As longtime CSA members know, the growing season isn’t simply about the day, week, or month we’re existing in. Soil building, animal care, and even farmer knowledge grows over the days, weeks, months, and years prior to the farming season. This growth sets the stage for a crop’s healthy development, an animal’s successful birth, or a crew member to drive our seeding tractor independently.
So, for the next few weeks, we’re sharing our writing from early part of 2025. We hope its a fun way to share our early season experiences and give context for the food we’re growing for you. We’ll kick it off with what we were writing in January and February.
Winter is here on the farm and snow is everywhere. After winters without snow or cold, the frigid temps and moisture bring a sense of normalcy to the farm. The sunlight is worth its weight in the gold color it provides. On sunny days, we take a long farm walk with our dog to look for any signs of spring progress, even peeking in hoophouses at protected soils. The relative quiet is blissful and recharging.
Coyote mating season makes them feel more present on the farm, though they are always nearby. We notice their well-worn tracks around our home and through the fields. When we moved to the white farmhouse 13 years ago, we were nervous about the coyotes circling our house daily. After years of watching them from our livingroom windows and learning more about their tendencies and behaviors, we feel very fortunate to be along their route. With large, protective pine trees behind our house and wetlands and prairies along the southernmost side of the farm fields, our yard is teeming with rabbits, squirrels, birds, mice, voles, and more, which means it’s a fruitful hunting ground for coyotes. We are fortunate to live inside this circle of life.
In January, Jeff and the newest member of the field growing team, Saul, spent countless hours redesigning seed orders, planting and field plans for the 2025 growing season. They worked to get even more detailed and granular than we have in the past. They also did this to focus our growing towards protecting and rotating crops against predators and diseases that change with a changing climate. These thorough plans will also allow the team to plant and seed autonomously while Jeff teaches his high school students on the farm.
Jeff’s students witness the early signs of spring life growing in the warmth of the greenhouse. While Owen is away at college, tomato starts are growing in his bedroom and eggs are incubating in the yellow farmhouse. We use any and all available warmth we can find on the farm right now. With nightly lows in the negatives, we feed and water our animals often to keep them warm with their chewing. We retrieve water from our well water spigots, hands protected with huge mittens, and we try hard not to splash ourselves. It’s best to avoid getting wet in negative 4 degrees! The heated water buckets keep the water warm for the chickens, goats, and sheep, even if we have to knock the ice off the surface so they can reach the water.
In February, we make an exciting shift towards seeding the greenhouse. Jeff serves as farm electrician by repairing circuit boards, fixing wires, and cleaning heaters, while Saul brings thawed soil bags. Together, they will consult on seeding plans and organize seed bins to prepare for the first seeding of the growing season. Once the first seeds are sown, we begin the early spring routines. This will entail watering twice daily, monitoring seed growth, mouse traps, and heating temperatures to ensure the earliest seeds will germinate.
Next up, our Farm Crew arrives back to Illinois in March so we prepare by cleaning their home, preparing their vehicle and making sure that border crossing documents are in order. Jeff speaks to David and Cleto regularly now. They exchange pictures of spring growth, discuss families, and share our collective excitement farming together again in their fourth season returning to our farm.
Together, we will wake up the rest of the farm in March. We’ll share our March and April progress next week.
More stories to come,
Jeff, Jen, David, Cleto, Anacleto, Miguel & Saul