2023 End of Season Reflections & Recap
Hi everyone! It’s been a long and productive season, and we’ve finally got a little time to take a look back and reflect on it all— and share those reflections with you all.
We kicked off the season around March (when I joined the team as an additional farm manager!) and really hit the ground running as we were building raised beds for our first expansion of the year— our new herb garden! Since our Operation’s Manager, Abigail, knows SO much about herbs and herbalism, we wanted to make sure there was a place for us to tap into her wealth of knowledge. Building the wooden beds through the winter was hard work— but we had fun doing it and learned a lot. Once the beds were assembled and outside, it was time to fill them with dirt and get our darling little herb starts planted! This garden was so prolific for us this year, and we’ve ended the season with several jars of assorted dried herbs to bring with us to the winter indoor farmers’ markets. We hope you’ve enjoyed the bounty of herbs we’ve been able to bring to markets all season and to pack into your CSA bags— we hope to do much more of this in the future!
Another project that we headed at the start of the season was an improvement to our pig’s pasture. It is very important to Patty, Abigail, and I that we give our pigs the best lives possible and that we are able to practice regenerative agriculture by trying to work with the land, rather than against it. In pursuance of this, we chose to take a large section of pasture and turn it into a rotational grazing pasture for our piggies— this way, they could enjoy rooting around in the dirt and grass while also fertilizing and nourishing the land at the same time. In order to maximize this on our farm, we spent considerable time planning and research to learn how rotational grazing would work best for us. In the end, we decided on setting posts at regular intervals for each of our grazing sections, putting insulators on each post, and adding poly wire around the perimeter of the pasture in use. By choosing to use poly wire, we were able to easily rotate the pigs onto the next section of pasture without significant infrastructure change or expense. Once the pigs were trained on the electric fence, they were free to roam between the pasture, the barn, and their outdoor lot, where they receive their food and have their pig pool.
Come early spring, it was time to get our field and greenhouses ready after a long winter of planning. For us, that means seeding, bed prepping, transplanting, and weeding — all of this takes a lot of time, effort, collaboration, and care. It’s a good thing we all like each other so much! We had a wonderful crew this season and couldn’t have done any of this without them.
Lucas LoBreglio, Noah Metzen, Abram Espe (back row), Chloe Boehnen, Zoe Winter, Rose Pasquan (middle), Rachel Kulacz, Anna Gebarski, Patty Grimmer, Abigail Miller (front), not included: Becky Johnson, Alyssa Cassidy, Jonah Hanson, Zach Ihm, Jameson Johnson
Maybe you saw some of these faces at the Dane County Farmers’ Market this season! We were there almost every week so excited to bring you fresh veggies, honey, mushrooms, and pork. Getting up and ready for the farmers’ market can be tough sometimes (depending on who’s coming, it can be a really early wake-up time!), but getting to see familiar faces, meet new people, connect with friends, and answer all your questions about no-till farming makes it all SO worth it. We’re so happy for those moments of connection with you all, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say we feel incredibly lucky that you choose to support us and that all of the work we put into our produce gets to help fill your tables. We hope to keep seeing you all at the winter indoor markets at the Monona Terrace and Garver Feed Mill until we can meet again in the sunshine on the square next season!
May and June brought lots more bed building and prep, planting, seeding, and getting our crew all settled in with how we do things at Wonka’s. For Patty, Abigail, and I, these months brought lots of planning, adapting, and learning to go with the flow. We had some pests set up shop in our starthouse where we keep all our young seedlings until they are ready for transplanting, and because of this we had some pretty tough losses— mainly in our pepper and tomato crops. This is the (perhaps) uglier side of following organic practices— we won’t just spray to get rid of these pests, so we have to get creative and sometimes, this happens a little bit too late to save ourselves from crop loss. We applied beneficial insects (a staple move at our farm) as a way to try to restore a balance that works for us in the starthouse, and fingers crossed we’ve gotten this under control ahead of planting for the upcoming season. I’m sharing this both to give a glimpse behind the curtain at some of the tougher parts of our job, but also so I can take an opportunity to shout out our local farming community who really stepped up and made sure we had a tomato and pepper crop for you all! We are so lucky to be affiliated with a few local farming networks and when we put out the call there for any extra starts and seedlings people weren’t going to use, we got our two greenhouses and one entire field block filled with plants! What a treat it is to be in community with so many amazing people.
July and August are every farmer’s biggest months as the peak of the season takes off and it seems like we never have enough hands to make it all happen— harvesting, weeding, and still somehow planting things out and seeding in preparation for the Fall— we felt once again incredibly grateful for our crew. In the heat of all this, though, we decided to give ourselves a whole lot of additional work as we began planning for our first annual music festival: Lettuce Jam. It started as the idea for a trade we could do with one of my best friends, Jory Carlin (a fellow local farmer & incredible musician) who offered to give us a massive growlight he had no use for if we would let his band perform at the farm. We imagined a few pallets as a stage, friends running “sound”, some twinkle lights, and foil-wrapped grilled cheeses for our crew and a few friends. Those of you who were there know this was far from what Lettuce Jam ended up as. Patty and Abigail took me and my friend’s silly idea and were SO enthusiastic and supportive, turning it into the full blown event it became. We worked through these months planning, preparing, weeding, cleaning out our pond, mowing, building— the list goes on and on! On top of all the other peak season work, our crew really kicked it into high gear and did an incredible job helping us prepare the property for the festivities. Thank you SO much to everyone who came, to the people who helped us out, to the incredible bands who joined us, to our amazing food vendors, and to everyone who shared the word and supported us in this new endeavor. We had the absolute best time with you all and we can’t wait for next year.
And just like that it was Fall… We said goodbye to crewmembers who had to head back to school full-time, and we started dropping in hours for the crew we had left. But— we still had plenty to do around the farm! We wrapped up our final regular-season CSA segment and started getting Autumn storage CSA boxes together. We love doing these storage boxes for you all because it really gives us an opportunity to partner with our local farm friends to bring you a really versatile box that will last you quite a while as the days start to get colder and shorter… We gathered local crops like apples and cranberries, brought in flax and bolted pastry flour from Meadowlark Organics, and of course stocked you up with our garlic, onions, herbs, and ginger. Many other farms follow this same regular season / Autumn storage model, but this was our first year breaking up our regular season into three separate segments: Spring, Summer, and Fall. We really wanted to give you all the opportunity to further customize your CSA experience, and it felt like the furthering of our mission towards food accessibility to be able to offer a less intense commitment for those who might not be, for whatever reason, interested in signing up for a whole 22-week CSA. If you were one of our members, we would love to hear how this went for you, so please always feel free to drop us a line with your comments and feedback. It’s because of you that we do all of this!
And speaking of CSAs, we also had the express pleasure this Fall of meeting and chatting with Ed Hamer from the Chagford CSA Farm in Dartmoor, UK! Ed was traveling across the country meeting with CSA farmers from the East to the West coast as part of a grant through the CSA Network UK doing research and collecting stories and testimonials to explore why CSA has taken off much more strongly in this country than it has in the UK, and how he might be able to shift the model there to increase access, awareness, and longevity. It was really special to be able to be a part of this and to make a connection with a farmer from across the pond! Be sure to check out Ed’s farm on Instagram if you’re curious for more @ chagfordcsa.
Now the season has largely slowed, we’ve said goodbye to the remaining members of our 2023 crew and the days are largely looking like Patty, Abigail, and myself either busily wandering about the farm checking on greenhouses, cleaning and organizing, starting seeds, and doing general maintenance, or— snuggled around an excel spreadsheet planning for next year’s crops. We are excited to offer some new crops and new varieties for you at the farmers’ markets and in our CSAs next season.
And as for next season? We have quite a lot in store! The biggest, most exciting, and most imminent change coming to our farm is the building of TWO new greenhouses!!! We are greatly increasing our growing space (and especially our early Spring and Winter growing space) which is incredibly exciting for the three of us. We have been pooling resources and making calls, excavating and directing some earthworks projects, and measuring, measuring, measuring. Now we’ve made the perfect space for our two new 120’ greenhouses— for those of you who have visited the farm, (perhaps you were on our farm tour as part of Lettuce Jam?) these new greenhouses will sit in a largely unused area across from our garage multipurpose space, and kind of kitty-corner to our packshed. We are going to get these built up and ready for our no-till practices as fast as we can (not a small feat) and then pack them full with greens and other yummies to offer at the Winter markets and in the first of the early Spring outdoor markets. For the main season, we are excited to use some of this newfound space (as we will now have a total of four greenhouses in addition to our field space) to do some experimenting— so stay tuned and cross your fingers as we try some new things!
