A lot has happened in the four months since our last post…
And to be honest, I don’t even know where to begin. We got married, moved into Jonathon’s grandparents’ house, finished out the CSA season, said see-you-later to our lovely intern Kayla, and moved the rest of our belongings and the whole farm (almost) to the new place…oh and started building a house.
Moved? Yep. Moved. Towards the end of last season we decided our current rental situation in Windsor, No. Dak. was no longer the best fit for us and decided to move our farm to Jonathon’s family farm near Streeter, No. Dak., not far from our original location. But to do so we needed a place to live. Since September we’ve been working on building a small home to put down new roots for Forager Farm.
The only option was to build. We started with grand plans of a tiny house retrofitted in a grain bin (similar to this :)). Partly because we could save money with resources we already had (a grain bin), but mostly because how cool would it be to live in a grain bin?
After many discussions we ultimately decided to go with a small-ish home, built completely from scratch, with the help of our families. Between our dads’ skills we were able to create a perfect storm of helpers. Not to mention some extremely generous guys from the Jamestown community (two of whom are members).
The whole process has been painstakingly slow. Just before Christmas we were able to turn the radiant floor heat on and move our bed in. Other than spending time with my family in Hazen, we’ve been sleeping in our new home since. But that pretty much only means it’s insulated and heated with one working outlet. Thankfully Jonathon’s parents’ house is not too far away as we’re able to use their kitchen and bathroom. It will be a work in progress as we find time and finances, but we are thrilled to have a place of our own.
What does this mean for the CSA and our members? Not much, really. Everything will continue to operate as this season did, just in a different location.
One drawback from the moving/building: we didn’t have time to plant our garlic before the ground froze up. We’re planning to experiment with transplanting it in the spring, but it’s not certain we’ll have garlic for the 2015 season. We’re pretty sad about it, but we do have some exciting news…
After we started receiving end-of-year surveys from our members (if you haven’t taken it yet, please do) we realized almost everyone wanted green beans in their boxes. We initially decided this first year we wouldn’t grow them as the harvest time is quite intense and didn’t seem worth it for us as we had so many other options. We’ve since realized the importance of the veggie to our members and love it just as much as them! So expect to see green beans in your boxes in 2015!
Since we’ve been busy building our home, the new CSA season planning took a back seat for a bit. We’re now at a comfortable “pause” moment on the house building, to focus on 2014 bookkeeping and opening up sales for our 2015 season.
Check out our new tabs at the top and search around – although we’ve updated a few things, we’re not quite ready to accept memberships. Stay tuned!
May you and yours have a fabulous New Year in 2015!
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