Guess what??

 In June Adam and I BOUGHT OUR OWN 40-ACRE FARM!!!  Yes, it's true.  After searching diligently over the past year, we finally found a farm that is a perfect fit for us.  Although we were looking for a property in our current location (and a little bit south of us where land is a bit more affordable), we saw the listing for our farm (still not used to writing "our farm") which is near Hutchinson, MN (around 70 miles west of Minneapolis).  We are so happy and overjoyed to have finally found something--the farm is already certified organic and has been operating a vegetable CSA in the local area.  We will not close on the property and move until the end of the season, and then we plan on expanding and being full-time farmers finally!  We have many plans, but season extension is high on our priority list and we will be putting up a hoophouse or two over the next couple years, hopefully extending our farming season into 9 months of the calendar year.    Being able to grow more healthy, local food for a longer season and also serve some of the economically disadvantaged population with fresh produce are among two of our top goals.  Of course, shoftly after we move to the new farm, I will atttend Terra Madre and leave Adam to tie up loose ends and plant garlic at the new Loon Farm.  I think Terra Madre will be an inspiring place to be right before we begin a new phase in our farming career.  I imagine that I'll be able to gather many great ideas from other small-scale farmers from all over the world and that I'll also be reminded of our solidarity with the community of farmers all over the world.   A great thing to keep in mind if you are feeling isolated on the farm.  In the meantime, we are trying to keep everything up here and enjoy the rest of our time here at this beautiful farm.  It seems even more beautiful now--probably because we are taking more time to notice it.  It helps that we are not having a killer, windy drought like last year at this time too!  As always, we'll keep you posted and chronicle our many joys and trials in the future months and years ahead.  

Next season, we shouldn't have many worries about space constraints, but in the meantime, we are still here farming our few acres and figuring out how to grow more on less.  In our effort to grow more in a smaller amount of space, we are experimenting with pole beans and peas.  That means that a lot of trellising--we already trellis our tomatoes and added pole beans and pole peas which adds up to a whole lot of T-posts springing up around the field.  Along with our electric fence, we have something like 200-300 stainless steel T-posts.  That's a lot of steel, but so far it seems that at least one planting of pole peas have done better in yields and health than previous years' plantings.  We will see about the beans.  We just had our first stellar harvest of bush green beans--I think we picked 200 pounds in a 200 foot row and another heavy set of beans is ready to be picked for tomorrow's CSA.  It will be hard for the pole beans to beat that.  The first pick of beans was beautiful with no trace of rust--that is, until it rained bucketloads on Thursday afternoon and Friday night.  There was a moment on Thursday that we thought a tornado was forming above the farm.  Luckily it didn't and we got just little pellets of hail for a minute or two.  We were holding our breath there though, especially once we heard there was a tornado about 5 miles east of Farmington.  I can't wait until we qualify for better crop insurance.  Until then, we will be little stress balls everytime the dark and stormy clouds approach.
Two types of trellising the pole beans are below.  Purple beans are crawling up steel hog panels tied to T-posts every 10 feet or so.  2nd photo is the traditional stringing from the top wire down to the bottom wire and the beans crawl up and up.  Panels were easier but more expensive, although they might be easier to pick beans from.