Do you want to build a hoop house but need a little help?

We've built several styles of hoop house and can rattle off the pros and cons of each style. Round or square metal arches? Gothic or quonset style? Cattle panels? Roll up or down sides? HEATING?! Want to just HIRE these farmers to build one for you? Keep reading.

We can help. Give us a jingle and we can answer many of your questions over the phone and we are happy to travel to your farm for some real time advice. How else do farmers get to travel?! We love talking with fellow farmers, aspiring to experienced. Its the community we cultivate (he he) that will support us when we're down and give a big "Cheers!" when we make it through another season. 

Free 30 minute consultation over the phone. 

2015 CSA: A New Season of Vegetables

View fullsize

As we sit in what could very well be a false start to spring, we continue to dream, plan, revise and begin. Even though we have been absent from your daily vegetable regime we still continue to farm? The winter comes with its own work and daily tasks. Snow = shoveling hoop houses. Below Freezing Temps = Hauling water 2-3 times a day for chickens and rabbits. December + January = seed orders and equipment purchases. February = THE BEGINNING. Its cyclical. We may not be hauling our wares to farmers markets, but we continue to make sales of storage crops to CSA members, restaurants and the Moscow Food Coop. 

We are opening our CSA now to encourage you to think about where your food comes from during our leanest season financially. I'm sure many of you are dreaming of warm summer days, fresh tomatoes and heaps of green salads. So, let's get started...

View fullsize

We are trying something new in 2015. A sliding scale CSA (with a minimum amount of course). Think of this as the tip jar at your favorite restaurant or coffee shop. Doesn't your local farmer deserve a little extra? Don't you love the freshness you get from local food? Want to recognize the hard work? Blood? Sweat? Tears?! It is so hard sometimes to raise the price of food because we live in a country that does not highly value food in general. That's why we are so, so, so fortunate to have CSA members who do love the fresh, chemical free food they get each week and are willing to pay a little extra for the personal service. (Right?!) So, here's your chance to help change the food system created around Federal welfare for farmers and support your local, industry changing, anti-corporate, fresh food purveyors. 

You can sign up for a CSA share now and pay just the minimum amount if that's what you can afford OR pay a little extra knowing that Deep Roots Farm will be able to continue working hard, growing good food, and be able to buy our home (YES!! That's what we're doing with this little extra cash!!), bring on a full-time farming partner (Isaak Julye, if you don't already know Isaak you might recognize him from years of cashiering at Tonnemakers at the Moscow Farmers Market) and grow our business even more in 2015. Join us...

Joel Salatin & I

Marci in the field 2013. University of Idaho photo.

Yesterday we attended the Idaho Center for Sustainable Agriculture symposium in Nampa, ID. We were fortunate to be asked to give a workshop on beginning farmer topics along with information about low cost hoophouses and season extension. We had never given a presentation of such length and were a bit nervous about filling the time. But as we created our presentation, it came with ease, these were things we were so well versed in and so passionate about that filling up the hour seemed less daunting and more like too short of a session! As the room began to fill and we saw the faces of young farmers being reflected back to us, it became clear that people want this information, they are craving guidance on starting a farm. As we were beautifully introduced by a fellow young farmer, Jessica McAleese from Swift River Farm in Salmon, ID, all of the anxiety and jitters I felt beforehand melted away. I was among my tribe in that moment. I was talking to friends.

I look forward to breaking down the information we talked about yesterday and fleshing out some of the topics we skimmed the surface of here on our blog. Right now I am so inspired because the talk we gave yesterday was perfectly mirrored by the ever honest and passionate Joel Salatin. His 10 principles for starting a farm talk were exactly, on the money, what we covered earlier that day. SAY WHAT?! Did we plan that? Did we confer ahead of time? Sure, we had a great conversation the evening before and we talked with him about what we were doing and why we were there. He knew our talk was specific to young farmers, but the word for word list he gave was the same list I had in my head. So what does that mean? It means that we farmers are on the right track. It means that when we move to action with passion and attention, big things happen. It means that we are a tribe. We are a community that should continue to rise each other up as we do the hard work of growing food for our communities with integrity and love. 

I look forward to talking more with each of you reading this, to strengthen the threads of connection between us, to move knowledge of passion back and forth with intention. Please join us in this journey.  

The 'End' of 2014 Farming Season

I say the 'end' because there is still a lot to do to finish putting the farm to bed and we'll be attending four more winter markets at the 1912 Center in Moscow and give a beginning farmer workshop at the Idaho Center for Sustainable Ag Symposium. But the bulk of the season is over. Now is our time to rest, rejuvenate and plan for next season. 

We begin planning right away. On our end of the season trip, the first thing we do in the car is make a list. What worked, what didn't, what do we each want to change. Then we rank each item in a scale of 1-5. 1 being must change or do away with with 5 being 'do more!' or expand that part of the operation. Its a really simple exercise that helps us capture on paper what just happened, when sometimes the season feels like a speeding train and we have just jumped off. What the hell just happened?! So to sit together and organize each our thoughts is really helpful before we take our respite into the wilderness. 

Once we return and hopefully the snow starts to fly, we sit for hours looking at seed catalogs, reading books and websites about what other small scale, direct market vegetable growers are doing and thinking, then we plan. We make our seed order, this year our plan is to have that done before the end of the year. And then we read some more. Mostly just for fun at this point. Since we miss most of the months other people get to enjoy reading in the sunshine or by the beach. Our days of rest and reading are mostly done under a blanket with a cup of tea. Ahh, sweet rest.

View fullsize

View fullsize

We're teaching a workshop & Joel Salatin!

View fullsize

We're really excited to share with you that we have been asked to teach a workshop at the Idaho Center for Sustainable Agriculture's annual symposium this November 18th in Nampa. We will have one hour to talk about beginning farmers, urban farming, low cost hoop houses and season extension, AND backyard chickens. It'll be a jam packed session, but we think it'll be exciting and worth every minute. Joel Salatin is the keynote speaker for the event. We farm very differently but have many of the same feelings about farming the way we do. 

So if you or someone you know would like to attend this awesome one day event, please go to the eventbrite site for details on tickets and more! See you there!!

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/2014-sustainable-agriculture-symposium-featuring-joel-salatin-tickets-10944975717

View fullsize

Planning: Spreadsheets

It is supposed to be the dead of winter right now. But it feels more like spring some days, with sunshine and a lack of frosty mornings. We haven't had noticeable precipitation in weeks and we're getting a little worried. But we're right where we're supposed to be... We're planning.

As part of our farming seasonal schedule, January is the month that we pour over records of last season, make lists of what we want to grow, what we grow because of different markets and our CSA, and drool over seed catalog pictures, knowing that some of those beautiful tomatoes won't taste the way they look in a picture. It's a fun process, reflecting together over what we enjoyed last season and what gave us the headaches. What can we change? What can we do better? What can we do better without? 

Greg has created a most beautiful masterpiece of a spreadsheet that keeps track of everything. Its so important for market farmers to have a working knowledge of what has been done and what we have to do in our future. Its a living document that is constantly tweaked and referred to throughout our busiest greenhouse seeding months of March and April. Every plant is accounted for, nothing is done in haste. We try to have a game plan. That game plan, when printed out for our trusty field notebook is about thirty pages. While we don't refer to all 30 pages, its all important information that we use in different ways throughout the year. In January, when that spreadsheet is reborn for the new season, we laugh at how this spreadsheet is truly an extension of these farmer brains. You can see a snipit below of our beloved production schedule and how we've tracked it for the last 3 seasons going on 4th.

View fullsize

Its jam packed, we know. It tells us how much of what we need to grow to meet the demands of our CSA, two farmers markets, online market, restaurant sales and more. While we know farmers who fly by the seat of their pants, or who know their routine by heart, this is an example of how each farm does things a little differently. We feel having this sort of detailed plan makes ordering seeds easier, determining how much we need to grow to meet our projected income for the year, and in general is makes day to day operations a little more smooth. If you ask a farmer right now what they are doing this time of year, some form of this is likely. So, even if we're not out working in the soil, it doesn't mean we're not busy.