Wintering 2024/25
“Life goes on abundantly in winter. Changes made here will usher us into future glories.”
— Katherine May, Wintering
The winter is a time of many projects on the farm. As soon as the weather starts to turn, there is a breath of relief, but also a pivot in a new direction of cleanup and preparation for rest. The job is far from done. The thought of preparing to rest might even sound absurd, but skip a few steps and the farm won’t be setup for a successful start come spring, or the rest eludes you as you find yourself in a constant state of still needing to do one more thing. To be perfectly honest, this is still something we are struggling to perfect. How do you convince yourself to keep going when you feel like there is nothing left to give?
We usually begin with the frantic collection of green silage and fallen leaves to boost our compost pile and to spread on rows and raised beds. An unfortunate fact of late collection is that many weeds have gone to seed and are scooped up in the process and then spread across our rows. We’ve started planning for a day where we have our own flail mower and a section on our property that we can harvest from throughout the year more consistently so that this does is not have such a gravity at this point in the year. It’s a fun but exhausting process that requires stacking, rolling, pushing, and piling up clippings on the back of a trailer until it is several feet high and the majority of the day is spent. The cows love to see us coming on the tractor though.
Dahlia digging and dividing is the next big hurdle that is triggered by the first frost. The flowers immediately cease and the leaves turn black. All the plant matter is cut back and removed from the rows. At this point, you pray you have labeled everything long ago. In 2023 this was far from the case, and I just had to dig and store without knowing what I really had. This year I meticulously spent much of September walking the rows and slipping plastic tags around the branches (especially of my favorite varieties) to try to ensure that I propagated and reproduced my prized ones first. The dream is to organize the field by color in 2025 and to protect my larger dinner plate sized blooms by growing some under cover. We still have several crates to go through wash and separate. The magic of dahlias really is how quickly they multiply. Looking forward to selling pots of sprouted plants at the market and getting tubers to interested growers this spring!
Seed saving is a huge deal to us on the farm. Not only does it make a ton of sense financially to avoid having to repurchase things year after year but it also is advantageous as things adapt to your region and growing conditions over time. Each season the seeds become more personally embedded in your farm. It is also a huge part of what happens here outside of the garden. Derek began his farm journey in a way because he was following in his father’s footsteps. They spend a lot of time throughout the year saving seeds from native plants which are sent up north to be cleaned at Prairie Moon Nursery. Those seeds are packaged and sold around our region and used to further restoration and conservation work in our area which is a huge source of pride for us. We love playing a part in keeping the natural ecosystem thriving.
Dried flowers have been a fun experiment I have been playing with since we started growing together a few years ago. In the past I have made bouquets and bookmarks. This year, we are planning to save a ton of materials for use in garland, arches, one epic chandelier, flower crowns, and other wedding fodder. One of my winter projects has been going through all of the materials in preparation for a fresh round of collecting and crafting.
One thing that we do every fall without fail is get our garlic planted. This year it happened later than usual but the weather wasn’t quite sure it was ready to turn to winter yet, even in November. Due to running out of garlic earlier than expected in 2024, Derek made sure we planted a good amount of our favorites (German Extra Hardy and Music) this time around. We did not plant much softneck garlic since we did not have that satisfying of a harvest last time around. We really just love the big heads we see from our hardneck options. Our goal is to have enough to share with people at the farmers market, friends and family, and to still have enough to carry us into 2026 (fingers crossed)!
Now the real fun begins - planning for the rows this year and starting seeds! The process begins all over again anew with the same hopes, dreams, and worries. Will we have enough? Will things go to waste? Will we have time to eat, dry, can and preserve it to enjoy or extend the harvest? Will we have the energy at the end of the season to close out strong?!?!
We are optimistic that this will be a great year for innovation and process improvements on the farm as we make progress toward creating a more sustainable operation.
