Welcome, Springtime Heat!
Wow, Spring heat has hit us full force this year! Here on the farm we are rolling with it, suddenly able to harvest much more varieties of fresh crops and using up the last of our stored roots. It is exciting and energizing! Your CSA this week will be packed with goodies to make salads and my favorite: Iced Mint Tea. I recommend getting a big pitcher if you don’t already have one, boil the mint in a pot of water, add honey, cool, and transfer to the pitcher, then keep in the fridge for a refreshing taste of summer! PS – adding a pinch...
read moreNew Produce and New Pigs
May is an exciting time of year on the farm. It’s a transition time from preparation to production. Our greenhouse team is at the summit of peak output and now it’s time to get all those plants in the ground. We’re off to a good start: already getting a round of lettuces, our first kale succession, and our onions transplanted in the field. (Did you know in just two beds of shallots we hand transplant almost 800 plants?) This week, we’re starting to see new produce (much of it featured in your CSA share), including baby carrots from the...
read moreFestivals of Springtime
May is here! Many cultures celebrate this seasonal midpoint between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. Around the world, these festivals include Beltane (Celtic, Pagan), May Day (Euro-American), Wulpurgisnacht/Valborg (German and Scandinavian), Root Festival (Yakama), Ching Ming (Chinese), Whitsuntide (Dutch), and the Goddess Festivals: Aphrodite (Greek), Venus (Roman), and Lada (Slavic). The themes many of these festivals share are a celebration of growth, renewal, fertility, and abundance. In many traditions, this marks the...
read moreTulips Springing
A gift that being a farmer gives you is living life by the seasons. They all have their defining features and creatures — for me in spring, it’s unpredictable weather; it’s watching tulips ripen; it’s little baby frogs living in the greenhouse lettuce, purple sprouting broccoli, absurd amounts of raab, piglets in a pen and bringing new crew onto the farm. Going into my third season at Red Dog, I’m in a throws of nostalgia: this time last year I was doing a lot of the same…picking tulips, for example. Here I am doing it all over again, but I...
read moreEarth Day Recipes
This week is earth week! Produce-wise, April and May can be the slimmest pickings of the year on local PNW farms, when the overwintered and stored crops have mostly been eaten and we turn our attention to growing and transplanting seedlings. It can sometimes be difficult or uninspiring to cook with locally grown fruit and veg at this time of year so I am going to list two recipe suggestions that are fun, unique ways to eat on Earth Day, using Red Dog Farm ingredients provided to all our CSA members! 1: PSB Pizza — a Red Dog crew...
read moreA “Galaxy” of Creative Plant Names
Hi CSA readers! Eli here! With spring in full swing, we are doing a lot of greenhouse work at the farm these days! Just a couple of weeks ago I was assigned to be greenhouse assistant for the springtime, so I have gotten to spend a lot of time getting to know all of the baby plants that we’ll be growing on the farm this season, and those we’re selling for you to grow at home! Working in the greenhouse with Eva has been an absolute joy. It is a truly amazing experience to begin with a tiny seed and know that each little dried-up seed will grow...
read moreCSA Means Springtime
Welcome to 2023 CSA! CSA has become synonymous with spring, and it is such a pleasure to distribute our stored winter roots, burgeoning greens, and tulips! You’re getting just a taste of tulips this week, with more to come. We have been so thankful for some sunny, dry weather these past weeks, but overall the temps have been unseasonably cold (a snow blizzard yesterday morning!?). Tulips and most crops are running behind schedule, but will be caught up in no time. This time of year is what I call “scrounge harvest”. I tell our harvest...
read moreThankful for the Abundant Season
2022 proved itself to be the most unusual farming year I’ve ever experienced, one in which many, many valuable lessons were learned. Literally nothing went as planned this year- from planting plans to staffing plans- there was constant change and upheaval. I’ve learned over the past 24 years farming that being flexible is paramount to success as a farmer. This year, I learned that to my core. Previously I thought I was flexible, but that was only practice, as it turned out! Amazingly, despite the record-breaking spring rainfall, staffing...
read moreWinter Bounty
Winter farming is in full swing at the farm! Many market and Farmstand customers are shocked when they hear that we still harvest in the winter. What is there to harvest? How do these crops survive a Pacific Northwest winter? Are farmers willing to harvest outside during this time of the year? I asked all of these questions when I first started farming at Red Dog. To my surprise, there are lots of crops to be harvested in the winter. In fact some crops that we planted in the summer will survive all the way through the winter and may be in the...
read moreThe Fields of Red Dog Farm: A Musical Journey
Dan here! As the season is coming to a close, I reflect back on many fond memories throughout the season here at Red Dog Farm. I relocated to Jefferson County this year, specifically to work on the farm and find community. I’ve lived all over the US and even some parts of Mexico. I’m somewhat of a rambler if you will. One of my favorite parts of working at Red Dog Farm is the love I have for my co-workers. It’s a truly special group of people I have the honor and pleasure of working with daily. We all have our stories, our journeys that...
read more