Greens For Good

These are crazy times. I am so grateful for the groundedness that farming provides. I am so grateful for the ability to access land and opportunities that my privilege provides. 

That's why this week, as a kick off to our 2020 farm sales, we are donating the proceeds of our sales to two amazing organizations advancing food justice on many fronts through their work with food access and farmer support-

National Black Food & Justice Alliance & Soul Fire Farm.  We're not free until we are all free and all communities are free to grow and eat their own nutritious, nourishing foods.

So in a mixed up world, we're mixing up our model. This week we offer a limited amount of Spring shares, we're calling Greens for Good. They will have kale, bok choi, green onions, mustard greens (my fave! Great with pork and any sesame soy concoction you can throw their way) and more. We're skipping the substitutions this week so we can move more shares and raise more money. 

DELIVERY AVAILABLE IN WASHBURN & ASHLAND currently. We will accept orders until Thursday at noon or until shares sell out.

Please order & pay through our farm stand :

And detail where you would like your no contact delivery placed-if you won't be home Friday afternoon we strongly suggest a cooler on the porch, greens love cool temps and behave best in them ;)

It is truly a PRIVILEGE to grow food for this community!

The Art of Letting Go

 Happy August and Full Sturgeon Moon. That lunar energy is high and the garden and wild wood seem to vibrate with it. The full moon is an excellent time to check in with intentions and purpose and to practice releasing. The garden is letting go, so to speak, of a few favorites this week: the last of the Napa Cabbage and the last of the cauliflower.But the wheel keeps on spinning and new favorites are taking their rightful place as August begins. New potatoes are available for the first time this week. Baby beets may also find there way to the table.   Holy Basil (Tulsi)- Queen of the calming herbs and delicious in a tea is back and ready to help you find your center, I've been steeping it in hot & cold tea preparations and its helping me keep my cool, both physically and emotionally in these long and charged summer days.
A garden and any of Nature really, is such a wonderful teacher in the Art of Letting Go, and I seem a slow learner in this capacity, thank goodness a farm continuously offers opportunities to practice it.  Speaking of Letting Go, I'm also practicing releasing my expectation for red tomatoes and grown cukes this week.  I peek under leafs, walk rows, bump elbows with bumblebees searching for the first of these quintessential summer fruits to show. The breeze ripples across the broad green leaves of these garden gems and whispers, "All in Good Time, All in Good Time," and I listen, sigh, and check again. I hope you get the opportunity to gaze up at that big ol moon, take a deep breathe, and let something go. Maybe even howl AND then go eat some veggies.

EMBRACE IT

We hope you are slowing down and savoring and heeding Summer's siren call to ENJOY. We hope this message finds you beach walking, star gazing, lake jumping, long dinner enjoying, family visit taking, firefly chasing, and star gazing. We hope you take thetime to sit on a porch or deck and share a cup of coffee or summer cheer with a close friend as we have been taking the time too! There is a hecticness to summer, especially a North Country, one as short and oh so sweet as it is. So though many of us areall caught up in the Getting IT ALL DONE, as we are ever so guilty of doing, please find the quiet pause and revel in the beauty and joy that this season offers. It is truly a gift, we just need to pause and receive it.

Independance Day: A Retrospective

This is an excerpt from our weekly newsletter, locals be sure to subscribe for the most up-to-date news and offerings from DFF

A brief statement on the 4th of July. We are so grateful to be free. To get up and choose how to spend our seconds, our moments, our thoughts, our fears, our hearts, our energy. We are so grateful to have strong roofs, full bellies, soft beds. We are so damn grateful to have the resources to steward this land of towering pines, clean water, abundant wildlife. To have the resources to care for all the living things we share our life with with the respect, kindness, and compassion they deserve. We wish this for all people, everywhere. And on that patriotic note, America’s birthday may not pass without thinking of voting. And I just want to pause and say a heartfelt Thank You for voting with your dollars to support small, local, sustainable agriculture and specifically, this small, scrappy, dream-filled  and heart-breaking endeavor of ours so we can keep on doing it. Every dollar you spend purchasing from us, from our local farmer friends, at the coop, at the farmers market is a vote that says you prioritize clean food, resilient local economies and ecosystems, fair wages for skilled labor, less packaging, less burning of fossil fuels, healthier people, plants, and animals, air and water. THANK YOU, for there is no farm or farmer without eaters.

HITTING THE GROUND RUNNING-ODE TO SPRING

Ahhh, Spring.  A fickle temptress indeed. As soon as the snow recedes just enough from the slumbering garden space, I dream of tomatoes, watermelons, crazy fever dreams that are still about 6 months away. But still, it lures one to imagine beaches and birdsong and bonfires. In reality:  Cold, cold, cold, wet. Then suddenly, in the blink of an eye or the snap of a finger, HOT, HOT, HOT (wet).  Although allegedly a transitional season, I find this a deceptive label. Out here, in our Defiant Field (and many other places as well)  it is really just a mash-up of Winter & Summer, sometimes alternatively, sometimes all at once. We have seen at least a foot of rain, we have seen fires in the woodstove to warm us deep into the heart of May, we have experienced several days near 90F already, hunkered through a few rounds of hail. BUT, any and everyday we have been able, we've been out prepping, flipping, weeding, watering, planting, praying, sweating, coaxing, celebrating, saddened. Basically, we've been farming in the Midbest Spring.

We were pulled away from the farm for a variety of reasons in May, so it may have been a bit more quiet over here, but we are using these long light-filled days to play the catch up game as best as we know how. Knowing deeply that there is no way to dupe Father Time, the wily old cuss, but trying our best to dance around his periphery, maybe if he doesn't notice, we get this second, minute, hour to complete the task while he obviously chuckles at our foolishness. But we try. We do try.

Because of and despite our best efforts, Spring is all about Growth. Helping us release the failures, (oh and there are those) the many hens lost this Spring to a coyote pack we just couldn't outsmart. The shallot crop lost to the cutworms, nestled so cozily in a thick mulch overwinter.  But then we notice -The chicks have rapidly reached their ugly/cute tween stage. The piglets are getting noticeably bigger plowing their way quickly through spring pasture, lush and full.  The first nest of Robins in the barn have fledged already. The Hummingbird feeder is busy day and night. The first generation of Monarch caterpillars is currently munching their way through our milkweed stands and the fireflies light our paths in the late late twilight as we close coops and breathe the soft Spring air deeply.

In the garden, the Spring favorites are readying.  Beautiful and crisp Little Gem Lettuces, snappy Arugula, Pac Chois and Kale and the Brassica friends deepening green and soaking in all this moisture. Delicate and lovely Japanese (Salad/Spring) turnips ghostly white glow pushing up through the soft dark ground. Herbs readying as the pathway clover grows wild and unruly and pollinators of all kinds, especially the honeybees ,binge on their sweet nectar. Visit our Online Farmstand to complete a custom order and get our spring goodies delivered to your door!

Spring, a sprint, a heartbreak, a triumph, a defeat. She tries our patience, fatigues our bodies, and frustrates our minds. She enchants our spirits, swells our hearts, makes us fall in love all over again, and what a privilege to be here, doing this work for another round.  ~Farmer Sarah

Well-Educated Eggs

One of the coolest things about being farmers in a small town is the connections you build in the community. We're not just selling food, we're feeding our friends. We love that. And we also love helping people learn about sustainable agriculture. So, last year when our friend Amy, a teacher in the local schools, asked if our hens could provide eggs to hatch as a class project, we were stoked. We packed up 36 of the best and brightest eggs we could find and shipped 'em off to school.

The class incubated the eggs, watched them hatch, cared for the fuzzy little chicks, and learned a whole lot about chickens in the process. At the end of the year, the well-loved little birds came back to Defiant Field Farm where they became part of our laying flock. So, when Amy asked if we could do the same thing again this spring, it was super cool to pack up eggs from some of the hens that hatched in her classroom last year and send them back for round two.

And since this will be the second generation of Defiant Field hens to attend school, we can probably claim to have the most highly educated chickens in Northern Wisconsin. We might have to add that to our labels.

We totally forgot to take a photo of this year's eggs before we sent them off to school, but these are last year's eggs on their way to the classroom. The best part: some of these eggs, hatched in the classroom last year, returned to Defiant Field Farm and grew up to be the hens that laid this year's hatching eggs.

Sarah carefully inspecting eggs for cracks and dirt before they go to the incubator.

SHOP CLOSED 10/17-10/23

Pigs are getting butchered, outbuildings are being worked on, friends are getting hitched (early CONGRATS Travis & Kyleleen!) and we're off to their wedding. So alas, dear friends, our online farmstand is closed for the week~ OCTOBER 17 to 23rd.  Hopefully you've got something healthy & fiber filled nearby to munch on (like my goat buddies here) while we're closed up and please do check back next week for more delicious fall flavors!

No reservation

A chill rain released from the cold dark heavens in the earliest hours of Sunday morning meant kissing goodbye to our warm weather friends of peppers, basil, tomatoes...(although peppers make one last exuberant showing in the online farmstead this week, get yours while they're here, it's their last hurrah!) This means we can, without reservation, fling open our arms in wide warm welcome to the fall crops of kale, radish, leek.  We can fire up the burners and hearths and unabashedly simmer, braise, and stew away...letting warm aromas pique our appetites hours before we sit down and sup with relish, gusto, and gratitude for the harvest among us.

GlORY

Glory, Hallelujah! This amazing fall is extending our season oh so beautifully.  Even as the ferns wither and brown on the forest's edge and the maples slowly kindle and then burst into flame, the garden has held on to vibrant, nourishing riches. The jewel tones of eggplant, pepper, kale glow on in lush rows. But, alas, the center and temps cannot hold. The end of the week is sounding the warning call of frost ...there will so very soon come an evening not long enough to pick and harvest before the dark tent of night covers the dome of sky above us and the temps plummet, officially transitioning the garden to late fall. BUT, it is not this night, nor the next few. So this is the week to stock pile bell peppers, hot peppers, eggplant.  All freeze splendidly, or roast in the oven or on the grill and tuck away for a bright taste of summer in the midst of a north country winter.  Likewise, stringing a few blazingly hued hot peppers to dry will transport you to the heat of the southwest even as you split your kindling and stack your woodpile.  The leeks, cabbage, and kale are gently whispering to you to be simmered into a creamy soup, easy campanions to wild rice or potatoes, your favorite smoky sausage to be eaten out of heavy earthen ware bowls near a flickering, cheery fire as we and the farmstead all herald the return to fall.

Allies

A standard week in the way that life exists on this earth. The sun rises and sets. Political posturing continues. The moon waxes, adding abundance each night as it sails through the stars, growing into its fat fullness, The Harvest moon. Our human tribe gathers in the West loudly defending land and custom who's voice has been muffled, but not silenced. Our days are growing incrementally shorter, the shadows on the fields lengthen noticeably. The cunning coyote nabs another unsuspecting pullet. The nighttime temps flirt with frost, just enough to cause sleepless tossing and turning in bed as they dip and deceive. Loved ones leave this earth through the doorway of death, new loved ones join us here in fast and amazing births. The delicate hot crops of summer, persist, doggedly ripening and staying the course. The late summer/fall hustle catches up with one farmer and slows her with a course of cold and cough ailments, the subtle sign of the body saying, "slow down, you've had enough."  But then, there are tomatoes to pick and cover crops to sow and emails to reply.  Balance, oh balance you ephemeral height.

I bow humbly to some of the tools the garden can supply, not just a piece of livelihood, and nourishment, but medicine too. A healing broth procured from the bones of the sassiest of this year's roos, simmered and bathed for hours on the stove in aromatic spledor. Softened together with the antibacterial allicin housed in the raw power of garlic, mingled with the power of onion in its own right. Enhanced with the enlivening and energizing effect of a hot pepper~ antioxidents, capsaicin, vitamin C, carotanoid.  The kale swirled into the broth bringing magnesium and folate. Carrots adding their own phytonutrients~beta-carotenes, cartanoids, polyacetylenes, names meaning less against their clarifying, strengthening work flooding through heart and digestive organs, the pulmonary system, the lungs, the breath, the brain, the blood and bones of me.  Any and all herbs, themselves an arsanal of healing and wealth, a fine addition. A crushed stem of rosemary, infusing the pot and my lungs with its anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-septic magic.  Steaming warm mugs of Tulsi (aromatic, antibacterial, antimicrobial) laced with raw honey,  brewed by honeybees (magical in their own right) from flowers of the same plant, a goddess of a plant (holy in her own right)  noted to aid in soothing colds, coughs, asthma, bronchitis, sinusitis, headaches, stress, anxiety...A refill please! And though I am not one to shy away from other mainstream courses of treatment, I do know the sweet freedom of starting a wellness journey mere steps from my back door. All the gifts the garden offers up, a fine meal to be sure, but also a cup, a spoonful of health.  A held hand in overwhelm, a warm embrace of healing and health, she extends...and I to you.

The Bridge

The bookends of summer are a human construct.  Memorial Day to Labor Day, an imaginary definition we've given to a season that fits neatly into another man-made timeline, the school year. And yet, many a morning directly proceeding Labor Day, I inhale a smoky spicy autumnal scent newly lingering in the morning fog. There is a heavier blanket of chill dew coating my feet as I walk to the field that seemingly wasn't there just a week ago. The pearlescent gray of twilight creeps in earlier and earlier these evenings, widening the gap, not unwelcomingly so, between dinner times and bedtimes. How does Nature acquiesce so to our strangely human seasonality?  Or is that, in some deeply hidden wild of ourselves we are still brushing against our agrarian roots, our hunter/gatherer/animal selves that still notice when the animal coats thicken, when the berries ripen, when the winds blow stronger and the moon shines clearer?  I'm not sure.  What I do know is that we are in the time of straddling the seasons, a bridge is being woven, minute by golden minute stretching across the chasm, one side summer still, one side autumn next.  The garden rides this distinction with equanimity and the farm chores reflect this framework. The assertive tastes of summer are still shining forth in tomato and basil, but the shallots are fattening up, the potatoes secreting sugars underground.  One evening we dine on cucumber, zucchini, all of the tomatoes, the next we roast a fat sassy rooster and accompany him with an equally fat but less sassy cabbage.  We begin the slow steady climb that is Autumn.  We still pick bucket loads of tomatoes for your canning pleasure. We still chop basil extravagantly in all things.  We snack on cukes straight from the vine.  And yet.  We harvest the first of many roosters, the biggest, the meanest. We pull honey frames from hives and wait for the spinner to arrive so we can jar that liquid gold. I keep an eye to the leeks that are growing still, straight and green in their arrow tops above soil. I sow fall field greens and radish seeds in faith of a gentle and forgiving autumn.  The orange winter squash flirt more boldly between the waning greens that nursed them along, soon, very soon, ready to be picked and cured wherever we can find the room. And so, really, who adjusts to who's timeline? The winds laugh as they breeze at our watches and calendars, the geese chortle at out timelines as the soar past, the bees buzz in amusement through the goldenrod as we pack away our summer whites, and the garden grows on throughout it all in quiet satisfaction.

The Rally

The breeze ruffles in the trees. Third cups of coffee are poured. Snooze buttons are hit one extra time. This is it. This is the sprint, the rally, the grand finale. This is the last caress of summer and the first chilly embrace of autumn. We have had a truly lovely month or so of visits, of loved ones journeying to the Northwoods. Of lake jumping and ice cream cone dinners.  We are so grateful that each and every one of these beloveds came to see us, trekked 6hrs, 9hrs, whole days to visit the tip of the country...(Third Coast feels). I'm in the liminal space of staycation and work, fervor and rest. But, it's making it really hard to buckle back down and get busy, at a time when busy is needed. The garden is celebrating by abundantly gifting all the heat of summer bests...the plucky cherry tomatoes, the sturdy slicing tomatoes, the hearty beefcakes, I mean beefstake tomatoes, the rich sauce tomatoes.  All bringing their own flare to the banquet of summer's best.  There's hot peppers, mild peppers, bell peppers.  There's basil, and cukes and zukes.  If you aren't making salsas left and right, I'm not sure what you are doing with yourself.  Now is the time for putting up and putting by. Freezing, canning, drying, stocking the larder for the starker days to come.  Gratitude, now's the time for that.

PS We've added another round of defiant chicks to bolster to our egg supply.  Look for more beautiful pastured, organic, free-range egg offerings just as soon as these ladies grow up and get crackin, er laying.

Patience

Patience is a virtue, at least that's what they tell me. I don't come by it too naturally, but then again, I suspect, that very few of us do.  For a decade, I waited to buy my own farm.  Then, once I (we) bought that farm in the rough, as it surely is, I waited 3 years to get to the point I could sell my own produce...slowly carving a market garden out of the forest, out of the scraggly meadow, out of the soil that was/is more of a sandbox than a sandy loam. I ran pigs through it, seeded it in cover crops like buckwheat, phacelia, clover. I started a small egg CSA, capturing the laying hens most coveted (to me) byproduct, -nitrogen, and enjoyed that other well known export of chickens, the egg. I (we) built a fence, a website, garden beds. I sold my first produce, lettuce, and it was grand!  And this little experiment of an online farm shop continues to build. I continue to deliver this local, organic, garden goodness weekly to my community and it FEELS SO GOOD.  All those years, months, days, hours of waiting....I have ripe tomatoes, for sale, just a few, just the beginning, but tomatoes none the less.  I'm not sure why this feels so monumental, so full of gravitas. But up here, in the northcountry, on the shores of Lake Superior, where growing seasons and heat are often meagerly rationed, having for sale field tomatoes, naked to the winds and rains and appetite of mice without the sweater-like comfort of a hoophouse, feels damn good.

I'm here to tell you, much like a watched pot doesn't boil, a pale orange slicer is loathe to burst into crimson when repeatedly badgered. As I have been monitoring the tomato beds, sometimes multiply times a day, I'vebeen ruminating on patience and timing and the way of the universe and lunch.  And today while out in the field, after a successful tomato stalking, I was graced with a huge Monarch swooping and diving and alighting all around me.  I thought about how the Monarch caterpillar doesn't get antsy as it munches along the milkweed, it simply nourishes itself and then one day, somehow, perhaps in the vibration of a dewdrop, or the whisper in a west wind, it knows to spin a chrysalis. And after its appropriate time spent incubating inside its green bivouacked home, without peeking or testing, it knows to break free.  And it knows to slide minutely and gracefully out, and unfurl its much adorned wings, letting them dry in that intense summer sun. And so on into its life, its purpose. And it knows and trusts, just as the tomato knows and trusts that it (with luck and blessings) will ripen on the vine.  And so, maybe too, I should trust and know, that all is happening on this farm, in this season, in this day, in this hour, as it should. That the ripening and unfurling and accomplishing is happening just as it should.  So I am learning the virtue in patience, in trust, and in tomato sandwiches.
 

Pause

My oh my, where to begin? Whew, can I just say how happy I am it's August? We LOVE what we do, this little defiant farm, but its been a doozy. Lots and lots of +90F days here on the hill, floods, blow down, logging, Lyme disease, loss of livestock. I am ever so excited to see that evening light take on that just beginning to be Autumn golden twilight hue. To re-experience the 50s at night. To throw on my favorite (not Bob's favorite) thrifted Loon sweatshirt as I head off to morning chores. Hallelujah. I know there will be a day, not too far in the frosty future, where my chilly bones will yearn for these sunkissed days, the eating straight from the garden, the "need" for routine ice cream, the steady soundtrack of hummingbird wings. But for now, in the air anyway, there seems to occur a crystalline moment where there is a pause, a breathe, a space and I am all the more thankful for it.
The garden, sad to say, slips into a little benign neglect this time of year. The weeds get a bit leggier than would have been tolerated in middle June, we are sparser with the precious drops of water that begin to be meted out with less regularity than in the Spring rains. There is a general shagginess that I kind of enjoy, but my early season Type A farmer lady would not tolerate. Its harvest and market instead of plant and cultivate. The hustle, the hustle has been hard. Keeping up with our other 3 jobs, working on wellness & healing, devoting some serious life energy picking up after the storm, ie logging, logging, logging. But that's farming and really, that's life, you know? But just when you (ME) wants to buy an air conditioner, crawl under the covers, and sleep for two weeks, letting that crazy world continue to spin on without you...there it is, The Pause. Or rather the reminders to pause: the sun setting just a bit earlier, the longer day onions bulbing up, the school supply aisle abrasively popping back up at the local grocery. And I stop, and I inhale and exhale, and I remember to be grateful for this breath, this breeze, this opportunity to be here, NOW, this tomato, this work, this life...and I hope you do too.

Click here to see what we've got from the Defiant Field this week.

Roan takes a rare Siberian husky swim. You know it's hot when sled dogs take to the water.

Teaser for next week: the first few tomatoes are ripening up! We should have them available for sale next week. Stay tuned.

Shhhhh, the garden is resting...

Shhhhhh, the garden is resting!
Hiya lovely friends & customers, we're taking a week off from garden sales and delivery this week, (8/5) as we've got a logger coming so we can attend to some more storm cleanup. But don't worry, we'll be back next week with even more of your summer favs. We'll miss you and will be very excited to bring you delivered local organic eats next week

Produce for Friday, July 29

Whew! What a challenging couple of weeks our area and this little farm has endured. But we are an area of tough, tender, resourceful, gritty & beautiful community and we're cleaning up, picking up, and moving on. Even though our forests and one out building suffered major damages, our animals, house, and for the most part, gardens are in great shape. That means we're back in business and have veggies and eggs online to sell and deliver for your eating pleasure this week. Even the chickens are back at it, laying eggs at a happy pace. New this week: broccoli and the very start of our summer squash crop! Basil is still looking good, despite the 90 mph winds it got tossed around in, so make your pesto now! The very high temps we've had recently means this is most likely our last head lettuce week for some time, but we're offering 3 pack hearts of romaine (one of my fav lettuces options!) for your salad fixings. Thank you to all of you for your kindness and understanding of our canceled deliveries and limited communications last week AND for your continued support of our unruly little woodland farm and local, sustainable agriculture!

Produce for Friday, July 22

Week three of our online ordering experiment! Check out what we've got ready for delivery this Friday (July 22):

• Romaine Lettuce
• Chard
• Kale
• Basil–NEW! this week order in a medium size bunch for $3 or get a big bag (perfect for PESTO making) for just $9.

Pop on over to the online store to place your order.

Produce for July 15

This week's storms and flooding hit northern Wisconsin hard. Driving rain and high winds have resulted in some crop loss here at Defiant Field, but –unlike some of our friends–we haven't lost everything and we're thankful for that. So here's what made it through the storm and is ready for delivery this week:

• Beautiful Romaine Lettuce–right at its peak
• Chard–just a few bunches up for grabs this week
• Kale–the garden workhorse and culinary powerhouse
• Basil–tenacious and tasty bundles
• Cauliflower–these are the first few brave explorers on the scene, hopefully more to come!

Place your order here. We'll be delivering in Ashland and Washburn on Friday, July 15. Make sure that the shipping address you include in your order is where you want your order delivered. We will take orders until 9:30 pm on Thursday night or until supplies run out.

As always, but especially this week, thank you for your support. It's what keeps us going.

The Defiant Farmers

Grocery Shop Online

It's a big day for our little farm. Today is the first day we've put produce on our website to sell. For this first week its lettuce, basil, and kale. That might not sound like such a big deal, but for us its a whole bunch of things coming together: work in the field, work on the website, work in the record keeping and accounting side of things. Selling produce through our website has been a part of the plan for a long time and now we're actually trying it out. Will it be seamless? Probably not. Will it be worth the trouble? That's what we'll find out. Like a ton of the things we do, it's an experiment. Stop back as the season goes on to see how it changes and grows. There's lots more to come. For now though, check it out and lettuce know what you think! HA!

New Kids on the Block.

Around midnight last night we welcomed four new arrivals at Defiant Field Farmstead, two sets of twins. Each doe had a white buckling and black doeling. We stayed in the barn until 3:30 this morning setting up heat lamps and making sure everyone got dried off and started nursing. Then we crashed. Went back out at 6 to make sure everyone was still doing well, did morning chores, and then crashed again. I think it's safe to say you'll be seeing a couple more photos of these little champs. Stay tuned.