• Last of the Apples! - Enjoy the final distribution of Goldrush and Fuji!
• Yellow Potatoes
• Leek, leeks, leeks! - It wasn't our best year for storage onions, but the leeks have made up for it! Big and fat and abundant!
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli - our first little harvest of the season
• Lacinato Raab - Our overwintered kale is starting to stretch skyward and make tasty little flower buds, which we call spring "raab." This is the final gift from kale plants that have been in the ground for a full year, and perhaps the best treat of all. Great steamed or roasted until crispy-browned.
• Cauliflower - The first harvest of overwintered cauliflower, which always feels quasi-miraculous. 
• Red and Gold Beets
• Candystick Delicata Squash
• Butternut Squash
• Lettuce & Spinach Salad Mix - If ever there was a labor of love, it's the winter salad mix! Lots of hours spent stooped on our knees for harvest, and another half day of washing, but oh the glory of a vibrant winter salad!
• Micro Mix - we're trialing a bunch of new micro varieties, so the mix this week is a little bit of everything!

Life on the farm is always dictated by the weather, but even more so in the winter. Right now work is pretty cleanly split into two categories: the rainy-day and the dry-day list. Dry days are all about pruning fruit trees and blueberry bushes, starting with the early-to-bloom plums and peaches, moving to pears, and finally apples. We're also juggling a long list of other "off-season" projects: new fencing, irrigation improvements, greenhouse upgrades, and building barn doors for the tote storage shed we completed last month:

Rainy-day work is far-ranging in content, but centered in the office: it always involves finishing the crop plan for the season to come, getting the last of our seeds ordered and organized, managing CSA sign-ups, and doing lots of member communications. But this year the office list is stretching longer than ever. We have a couple of grants to apply for before mid-March (state funds, not unpredictable federal dollars this time). We're in the midst of importing another Toyota Hiace pickup from Japan - a lot of paperwork, but worth it for the best farm rig ever built: diesel 4WD, 1 ton capacity, fold down sides (so it converts to a full flatbed), a ten foot bed (for hauling lots of veggies! lumber! metal roofing! pallets of stuff!), but still compact for our small farm. Of course I wish it was electric, but until they invent that fantasy farm rig, my flame will burn for the Toyota Hiace. Here's a pic of Yoshi, the first one we imported last fall:

It's also been a super busy season of policy and legislative activism at the county, state and federal levels: It's almost daily that I'm submitting written testimony to the legislature regarding various bills under consideration in Salem to protect land use laws, improve water law, promote programs for farmers, immigrants, and low income communities, and support policies that underwrite more resilient local food systems in our state. Meanwhile the Curry County Board of Commissioners has many of us working overtime in an effort to steer them away from a misguided proposal to take over and clearcut our federal lands, and instead help brainstorm proposals for sustainable revenue generation for the county. Add to that the federal funding freeze, which is still impacting the farm and has me in daily correspondence with Congressional staffers, the Governor's office, farmer organizations and other farmers. There's a lot to do on all these fronts (please let me know if you want to plug in in any way, we need more voices!).

But one look at the weather forecast this week means pruning is going to win out, in spite of the pile-up on my desk (with the exception of some time-sensitive testimony that will get written somehow, by burning another other end of the candle...man, if only they could make a candle with more than two ends...).

There is also one other kind of weather that creates its very own kind of purpose: wet and very cold, which equals very cold and very snowy in the mountains. When that forecast shows up on my phone, you can bet money that this is where you'll find most of the Valley Flora family, in varying states of glee: 

After all, everyone needs a snow day now and then :)