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With all the peas picked and this season’s strawberries in our rear-view mirror, it’s really starting to feel like summer.  The recent solstice and face-melting temperatures also go a long way in setting the scene.  In just a few weeks time, the summer veggies will make their grand entrance, like […]

An Ensemble Performance

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  When we set out to build a farm five years ago, we pictured bountiful vegetable rows free of plastic mulch.  We didn’t like the idea of laying out a field’s worth of petroleum-intensive plastic, only to throw it away at the the end of the season.  We also felt […]

An Evolving View on Plastic

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  These nodules on the roots of our Austrian winter peas are host to every farmer’s favorite nitrogen-fixing bacteria.  We incorporated the peas (and the nitrogen they store) into the soil a few weeks ago and are now planting peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants into those beds.  As we develop a […]

How do you like them nodules?

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  While the market table suggests a season in its infancy, we’ve been sticking veggies in the ground for about a month and a half.  The greenhouse, meanwhile, has been home to baby plants since the frigid days of February.  Don’t let the harvest fool you–Spring’s decisions have already been […]

Slip Service

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  Each season, we learn something new about navigating the unique needs of spring production.  Last year’s lessons were all about our veggie transplants.  Our greenhouse was too cold and our germination mix too low in fertility to start happy, healthy plants.  We made some tweaks over the course of […]

New Season, New Lessons

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    In the waning days of fall, with our cover crops seeded and our frost-sensitive veggies tucked under row cover, there’s nothing left to add to the fields. So, we have no choice but to start the bittersweet process of taking it all away. We spend our meager hours […]

Saying Goodbye to 2014 with Flair

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  It’s the end of an era on Root Mass Farm. After nearly 4 seasons with the faithful Dodge Ram ’98 van (pictured above), we’ve decided to replace it with a shiny, new Ram Promaster. Our new vehicle will be more functional in every possible way, with three seats in […]

The End of An Era

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  This time of year, we tend to let some things go. Our drive to get fieldwork done is stifled by two complementary feelings–a weariness from the work we’ve already put in and a contentment with the results. If we just stopped working today, we could probably get you kale […]

You Win Some, You Lose Some

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  Some (maybe most) parts of running a farm can only be mastered with lots of time. No matter how many books we browse or numbers we crunch, Landon and I just have to learn our lessons from season-to-season and make changes incrementally. When a wrong gets righted one year […]

The Secret of Good Farming is Timing

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  For the first time in a couple years, we’re harvesting more string beans than we can manage. It’s the good sort of problem farmers hope to have and one we didn’t think was possible this time last year. By September of 2013, our bean plants had been decimated by […]

In Pediobius We Trust

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  Not to diminish the coolness of carrots, but I wish I had included a picture of the mountain of dirty plug flats living in the barn, just so you could see the visual proof of how close we are to getting everything in the ground. The planting season begins […]

Lots of Changes, Max

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  If I spend too much time with any one crop, my worrisome nature takes over and I start to doubt its progress. “Is that aster yellows in the carrots?” “Did you see that shrimpy kale transplant in the second planting? Do you think its shrimpiness is contagious?” So, for […]

Helicopter Parent

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  The history of our farm so far has been one of expansion. Each season, we’ve brought new pieces of land into cultivation and tested the muscles of our two-person crew. But the field pictured above represents the end of the line for us. Once we begin farming this field […]

The Future is Now

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  Usually, we try to reserve this space for good news, but Landon and I felt it was time to share some heavier stuff. It’s about the garlic. As some of you may remember, we had some woeful disease problems with last year’s garlic crop, resulting in much lower yields […]

Bad News, Tempered by Some Good Spuds

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  Like big ol’ scarves and cute boots, some great things just aren’t made for summer. Alas, we have to say goodbye to the radishes, spinach, and other cool-weather veggies. They’ve hung up their “Gone Fishin'” signs and won’t be back until fall.   Fortunately, some fun-loving, heat-loving summer crops […]

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Summer

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    Even though the spring crops are just starting to come in, the greenhouse already looks like fall. The benches are beginning to fill with flats of kale, cabbage, broccoli and celery, and the parsnips are germinating well in the fields. It’s always fun to straddle the seasons in […]

A Farm in Miniature

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  May is an intensive planting time on a vegetable farm, and Landon and I are grateful to be on schedule (well, mostly). Over the last few weeks, okra, zucchini, cucumbers, sweet corn, string beans, and, of course, tomatoes all moved into their permanent residences in the fields. The eggplants, […]

Happiness is a Pea Plant in Spring

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  Our market table has looked pretty bare for the first the two weeks of the season, and will continue to be limited for the next couple weeks.  Things are emerging from their cool spring start a little slower than we had hoped, but the cold weather finally seems to […]

An Exercise in Patience

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Thanks for joining Landon and me for our fourth season!  We’re excited to have some new folks on board and excited to see some familiar faces.  There are lots of exceptional CSA options in our region, so we’re especially grateful you decided to support our little two-person, 3-acre farm.   […]

A Thanks to our Awesome Customers

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Every winter, Landon and I look at the sales numbers for our major crops and calculate the biggest losers and triumphant winners.  If a crop performs well, we expect it to bring in about $3-$6 per bed foot.  Anything less than that, and we have to make some decisions about […]

Top Grossing Crops per Bed Foot

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