ON FROST AND SUCCESS.

We got our first frosts this weekend. And It felt.... good. Really good. Sometimes frosts can come at the absolute wrong time––too early, too late, too unpredicted––but we were expecting these and we were excited to see them.Frost sweetens the greens. Frost kills off unwanted weeds. Frost makes an excellent last name. But moreover, frost marks the end of the season, and a good time to celebrate. Or at least you always hope so.Of course, things are still growing, and will continue growing well into the winter. But mostly it will be the crops we want to be growing––carrots, beets, greens. Otherwise, the summer weeds are toast, the winter cover crops are rocking, and the main bulk is out and safely stowed away.So now we finish up our season with our wonderful shareholders, and start planning next year's garden, looking at seed catalogs, and getting ready for what we feel will be our best year yet––2016. We're excited about our CSA––very––excited about our markets, and excited to still be farming six years in. Not every young farmer lasts that long. Not every young farmer gets to experience frost elation. But every time we make it to that first fall frost, we feel a little victorious––one more year down, one more year in the books, one more year of experience completed. And although we will only know a year from now how we did, we do think next year will be a great year––more mushrooms, more honey, more vegetables, more fun. More pigs? Maybe that, too. All that said, we truly won't know until those first fall frosts of 2016 when we can look around and say, "By golly, we did it again!" So thank you, frost. It's always good to see you.- Jesse.

THE FARMER AND CHEF SERIES: WHAT FARMERS DO RIGHT.

It's around 8:30 a.m. and I'm looking at a large chunk of galangal, which has suddenly appeared from the cab of Rocky Glade Farm's truck for the chefs to taste. Owen––who is always bouncing a little with excitement, but particularly so at the sight of this rhizome––cuts a few slivers off and hands one to me. The galangal itself is beautiful, the flavor unreal, and the fact that it even exists in this moment? A perfect place to continue our TFAC Series. Because if you want to know what farmers do right, Philip and Owen tell me, just talk to Rocky Glade.So that's what we did. This past Sunday, Hannah and I went to Rocky Glade Farm to meet Jim, Julie and their distractingly wonderful children at their farm for a little conversation and farm tour.I should start by saying that what I didn't realize about Rocky Glade when I first requested an interview was that this is their busy time. Unlike us, who are now more or less "laid by" for the season, the Vaughn family is just gearing up. They do not do a full-on summer market––they literally and somewhat shockingly, don't even grow tomatoes. Instead, they focus most of their efforts on the fall and winter, because upon asking themselves, "When would our customers miss us the most?", wintertime was the obvious victor. So for them to have given us a whole Sunday afternoon in the fall was very generous, and I hope they found it as fun and interesting as we did.Something else I did not realize about Rocky Glade was what percentage of their sales that restaurants make up. Well, not restaurants, exactly, but primarily one restaurant––singular. In terms of income, they told us, Rolf and Daughters makes up around a third of their yearly sales. Then, of course, there are a few other restaurants that buy from them who they view perhaps as larger market customers. They also have their market table and then a Fall/Winter CSA to make up the rest. But Rolf is a notably significant slice of the pie. For a market farmer, that's an attractive reality––having a customer that large, and that consistent. However, when I asked them if they were looking for more restaurant sales like that, they both said not really. "We don't need another Rolf." They like having a couple other smaller restaurants, then a few different income outlets. Indeed, Rolf and Daughters supplies a large portion of their revenue, but because diversity is as important in your sales as in your garden, they do not rely solely on restaurants for their income. If the restaurant shuts down for a week, as they point out, the farm doesn't shut down. Since it is always producing, a farm needs alternatives and, we all laugh, "people who can use normal-sized chard and kale––some regular chefs."What their farm has with Rolf and Daughters is special, they tell us, but it isn't unique. "A lot of farms our size," Jim points out, "end up finding one restaurant they mesh with." This is a person who comes to them to sift through seed catalogs in the winter, or calls them regularly for produce, or even goes to them first when they're wondering if a specific crop can be grown locally. It's not just a customer, but a working relationship. Or as Julie put it, "A partnership."But if you were a chef, it would be hard not to not want Rocky Glade as your farm. They are passionate about what they do, and according to Philip and Owen, they're on it. They send consistent, regular emails with produce lists, and how much is available every week. Julie "scouts the garden hard twice a week", then sends them updates on what's coming in, and what's going out. She tells us she likes any type of communication that can "hang out there" for a while, so that the chefs can see it, and start thinking about it. Chefs have different schedules from farmers. When Rocky Glade is getting back from the fields, and typing up their availability lists, R.A.D is starting service. But by sending an email or leaving a message, the next time she checks in with them––which she does by lunch every Monday, if they do not respond––she will have an order within hours.Of course, Julie said she always feels like she's pushing too hard, but to hear R.A.D. talk about it, they're grateful for the check-ins––for someone working so hard to keep them supplied with great food. The chefs also like that they know how much they can order of something, the size it might be, and so on. Jim will even send chefs pictures from the field of various produce so they can see how it's coming along. It's smart, and as far as I can tell, greatly appreciated.So what the Vaughn family does so well, from my perspective, is focus on just a few restaurants––one in particular––and really works hard to satisfy those restaurants' needs. They don't just grow things and heap them on their table in hopes restaurants will buy every bit, because most of the time, they said, the restaurants want something different––something specific. They want a smaller size, shape, or even part of the plant. Getting to know the chefs then, eating at their restaurants and really building that relationship, gives them the opportunity to understand what those needs are and to fulfill them. Moreover, they communicate a lot. They ask a lot of questions. They give and request feedback. Rocky Glade, in this sense, is a great model for the restaurant farm because they are constantly striving to better serve their restaurants.Anyway, I could write a book on Rocky Glade, but later this week or early next I'll try and distill some more of what we learned there into a more concise, "Lesson from Rocky Glade" post. So check back and––sorry, can't help myself––go Cubs!- Jesse.

THAT MAMA LIFE.

On Saturday morning, I was laying in bed with Further listening to the rain tapping on the tin roof. Jesse had left early that morning for market, and we had the whole day to ourselves. We were snuggled up under the quilt and I was envisioning my morning: cleaning the house, washing diapers, maybe doing a little bit of knitting...Then I heard that sound we have so come to dread: the snarfling, snorting sound of pigs in the front yard. I closed my eyes for a moment and then got up, grabbed the baby carrier, and off we went.Somehow, I managed to smoothly wrangle the pigs, get them back into their paddock, re-string the electric wire fence, bring them food and water - all the while tromping through the rain and mud in my pajamas AND simultaneously breastfeeding Further! All before 7 AM. I got back to the house and couldn't help but feel pretty dang proud of myself.Well, I am sure you know how this sort of story goes. It wasn't half an hour later that I was back outside, in more rain and mud, chasing pigs and not feeling quite so smug. This time, Further was screaming his head off and slamming his face repeatedly into my chest, and I was saying a lot more choice words. Finally, by 11:30, and with the helping hand of Ira, the pigs were all in and accounted for. I started cooking my much-needed breakfast and felt completely spent. My leisurely morning: gone. My plans of returning any sense of order to the cabin: nixed.This is often how I find myself these days - zipping back in forth between feeling somewhat accomplished and feeling like a total failure. I have come to grips with the fact that I cannot always be out in the field helping Jesse. But when I can't even manage to get the floor swept and the diapers are piling up and I can't find one clean fork, I just start to feel somewhat useless.I know, I know, I know that being a Mama is important. And I know that this is what it is to be a parent: to try every day, to fail every day. Some days we read books and play games and laugh and learn and I love my baby every single minute, and some days I just can't wait for him to fall asleep so I can just sit alone in a room and not have anybody touching me for five seconds. But I am trying these days not to be so controlled by my emotions, trying not to let those ugly feelings of failure creep in. This is hard in being a mama, and it is hard in farming. Hard to not despair over lost crops, weedy gardens, buggy broccoli.So: I will embrace the dirty kitchen. I will wait for Jesse to come home and help me with the pigs. I will try very hard to treasure every moment of this little child of mine, this farming life of mine. And tomorrow, I will try again.- Hannah.

ALL THINGS ARE NATURAL.

My favorite kind of wine is natural wine. That's literally to how they're referred––Les Vins Naturels. These wines are typically unrefined, unfiltered, ornery, and I love them. They can taste sweet and bright, or like manure, but mostly they just taste alive. Anyway, I remember ten or so years ago when some of us in the wine trade first started referring to these wines as "Natural Wine" that many other wine professionals threw a fit, and the fit went like this: 1) Natural is too vague a term to use, and/or 2) Because wine is a product that is made by humans, it can therefore not be referred to as natural.Argument number 1 is fair. Natural is a vague term. But we weren't using it as an official label. We were just grouping a bunch of wines together and giving them a name in the same way we group stylish young individuals together and call them hipsters. And, perhaps like "hipster", the word "natural" wasn't always something producers wanted their wines to be called. It was unavoidable, though, that they would be grouped together somehow. These wines were all different, sure, but all had one unique feature in common––for hipsters, it was style, for natural wine, it was vivacity. We just wanted something to call all these wines that we so loved, and it could have been anything, but natural wine was what stuck. Argument number 2, however, that since humans produce and bottle wine it can therefore never be considered natural, has always grated on me.Why as humans do we cling so fast to the idea that we are even remotely capable of doing anything that is not natural? We intensively cultivate crops, milk animals and keep livestock, you might argue. Well, so do many types of ants. What about the fact that we make and drink wine? Not to be a spoilsport––pun intended?––but we've been doing that since we lived in trees. In fact, our relatives who still live in trees, still do it––they just don't bottle and sell the stuff (yet). How would I argue against that fact that we synthesize chemicals to kill unwanted plants? That has to be unnatural. Well, sorry, plants did it first. In fact, 99.9% of the pesticide and herbicide residue we ingest is actually made by the plants, according to THIS ridiculously interesting study. Moreover, many of the petrochemicals we do create can actually be completely dismantled by fungi––called mycoremediation––or bacteria. So, perhaps maddeningly, even the chemicals we create ourselves––which no one would really refer to as natural––are not so unnatural after all. Otherwise Nature wouldn't have an answer for them. Also, just for fun, did you know dolphins in the wild each have their own individual names with which they introduce themselves to other dolphins? Yep. So in short, we, too, are just animals. And we are doing nothing different from what Nature does, only most other parts of Nature are better at it; most other parts do it on a more sustainable scale.We just have to stop thinking that there is Nature, and then there's us––it's not healthy, and it's definitely not correct. We are a product of Nature. From the earth we came and to the earth we shall return, right? It is easy to look around at the manmade world we've created and think we did it on our own––easy, but wrong. We were domesticated by plants like wheat, soybeans, corn and the grapevine––which collectively possess the vast majority of our farmland, I might point out––in the same way that the squirrel was domesticated by the oak tree, or the hummingbird by the flower, or the hipster by The Strokes. In the end, perhaps it is symbiosis we are outside of, not nature. Nature we are very much a part of, even if we suck at it.- Jesse.