Agriculture & Ecology

Spring: Steamy in the sun, frosty in the shade!

I sit here in the beginning of March, the sun is shining and it is a cool 28 degrees outside. The mole hills have flat towers of ice pushing skyward. Cool weather has conjured moisture up from saturated soil to stand it at attention in the sunlight for a few hours, it is spectacular. Nature’s beauty, strength and quiet ferocity is commanding. It is one of the things that drew me to food production in the first place.

As someone who often felt less alone in the woods than I did in a room full of people nature has always been a touchstone of sorts for me. Even in the East Bay suburbs of Northern California, my family and the experiences they provided instilled in me a deep love of and respect for nature. But the beauty and ruggedness of the west coast, the old, gnarled live oaks on brown summer hillsides, and steep ravines covered with blackberry and scurrying quail could not hide the imbalances that I saw growing up. I was born the year after the 1973 oil crisis, grew up in the age of ozone depletion and the first public warnings of global warming, California drought and water rationing (1986-1992), and the Oakland Firestorm/Tunnel Fire (1991) at the tail end of the drought. The impact of human intervention on the natural landscape was inescapable. From the car I watched conventional farmland roll by driving south from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, east through Sacramento on the way to Lake Tahoe, and north towards Mendocino. While I didn’t grow up with a direct connection to agriculture, it is everywhere in California and I was luckier than most to have proximity to fields where I could see things like vegetables, strawberries, grapes, garlic and almonds growing.

Decades on, I’ve cultivated that interest and continued learning more about how and why we eat the way we do. The global food system and U.S. industrialized agriculture is an industry fueled by capitalism’s appetite for profit and yield at the expense of all else. This kind of food production relies on chemicals instead of natural systems or biology. It is based on extraction without permission or consequence and ignores the welfare of people and places, including the farmers owners and workers that manage the land. The question I’ve asked myself for years is: If our food system is broken, then how do we fix it? Teasing out the answers to that question is how I started growing food in the first place.

In the intervening decades, I’ve come to understand that the path to a new food system is rooted in both ecology and agriculture and is based on systems that not only lift up our planet but all of us living beings that reside here. And so I thought I’d share a wonderful opinion piece in Civil Eats I recently read that quite beautifully untangles the hurdles that systems change in food production currently faces and talks about agroecology as a solution to the food system that is failing us. It provides perspective to us as consumers and participants in the food system, wherever we sit.

https://civileats.com/2022/03/04/op-ed-evidence-agroecology-transform-food-system-justice-sovereignty/

Abundance in Winter

Big and little carrot buddies from a recent fall harvest

In the late fall and early winter I think a lot about resilience and nature’s capacity to regenerate health and diversity in its annual cycle. Even though visible production in plant and animal life diminishes in winter it is a time of abundance. We see trees, perennials and other plants go dormant and animals like bears and frogs hibernate as plant and animal life reserves what it needs to renew itself vibrantly in the spring. This is how natural systems work. A balance of conservation and abundance must exist.

Our selection of seeds reflects those everlasting principles of nature and keep that necessary regeneration in mind. We have long term goals of saving and selecting the seed varieties we use so that they can best produce under the unique location and micro climate of our farm. Choosing to grow heirloom and open pollinated seeds gives us the flexibility to save seeds while supporting seed growers that specialize in producing heirloom seeds. Choosing to buy this kind of seed reorients demand from large scale seed producers to smaller, independently owned businesses that tend to focus more on unique varieties. A genetically diverse offering of vegetable varieties in the world creates a safer, more secure food system and more resilience in the face of this climate emergency. Who wants a world filled with only the varieties you can buy at a grocery store? My taste buds, body and mind say NO THANK YOU!

The carrots pictured above is one such open pollinated variety that we've been growing for many years. A lot of people look at yellow carrots and shrug their shoulders and it’s no wonder. The yellow carrots you buy in the grocery store are often flavorless and dry! These golden wonders pictured above are not only brilliant to look at but also to eat. Growing the large quantity of vegetables that we do, we often encounter a wide range of diversity in shape and size of the vegetables that grow from the seed we plant. That is genetic diversity at work, nature’s safety net visible in the sheer volume of the seeds that we grow. Because we harvest so many carrots we experience and celebrate the awesomeness of that diversity. Take the photograph above featuring a standard carrot (about 6-7 inches long) right next to a fully formed but miniature carrot of the same variety that stands at about 1/3 of an inch long. A lovely representation and celebration of how unique our plant relatives are and how this upholds their resilience in the face of ever changing environmental circumstances. The natural world around us creates revolutions of change as a matter of course in order to bolster their resilience and the health of the world around us, embracing diversity and change.

October 2021 - Ducklings!

Ducklings: Day One

This is the place for all 2021 duckling progress updates. Get your duckling fix here!

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ducklings looking a little more duck-like all the time!

WEEK SEVEN | The ducklings are now looking more like little ducks! At this stage birds have an artery that runs into the sheath of every feather as it develops. As they begin to grow their wing feathers in you can see these dark sheaths slowly pushing their wing feathers out. Their wings droop dramatically and flop down from what I imagine are the weight of the new feathers and the blood supplied to the shafts. As the feather develops more fully the blood supply is relegated to the very base of the shaft. In the photo above you can see how the wing of the duck at center is drooping while the one at left is more fully grown out and resting in a more normal position.

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WEEK SIX | The ducklings are now getting their full feathers in. The cutest thing that happens around this stage in their adolescence is that their voices start cracking. When they open their beaks to express themselves it comes out as a cross between a cute chirping and a hoarse croak. One morning in the next couple of weeks they’ll greet me with full grown quacks!

Week Six

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WEEK FIVE | These little ladies so enjoy their time outside! They explore, forage and practice the skills they need to live productive lives on the farm. One of those skills is keeping a watchful eye on the environment around them for predators and anything else that's out of the ordinary. Out of the ordinary could mean a hawk overhead, a newly fallen tree, a prowling coyote, or if I wear a different coat or hat or if I take my hat off like I did right before I took this photo. When I took this photograph they were feeling adventurous and brave, but when I walked away for a minute to fill some buckets with water they hurried back to their brooder until I returned. Their great instincts are one of the reasons we've only lost a handful of ducks over the last 5 years to aerial predators. Good breeds make a world of difference.

Week five - curiosity prevails!

Week five - still looking a lot like ducklings.

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WEEK FOUR | The ducklings made their first journey outside this week. They are getting more curious and brave by the day. We feed them fresh grass and greens twice a day when they are inside but getting them out and foraging on their own provides the best greens, bugs and microbes for their growing bodies. We will slowly increase the time they spend outside but until they are fully feathered and protected from the elements we’ll move them in and out as weather allows. This week they’ve started growing in their true feathers. You can see the speckled feathers just above and below their tiny wings.

Venturing outside for the first time!

Foraging in the morning glory

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WEEK THREE | These little peepers have graduated to a new waterer and will soon graduate to a new feeder. In the photo below you can see their tiny pin feathers starting to come in. In a few short weeks their backs will be fully feathered!

Ducklings in their third week. Their pin feathers on their backs and tails are starting to come in!

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WEEK TWO | They change so much in just a couple of weeks! They are more confident walking around and much, much more inquisitive. Pecking at my boots, my camera and running towards freshly cut grass whenever I bring it in to their brooder. They eat more food, drink more water and are twice the size they were when they arrived. Tail feathers are starting to grow in, you can see how they stick out among their downy feathers. In another few short weeks they’ll be hitting their “awkward” phase - half feathered and less proportional than they are now.

Ducklings: Week Two

Ducklings: Week Two

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WEEK ONE | Well, one of the cutest events of the season happened just last Wednesday. At six a.m. I arrived at the loading dock of the Monroe Post Office to the sound of ducklings. The ducks are hatched on Monday and on their way to Monroe via the United States Postal Service by early evening. By the time they arrive at the farm they are just about two days old. So small and fluffy! After I settle the box of ducklings into the car I usually whistle a tune to them. For years I have sung a specific tune to our different flocks. It seems to calm them down somewhat as we make our way back to the farm and is my way of saying hello to the new ducklings. The photo above was taken a few hours after they arrived - they are warming up under an infrared heater in their brooder. It's amazing how quickly they grow and change over the first few days of their lives. Where they were wobbly and somewhat awkward they quickly become more confident moving around - darting here and there between the food and the water. In this video you'll see just how quickly they move! They will continue doing adorable duckling things like falling asleep standing up or taking a little nap mid drink at the waterer. Once these fluffy little numbers start getting a little bit bigger and get their feathers they'll have some outside time to forage and explore and ingest all the good bacteria and microscopic organisms out in the grass. For now they're content in their brooder area, and I am filled with satisfaction when I check on them several times a day and whistle them a little tune.

Week One

September 18, 2021 - Equinox

Tomato and eggplant plants in one of our high tunnels this season

The progression of the seasons is a constant in our lives. And so it goes that the autumnal equinox is this coming Wednesday, September 22nd. It is the official beginning of Fall and the time when I begin to think a little more about nighttime temperatures. We use high tunnels on the farm which are narrower and not nearly as tall as a traditional greenhouse. They work well on our farm as they can be moved as needed and take up a smaller footprint. It is more challenging to moderate temperatures and humidity in them as they lack the large volume of overhead airspace that traditionally sized greenhouses have. We were looking for a way to add some ventilation options to these tunnels aside from lifting the plastic on the sides or raising the end walls. It’s hard to open just a small part of an end wall so we added these vents. You can see them in the picture above.

We think these vents will be especially effective in the shoulder seasons, when temperatures can vary widely over the course of a single day. These are too small to be the primary driver of ventilation but we are hoping they flatten out the fluctuations slightly. In the summer these tunnels have no end walls as seen in the photo above but as we move into fall the ends will be covered. These tunnels will help us extend late fall crops and start early ones. We can seed spring snap peas and carrots, green onions and spring greens and assure growing conditions that are a bit more favorable for them. These changes will hopefully allow us to provide more spring vegetables to you earlier than ever before!

Pictured here in one of our newest fields are cold hardy chicories. They manage well in fall and winter and develop deeper colors and flavors with these low temperatures.

August 20, 2021 - Inspiration

There are so many ways to be inspired in this world we live in. Take the pepper plants above as an example. These Sarit Gat chili peppers from Uprising Seeds look like sculptures to me. I am inspired by this vibrant landscape we work on, by the history it holds, and by what it produces for us here on the farm. But the work I do really comes alive when I get to meet and connect with the people that buy our produce. Everyday folks like you and me that love to cook and eat and also skilled craftspeople that work everyday in kitchens across this region. There are chefs in the greater Seattle area who ply their skills and inspiration to create sustenance, experience, beauty, and flavor using some of our produce.

We were lucky to have the team from Archipelago and their families to the farm last week and it was lovely to get to know them, learn more about their work and inspiration and share some of ours. The produce we grow goes on to do such incredible things in the hands of nurturing and creative people like Amber and Aaron of Archipelago. Together they hold culture and community at the center of their work and it informs what they cook and how they prepare it. You will taste that love and commitment when you go to their restaurant and you will feel like you are being welcomed home. Having Amber and Aaron and their team on the farm is an indispensable part of working in the food system and an inevitable part of our human experience with food and with community around a table. The geographic and human landscape we live in informs our collective story and our individual lives. The two are inextricable.

photo credit: @archipelagorestaruant

We feel inspired by the their visit and their work and feel so grateful for the time they spent on the farm with us! We are also grateful for the amazing documentation of their trip to the farm. Thank you Amber for these amazing photographs! Find these photos and a document of their day at the farm here: @archipelago_restaurant and follow, like, comment, share. And please, please inspire yourself. Make a reservation!

photo credit: @archipelago_restaurant

July 31, 2021 - Food and Community

Escarole on our campfire gril..

I think one of the things that led me to this amazing job of farming is a love of and connection to the natural world. One of the other things that drew me into growing food for a living is the inextricable link between food and relationship. Preparing a meal is an act of love, whether you are feeding yourself or someone else and in that way is nourishing both our physical and emotional bodies. As humans we communicate with each other in so many different and complex ways - with words, looks, gesturing. Amidst all of that is the simple act of feeding yourself and others.

Sharing the farm with family and family helping out on the farm.

This summer has been filled with family on the farm. As the pandemic loosened its grip, family made their way from the east coast to spend time on the farm, experiencing what it has to offer and contributing what they could to our work here. The pandemic has highlighted the deep importance and value of human connection for me and made visits like these even more special.

July 10, 2021 - Escarole, taking over a refrigerator near you!

Escarole - our friend at the farm. One of the sweeter varieties in the chicory family, it holds up well to cooking or grilling and is also amazing eaten fresh! When cooked it will sweeten up a little bit.

Ok, so was anyone overwhelmed by the head of escarole they received in their box last week? Did anyone think, “is this vegetable for real?”. If so, it’s ok! There is a wide variety that comes every week in your box and sometimes it’s the thought that your refrigerator is filling up and sometimes it’s the vegetables themselves that create a little stress! You are all clearly adventurous, gracious, and giving folks - adventurous in the spirit of trying new foods, gracious in your flexibility to “move” with the season and whims of nature, and giving in your support of this farm and the local food economy. We try to mix up the variety in the boxes enough that you get to try new things you haven’t seen or tasted before and still have the good old favorites at hand. We hope you are enjoying what you’ve receive so far.

But let’s focus just on the escarole for a moment. There are innumerable ways to embrace the sizable and insistent chicory that made it’s way into your kitchen!

Farmer Libby dressing up on a Saturday night with some Escarole!

My favorite way to eat escarole? Cut it into wedges so that the leaves are still attached to the core and grill it or roast it briefly on high heat until it is just starting to wilt, then dress it with your favorite salad dressing. Eat with fork and knife if you’re sitting politely around a table or hold it in your hand like a piece of pizza and happily chat with your friends around the camp fire.

How did you prepare your escarole? I learn so much from others about how to cook vegetables and am often inspired to try new things that way. Please share!

June 26, 2021 - Engaging with the Food Around You

Shimonita Negi - Just hilled for the first time. Hilling blanches the bottom part of the stem so that it stays white and tender. These will get hilled 4 times over the season, every 1.5 months or so.

We are a naturally curious species, although we like certain routine and predictability we are also deeply engaged when exposed to new and interesting things - we like variety! We are social animals and depend on each other for survival. Do you remember what it felt like to go on a field trip as a child, or to travel to a new place as an adult? Think of how you feel when you take a walk in the woods or in a neighborhood different than your own. Think of when you eat a new recipe or vegetable. There is so much to notice and be interested in when we give ourselves the opportunity to do so.

One of the reasons I grow food is to contribute to the diversity of vegetable varieties available for consumption. I consider it a mission to try to provide that kind of engagement and experience around food - to make people curious about food and where it comes from. The above photo is a new variety we’re trying out this season called Shimonita Negi. Green onions, or bunching onions, fill a unique roll in the onion family. They are mild enough to be eaten raw or cooked and tend to be slightly sweeter than a traditional bulb onion. We are used to seeing smaller bunching onions, like the ones you see in our online store or at the grocery, but there is a different variety that has been bred to grow one large diameter stalk. A bunching onion that is the size of a leek! This onion variety was bred in Japan and prized for it’s even more mild and sweet flavor. We are growing it for the first time this season and it is coming along nicely so far! This onion, much like leeks, stay in the ground for between 6-12 months and will hopefully provide a nice winter harvest heading into the fall!

June 11, 2021 - Broody

The one that got away! Hunkered down and guarding her eggs.

Having a diversified farm with both animal and vegetable production has ecological and economic benefits and brings a lot to our farm. We raise ducks for eggs on Orange Star Farm. Ducks produce into the shoulder seasons which is helpful for our business but our ducks also serve as mighty mowing machines! We never need to cut the grass where they are pastured! It saves us time, money and reduces our use of gasoline. Putting them on pasture is also good for them! It gives them access to an abundance of nutrients because they have access to greens, insects, and microbes. And speaking of insects, did you know that ducks love slugs? So they serve the great purpose of keeping the invasive and voracious single footed stomachs in check on our farm.

We herd our ducks out to pasture at dawn and they waddle around pasture and through shrubs, foraging throughout all day. At dusk we herd them back to the duck house where they have a safe and dry place to lay their eggs at night. This time of year, it’s not uncommon for a hen or two to get broody. They’ve started laying eggs and their instincts are telling them to make a nest, fill it, and sit on it so that they can hatch some ducklings. As much as I try to herd all the ducks in at night there is usually one every year who hides her nest so well that I can’t find her.

A lot of love went into the construction of this nest.

The duck pictured at the top has received the honors for this year. She has such good instincts for caring for her eggs and constructed the beautiful nest pictured above. She carved a deep bowl several inches down into the soil and built it up with fresh and dry grass, leaves and down from her own chest. A downy berm to protect her eggs!

Ducks are a JOY to raise for a lot of different reasons, if you’d like to learn more about how we raise ducks and how to use duck eggs you can find more information HERE.

May 29, 2021 - The Search for Vegetable Friends

Fennel and Garnet Stem Dandelion. Fennel is alliopathic but the hardy dandelion seems to hold it’s own with no problems. Phil, farm dogs (Jodo and Sofie), and one of our farm cats (Luis) in background.

We grow on 1.5 acres, a mix of annual and perennial vegetables and fruits. In order to make the most of the farm and our relatively small growing space we are always trying to find ways to create order, balance and efficiency in a profession with so many unknowns. Nature has its own way of doing those same things and I often look to the natural world around us to understand more about how plants like to grow together. Plants in nature are in a constant play of mutual aid, competition, or relative harmony. In the absence of invasive species, nature balances itself out, growing in different stories or levels so that each one gets what it needs from the sun above and the ground below. Grouping plants together with this kind of approach is a fairly common approach for small farmers and gardeners alike (see fennel and dandelion above). Planting deeply rooted plants with shallowly rooted ones so they don’t compete. Planting marigolds with tomatoes or other flowering crops to create habitat for beneficial insects. We grew our first crop of baby turmeric and ginger two years ago and since then have been working on finding ways to support the needs of those tropical plants by pairing them with others. Both plants are in the same family and love heat but prefer shaded leaves and soil and we’re experimenting with inter-planting those rhizomes with other crops, using broad leafed plants like eggplant, pole beans and peppers to shade those plants and the soil from the sun while giving them the heat they need to grow successfully here.

Ginger and eggplant making friends in the high tunnel

As with just about everything on the farm, it’s a work in progress. The seed ginger we purchased this year was already sprouting when we received it so it’s much further along that it usually is this time of year so next year we’ll work on the timing so that the plants are better paired to support one another. For now, we will shade this ginger (and the bed of turmeric) with shade cloth until the eggplant catches up. Things will look pretty different a 4-6 weeks from now and we’ll update you then on the progress.

May 13, 2021 - Foraging and Finding

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Jewel weed, fern, and salmon berry at the edge of the woods on the farm

At Orange Star we farm on the ancestral lands of the Snohomish, Snoqualmie and Coast Salish people and the care that has gone into this land for millenia is evident. It is so fertile and full of life at every level. We farm in a narrow valley bordered on one side by a salmon spawning creek and on the other side by deep, damp, green woods. Farming is about so very many things but I’ve found that the thing that informs most every decision that gets made is about place.

The micro climate, the soil, the water, the surrounding environment all of those things impact how we’ve decided to farm here. It’s also informed what we sell. We grow most of what we sell on the farm but there are some native plants that the land here offers that nourishes our family and you, our customers. Nootka rose, tender spring spruce tips, elder flower, maple blossoms, salmon berry, thimble berry and the stinging nettle are just a few. I spend many harvest mornings in springtime foraging for nettle. It grows along the woods edge where it can receive dappled sunlight from above and the moist, rich duff from below. As nature is want to do, it has responded to our foraging by expanding the patches of nettle. What was just a few pounds 4 years ago is now 15-20! The beauty of harvesting from nature is that we always leave most of it behind. It’s a reciprocal effort where we harvest a small part of the plant and then leave it to grow naturally so it can feed itself, the soil and continue providing for us the following spring.

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Stinging nettle stand

Spending dedicated time in the woods and foraging always teaches me something. It continually gives me insight on how to look differently at plants in my cultivated field and inspires me to bring the balance of the nature and it’s abundant wisdom to the fields we cultivate.