March on the Farm!!

Hello Farmily!

What a spring!! It’s been wonderfully warm, seeds are starting, grass is growing and baby goats are bounding about the farm! It’s also still really wet. Liquid sunshine we like to call it. Here’s to hoping we avoid a drought this summer! (Speaking of summer, make sure you read to the end for a special offer!!!)

After a dark cold winter it’s nice to be enjoying some of the left over greens from the garden. It’s also exciting to see all the little specks and flecks in the seed packets come to life, lift their hands to the light and GROW!

 Basil, Nasturtium, Calendula and Pac Choi!

That’s not the only thing growing on the farm! Last Friday Marbles, the spotted doe threw (that’s farm talk for gave birth) to two strapping bucklings (boys). They are getting bottles 4 times a day, and are getting more coordinated every day.

They even came out to say hi to our new puppy Logan! With all that’s going on right now, it’s still pre-CSA season! We have a little late March special for those of you who haven’t signed up for our CSA yet! How does a free week of veggies sound to you? If you sign up by the end of March, we will give you a free week of veggies!! That’s 6 months of fresh, seasonal, classic garden treats for less than $22 a week, and you’ll get a week for free!! Everyone likes free. Just click the link, and fill out the order form. We’ll bill you later (yes we can take payments)

HERE IS THE SIGN-UP LINK!

(and one last shot of the cute brothers!)

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Fresh Local Berries (organic too!)

We are excited to be partnering with Hayton Farms this year to offer an add on of fresh local organic berries!  Hayton Farms is a 5th generation, organic berry farm less than 20 miles from our farm in the fertile Skagit valley.  They specialize in berries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.  They offer multiple varieties of each, meaning lots of variety!  If you’ve been to any of the local farmers markets, you’ve seen them.  They are at over 80 different markets each week!!!

We are going to be offering 1/3 flats, that’s four pints (or two quarts) of berries.  They will be seasonal, so there may be a lot of strawberries at some times, more blueberries at others.  If you really love fresh fruits and berries, you can add on more than one fruit share.  If you select delivery, your berries will come with the rest of your CSA share at no extra charge.  We hope to be able to offer some bulk buys during the season for folks who want to do some canning as well.  The cost for the first share is $204 for 17 weeks.  You can add a second share for an additional $195.  In addition, we will be coordinating bulk buys for canning and preserving for our CSA members.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!

Here’s the CSA Sign Up link!!!

Flower CSA! From Twig and Vine in Stanwood Washington.

We can’t do it all.  But we also think that shouldn’t mean you shouldn’t have choices, options and some beauty in your life, and we have an opportunity for our CSA customers, to have a fresh local flower arrangement weekly with their CSA vegetables.

While we are growing your veggies, Deanna from Twig and Vine will be putting together some of the best of the seasons flowers to grace your table!  Deanna has been arranging flowers for local brides, offices and other customers for years.  We are excited to have the chance to partner with her to offer a 10 week season of fresh local flowers, grown with the same care as we are growing your food (That means no bee harming sprays or chemicals, and with a mind to the stewardship of the soil).

 

Your arrangement will be different, every week, and will include some familiar and some unique components.  She describes them as “a flower garden bouquet, with a loose comfortable feel, filled with unique foliages and herbs.  The will have heirloom flowers, types that growers sometimes can’t get, and flowers like sweet peas, dahlias, zinnias and much more!”

 

The cost for the 10 week season is $250, which is a good deal, and unlike the $30 arrangements in grocery stores, all of your investment will stay in the community.  These flowers aren’t brought in from out of state, these are local.  Like 25 miles local.  Additionally, if you add on delivery for your CSA, your bouquet will show up with your weekly box of local produce at no extra charge!  Deanna expects the season to start in July.

 

If you have any questions, you can e-mail her at twigandvine(at)gmail.com, or get in touch with us!!

CSA Sign up link here!!!

 

Family Farm January update!

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year from the farm!

It’s been a wild open to the winter season!!! We are again reminded why we did not buy land in a valley, as many of the valley farmers we know are currently watching water flow through their green houses and over their fields. We have had our share of “liquid sunshine” here on the farm, and there are some ares that are boggy enough to pull off your boot, and then ask for your sock too. Maintaining dry footing and bedding areas for the animals are about our only outdoor challenge at the moment.

 

Taking advantage of some clear weather to spread more wood chips in the goat pen.

Even with a flat tire on the trailer, the farm help stuck with it, and got the job done!

We love the Christmas Holidays here on the farm.Quiet whispered phone conversations, evergreen needles stuck in socks, more sugar than what’s good for us, and fires in the wood stove. There are also wonderful “dark days” crafts, games and more treats!

It’s also a chance to start thinking of the new year. The farm plan for the CSA is under way, and with one full season under our belts, we can’t wait to start the 2016 Adalyn Farm CSA. It is going to be 100% local. And delivery is an option if your spring and summer schedule is hectic. There are two share sizes available, standard, and premium. If you are still learning to love your veggies, we would recommend the standard share. If you know you love them, then we would recommend a premium share. If you are single, empty nesters or grow a garden of your own, we would suggest you split a share. Splitting a share gives you a full share, every other week, and with the first shares coming out in May, and running for 25 weeks well into the fall, it’s a way to make sure your kitchen is stocked with fresh veggies before and after the “zucchini flood” that most home gardeners suffer from in late July and August. If you are interested in splitting a share, just mention that in the sign up sheet, and we’ll invoice you for half the cost of a full share.

 
These are some sample shares from the 2015 season.

If you have any questions on how this might work, please get in touch!

This really is a fun time of year, when things have slowed down and we look at the crop information from 2015, yields, germination and harvest timeline, taste tests, and recipes that we loved, and if we liked the food, decide what’s going to get care, love and attention again here on the farm, and what’s going to get skipped. Not that running a farm with veggies, hens, geese, pigs and goats ever really has a slow time.

-Your farmers.

Are you ready to sign up for fresh veggies in 2016?

HERE IS THE SIGN-UP LINK!

Fall Farm Update!

Hello Farmily!

It seems like no matter the season, it’s our favorite, and it’s the busy one!  This summer has been fun, and busy, and crazy!

To re-cap our pilot year CSA has gone REALLY WELL!  We’ve had great feedback, we have learned more than having taken a 10 credit collage course, and worked a full time job to boot!  We are super excited about the 2016 season, and although it’s early for CSA sign up’s we are already taking deposits.  We’ve added some cool stuff too.  We have an add on option for berries, and weekly bouquets.  Also, cause we are busy and feel the ‘too much to do’ pressure, we are offering DELIVERY!  Initially we will deliver to Stanwood, Camano and Arlington, but if you are interested, and outside that area, please get in touch…  There are images of all 25 weeks on our flickr page, if you want to see what the Half Share size we did this year looks like.

9 of the shares from this summer.

Turkeys are done!  Most went into the freezers of our customers who got their deposits in back in May.  We did have a couple folks who didn’t wait and cooked them up fresh.  Word is they are great!  Which is always nice to hear, especially since Farmer Joscelyn and Farmer Adam (with some help from Grammy) were the butchering party this year.

The night before ice camp.

The December pigs are doing well too!  We still have half a pig available.  Deposit is $125 for the half.  They are busy right now digging up for the garden for next year, eating our old pumpkins and getting LOADS of other organic produce trimmings.

The rototillers just before their move to the new patch.

Winter is going to be a season of change in more ways than one.  After 14 years of off farm work, Farmer Adam’s boss has decided that he was ready to move on without Adam.  We had planned on Adam working off farm till May or April, but that’s obviously changing a bit.  There were several ‘dark days’ farm related products and crops that we had planned on trialing in 2016, but we are moving some of them up to this fall.  We’ll be posting more info on our web site and social media (Facebook and Instagram)

Fall colors by the back woods.

Whew!  Told you it’s been busy!  If you want more info on the CSA for next year, Here’s an info link, and the link is below for sign up!

Are you ready?  HERE IS THE SIGN-UP LINK!

CSA Status…

We are past week 8 for our CSA.  We had some issues at the beginning (really before the beginning) that made us delay the start by two weeks.  We still got it all rolling in May (which was the goal, since most other truly local CSA’s don’t start till June) so that was a success.  Although the garden plan didn’t take into account the off farm job, and the impact that had on the seeding schedule, things are rolling along.  We still have 17 more weeks go to, and we are just now seeding some things for near the end of the CSA for this summer.  Until this week, we have been considering the shares “half shares”.  Week 6 is the first share that we would consider full sized.  Now for a little show and tell.

 

Week Eight

Week Seven

Week Six

Week Five

Week Four

Week Three

Week Two

Week One

We are finishing up the work on our pricing and options for the 2016 season.  Sign up forms will be on-line soon!  Options to include farm fresh meat are part of the mix…  Whole Diet CSA.  We are also talking about a fall CSA.  A little more laid back (bi-weekly pickup?), with a per week rate if a hard freeze ends the season before we expect it to.  It would be a bit of a test run, with one season of a CSA under our belt, and having enjoyed winter greens through the new year this last season, we are as ever, optimistic!  There is also the thought in the back of this farmer’s mind, that if it went well, as in, better than he optimistically hopes it might, the full time farming timetable might get move up a bit.  There are still some capitalization hurdles to get over, but hope is what drives us.

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First CSA share is out!

Yep, we are underway!  Our first CSA share went out last Wednesday.  This year is a test year, so 10 shares, and only on-farm pickup.  We are keeping it simple, and trying to make all the mistakes we possibly can.  Every. Single. One.  The good news is we are making lots of mistakes, the better news is that we are still seeing some success despite the the mistakes!

Our little Farm-ily has been wonderfully supportive.  We got thank you notes, and words of encouragement back in early spring, before we even had anything in the ground.  It was heart warming.  And now that the first shares are down the driveway, we are getting more support, encouragement and some very kind words.

Here’s what one of our customers posted.  I think she actually had dinner before we did, and arguably might have been the first to get cooking with the greens!

View this post on Instagram

Our gorgeous dinner, with big thanks to @adalynfarmboy and @adalynfarmgirl for their first CSA week!

A post shared by Sally (@sallykanehen) on May 20, 2015 at 6:06pm PDT

 

Sally was kind enough to share her “quick dinner” with me (she didn’t want to call it a recipe, but did say she loves cooking chicken like this, because it stays so moist)

“Evoo in pan, salt & pepper chicken thighs, and brown in the pan. When they’re browned on one side, flip, then add a chopped onion and a couple hand fulls of quartered baby cremini mushrooms. More salt, lower heat, then arrange so the chicken is resting on top of veggies. Then I drizzled with about 2-3T of balsamic and let cook another 10 min or so. Lastly, add a couple handfuls of whatever greens you like (I used those beet greens) and just cook for another minute or two. Key is to not over cook the greens!
We had the chicken with a wild rice and quinoa blend, and a salad of your greens, radishes, feta cheese and sunflower seeds.”

It’s a long season ahead of us, with problems we don’t even know we will need to fix yet, we also know it’s full of sunshine, smiles and some of the best time’s we have ever had.  We are truly excited to share our farm with this wonderful group of people.  We are also just barely starting to think about next season, if your interested, drop us a note farmers at adalynfarm.com, we’ll keep you in the loop.

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First frost, and optimism.

It’s happened. First frost. It looks like the dahlias might pull through this one, but their time is limited.  The summer squash in the garden may not be so lucky. But I have hope for at least one last batch of grilled zukes.

I’ve been told that I have an overdeveloped sense of optimism. I think it comes in handy in farming. I also tend to be most excited about what we are in the middle of, with a close second being what we are about to start. That said at the moment I am loving the fall. Although the earlyish frost is a bit of a damper, the weather that had brought it on has been lovely, with clear sunny days and clear starry nights.  I am also looking forward to the fall proper. Wood stove hot to keep us warm, soup on the stove, weather that encourages us to get caught up on record keeping, and prepare for the holidays.

I hope this seasonal transition finds you well, with good people and good food all around you. And a sense of hope for what is to come.

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