Farmers’ markets come to an end, which gives us a needed break from waking up at 4am twice a week for 8 months! Stew hens and meat chickens are butchered and thrown in the freezer. Firewood is delivered. Tea consumption goes up. And we are allowed more free time to reflect on the past season — our successes, challenges, goals for 2010 — and we are freed up to spend more time pursuing other interests, which is a nice respite from the mania of the growing season. We are continuing through the winter this year with our winter CSA program (already full — wow!) and we will continue to provide produce to stores and restaurants as availability allows. We are excited about the winter CSA program this year and hope this is something that can grow in the coming years. Once again, we offer all of you Barking Moon Farm faithful friends and customers our deepest gratitude and thanks for your support of our farm this year.

Pumpkins and various winter squash.

I love rutabaga -- a stalwart vegetable!

Red & yellow storage onions curing in the barn.

It has been awhile since I’ve posted. The busyness of life got a hold of me. So, what’s new at Barking Moon Farm?

Let’s recap:

1. We just ventured into the last 5 weeks of our CSA program for 2009.

2. Traveled to Springfield, Illinois to present at the national Small Farms conference (this is for my other job as an Extension agent). Interns successfully ran the farm and Josh telecommuted for the first time ever! Met a ton of southern US extension agents and farmers. Very cool.

3. Finished the last greenhouse seeding for 2009! Woohoo!

4. Harvested hundreds and hundreds of pounds of winter squash. Pumpkins are next.

5. Began harvesting the first of the fall crops — cauliflower, broccoli, kale, napa cabbage.

6. Prayed for rain a couple of times. It is way too dry here!

7. Started promoting our 2009- 2010 winter CSA program. A blog post to come on that.

8. Hit our highest ever monthly gross sales in August.

9. Talked to 114 folks about our farm at the 2009 Eat Local dinner at Roxy Ann Winery, while they ate our salad greens.

10. Josh gave a tour to 25 enthusiastic folks on the Ashland Food Cooperative farm tour.

11. Got really excited about winter!

12. Broilers are growing fast and doing well. They are grazing on old spring kale beds. Should be ready for slaughter in 2 weeks. No predator losses yet.

13. Survived the first power outage of 2009 on an extremely hot day. It was quick and the cooler and water started working promptly after about 2 hours.

14. Discovered that recordkeeping is key for success.

15. Finally, amazed at the amount of food we have produced on this farm in such a short period of time. Next year’s goal: weigh every single harvested crop for a total weight of food harvested and sold.

That’s about all I can remember from the last few weeks. Here are some pictures taken at our leased property the other day.

View of zinnias and fall cabbage.

Everett eating daikon straight from the field!

Tender fall kale and rutabaga.

Farmer Josh sampling daikon.

It has been an abundant month for Barking Moon Farm in so many ways, not just food! Lots of hard work and long days mixed with wonderful eating (when we have time to cook all this beautiful produce) and laughter. We have the best farm crew in southern Oregon, especially Mark & Cameron, our two apprentice interns who are amazingly positive and hard-working each and every day! Thank you to them for everything!

We’ve been staying busy on the farm picking vegetables almost constantly throughout the week when we aren’t going to farmers’ markets,  making produce deliveries, washing eggs, irrigating or planting fall crops. This time of year, the crops are demanding much attention — beans, tomatoes, zucchini, strawberries, eggplant, peppers, potatoes — all must be picked or pulled every few days keeping the crew’s heads to the ground as they pull all this beautiful food from the farm to your table. It is easy to forget how plentiful and abundant August and September is and how easy it is to exhaust ourselves from long days. I think Josh put in a 17-hour day the other week. He’s been practically running around non-stop for the last few weeks trying to manage a crew, markets, orders, plant, irrigate, etc. etc. Luckily, our family got away to the coast last weekend for a teaser vacation. Short, but sweet.

Come see us at market anytime on Tuesday or Saturday. Or, the Ashland Food Coop will be bringing a bus to our farm on September 19th, so check in with them about making a reservation.

It is quite hard to get to the computer these days, slow down, take a deep breath and write about all that is happening on the farm. Here’s the short top ten list for July (I know there is more that I’m not thinking of):

1. planted fall and winter carrots (Bolero — the best!)
2. harvested over 350 pounds of beans in five days (woah!)
3. planted winter and fall brassicas–cabbage (savoyed..yeah), broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cauliflower
4. said goodbye to an amazing crew member and the best weeder ever, Pearl. Good luck Pearl!
5. saw a porcupine on Thompson Creek Road (Josh)
6. received 50 broiler chickens in the mail (who are growing very fast)
7. ate the first of the red cherry tomatoes (Matt’s Wild) out of the hoophouse–yum
8. started flats and flats of kale, chard, bunching onions, rutabaga, overwintering cauliflower, salad greens
9. began building the outdoor kitchen, which we have now promised Cameron & Mark for almost three months
10. had about 7 mini-meltdowns about farming and the challenges we face as very small farmers trying to make this whole system work efficiently, profitably and sustainably. We had pretty quick recoveries.  I think we’re good now.
11. Okay…11 not ten…survived 106-degree weather.

The Ashland Food Cooperative came out and took pictures of the farm last week. Here’s a link to their Facebook page with all the pictures. These are pictures of our leased vegetable field. The other day, Josh and I went to the top of the hill where our irrigation pump lives and saw the view of the field from the top. I promise to take a picture. It was quite astounding to look down at the beauty and diversity of our vegetable farm and realize the accomplishments we have made in the last few months. We need to celebrate those accomplishments more often. They matter.

As promised, here are more pictures of the farm. All taken by Khaliqa Rogmans. I hope to get pictures up soon of our other field where most of our summer crops are planted.

Me, Josh and Everett giving a tour of our farm.

Josh talking 'bout the farm.

Purple kale.

A view of our tomato house.

The salad mix beds.

Symmetry.

Showing off one of the hen houses.

Tim, from Dancing Bear Farm, checking out the nest boxes.

As you can see, the posts are getting farther and fewer apart as mid-summer creeps up on us and we find ourselves in the heart of the season. All is well on the farm. We are in the midst of planting and starting all the fall and winter crops and we haven’t even begun harvesting the summer crops! It seems strange to be thinking about eating winter cabbage in February when it is still July, but these crops get planted from now through August in order to have vegetables in October through February.

We recently gave a tour to 20 interns from various farms in southern Oregon as part of Rogue Farm Corps, an educational program for beginning farmers. We gave a farm tour as well as talked about poultry production & CSAs. It was fun to talk about the farm and share our experiences with budding farmers, something we really enjoy doing, but don’t have as much time for as we’d like. I have uploaded some pictures from the tour. They were taken by Khaliqa Rogmans.

Josh giving a tour of the greenhouse.

A nice view of our potato patch in the foreground, the tour and the farm.

The summer solstice has come and gone and most all of the summer crops made it into the ground except for a few more beds of melons and squash to go in Wednesday. I know, I know. We are late on planting as usual. Why the lateness? A big theme for us lately (and well this entire season so far) has been figuring out our new four-acre scale with the increased labor and water demands. And managing two properties has got Josh running in circles (literally, since we don’t have a timer on the irrigation system at the leased field). Needless to say, we’re tired and hanging in there and trying to find time for our family and relaxation. The heart of the season is upon us and we’re running to keep up with everything that needs to be done. The support from the community is what keeps us going! Thank you!

We are in a bit of a produce lull while we wait for summer veggies to mature like zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, beans and basil, but they are just around the corner if the weather would stay warm. We are coming to the end of our small plantings of broccoli and cabbages and hopefully, it will make for a seamless transition. I know you can only eat so much kale.

Our crew planted out a huge number of transplants this past week including popcorn (our little farm experiment), peppers, eggplant and sunflowers. Plants are in a bit of shock, but should pull out of it soon. Our next big task this week is taking out all the weeds that are threatening a major beet, basil and carrot planting. Watch out weeds. Here we come.

We’re having a light market booth this week between some labor changes and our produce lull, but we will still be there with lots of green abundance, so come out and see us. Happy summertime!