Farm Happenings

Small batch marinara from scratch
Before I became a farmer I didn't know there was a difference in tomatoes. Obviously, I had seen heirloom and cherry tomatoes at the farmers market, but aside from that, I didn't know that the tomatoes you make sauce out of were different. I love to cook and was inspired to play more in the kitchen when I started helping friends who were chefs first and then became farmers. But it wasn't until I moved to Corvallis and started working at Sunbow that I was introduced to the paste tomato.... Read more...
Spring 2024
Seasoned farmers know how important it is to have routines and we also know that regardless of said routines, things don't always go routinely. With the renewal of our Oregon Food Bank grant, an expanded farm stand and a new wholesale account with Linn-Benton Food Share, we seeded thousands of plants in late winter. Here are many of them in their full glory! There's lettuce, celery, parsley, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages and collards to name a few. We then waited a few weeks and seeded summer crops, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil... Read more...
Wrapping up 2023 and looking ahead at 2024
Celebrating you, feel goods, an exciting announcement and a request... Read more...
Beginnings, Endings and the In-Betweens
Let's talk business... Beginning today, you can sign up for 2023 Canners and Planners, our version of a CSA! Details here. The deadline this year is March 31. Our hiatus is coming to an end. We'll be resuming harvest on Monday March 6th. Thank you for your patience while we gave plants time to grow and recover. It's been a mixed bag of results. We'll have salad mix when we return but the kales and blue collards still aren't looking so great. They got the one-two punch of a high water table... Read more...
The other side of farming
It's true that farm life revolves around the seasons and the cycle of seed, transplant, weed, harvest, repeat. I'm not particularly drawn to monotonous tasks but I do find them to have a meditative quality. I can put my head down and get through a long task when I need to. I think if farming were just that, people with more creative inclinations might find themselves bored. I haven't figured out whether it's a blessing or a curse, but farming is so much more than the aforementioned cycle.  We spend... Read more...
Wonders of the Natural World (on a small farm)
As you might imagine, farm life is a constant game of tug-o-war for one's attention and energy. It can easily turn into a game of ping-pong or a blindfolded egg toss if you aren't careful. I can't be sure, but I would guess that this particular dynamic is one of the reasons many first-time farmers don't make it past their first few years. It's easy to get caught up in the chaos and lose direction or spread yourself too thin and burn out. As unlikely as it may seem, the... Read more...
February 2023 Announcement
Dear friends,The prolonged freezing temps were very hard on our outdoor crops last week. During the last winter storm we lost covering on one of our greenhouses, so the crops inside that structure also suffered. We took stock of what we have, and it's basically just potatoes and Megs Eggs. So we've made the difficult decision to close down for at least two weeks, maybe three, to give crops time to recover and to give seedlings time to grow!We encourage you to visit the Winter Farmers Market at the fairgrounds... Read more...
A year for the record books
Stewarding farmland in 2022 was a wet, wild, and wacky ride. Just when you think you're familiar with the rhythm of the seasons, nature reminds you that there are no guarantees! We're so very grateful that you've hung in there with us through so many uncertainties. For a while there, it seemed questionable whether we'd have our favorite summer crops for more than just a few weeks. In the spring we were often frustrated and discouraged, having to compost thousands of plants that had no where to go due to... Read more...
Farm to another kind of table
The tail end of the warm season this year brings the uncanny feeling that we're just now to the midmost. You'll remember Summer arrived in fresh foliage from cool, muddy weeks that stretched all the way back to early Spring. The slugs stuck around for far too long. The tractor mocked us in forced idleness. And frankly we had some dread from the late start, the old work piling onto the new, with missed opportunities mounting as time got scarce. In a pinch like that, you do what you can,... Read more...
Building and growing
At some point last week we started to get a minimum of 10 hours of daylight! That marks the end of the Persephone period and we'll start to see a dramatic change of pace all around us.  We've been busy with the usual farm chores of seeding, weeding, cleaning up, watering seedlings, keeping pests like mice and hungry birds in check, and bumping plants up from their seed trays into 6-packs. Yesterday I was very happy to spend time bumping baby parsley plants and was even happier to see that... Read more...
Winter 2022
It's another unpredictable year when it comes to weather. Like most of you, we've been muddling our way though the pea-soup level fog for the last 10 days. The most recent cold snap was a surprise but not unwelcome, it'll help reduce the amount of pests we see later this spring/summer. You probably know we have two locations that we farm. Our Philomath plot is all outdoors and we're only harvesting a few crops there, the cooking mix and the carrots. The other items are fall harvest storage crops that... Read more...
A farmer's thoughts on Thanksgiving
The gesture and act of giving thanks feels sacred to me. In giving thanks we recognize a person or thing. In doing so, we create a connection between the two, an acknowlegment of each other. Growing up, I learned that Thanksgiving was about pilgrims and indigenous peoples sharing work and celebrating the bounty that it brought together. As an adult, I see now that it's another example of erasure. It's another example of the ugly truth, this land that we live on, was taken in brutality from others. I know, it's... Read more...
False Summer
Anyone who makes a living working outside will tell you, you can't count on the weather to do what the predictions say it will. Last week the predictions proved correct and it was unreasonably~er, I mean unseasonably hot for several days. When we planted the majority of our crops inside the hoop houses (fields are usually too cold and wet until May), we had no idea the "dry down" would come on so quickly. We seeded all manner of cool weather brassicas that are now in the compost heap because... Read more...
April? Already?
I'm not sure what happened to March, it was here a minute ago...my mantra lately has been "one foot in front of the other". All you can do when time is racing by is to just keep stepping. We know it's been tricky for some of you to remember that we don't do Friday harvests anymore. We are sorry for any inconvenience it might have caused but let me tell you, this change has been revolutionary for us! Last year the demand for our produce went up, A LOT. We... Read more...
The warm up is over!
Haha, not the weather warm up! I'm referring to the warm up before the ultra marathon we call the "main season". We heard the starting gun go off last week and we're pacing ourselves for a big, amazing season. This year is different in so many ways, not the least of them being that we have a dear friend helping us with the work. Ayelet hails from Isreal and is trained professional dancer but somehow we got lucky enough to meet her in 2019 when she came to do work... Read more...
Spring 2021
It's finally happened! Spring Equinox is here. This past week our bodies were "talking to us" telling us, okay maybe shouting a little, that it's time to gear up and kick it into high gear. If you've looked around and noticed the trees, the length of the grass, the blossoms all around town, you may also have gotten the internal message recently. Perhaps you've gone out and started your garden prep or seeded your summer dreams. For us, it means we start waking up earlier and going inside later. I... Read more...
Why we can't afford to be silent
What good does it do to nourish our bodies but not our minds? Today we invite you to feast your mind on the idea that our country can evolve into a place where our violent history is acknowledged and our hopeful future will involve meaningful change through conversations, community organizing, policy change and radical inner evolution. Read more...
Stretching into changing times
I've heard varying verdicts on whether one should stretch before working out or whether a nice warm up using whole body movement is best before stretching. No, no, I'm not turning into a fitness guru in my (ha!) spare time. This is how I'm mentally framing the constant adjustments we're making in light of Covid precautions. The first week Oregonians were told to stay home, there was no time for these two farmers to stretch. The starting gun went off and we were in a full sprint. We've moved on... Read more...
On being connected
This week we want to appreciate Harry MacCormack and Cheri Clark, owners of Sunbow Farm where our business is based. Several years before we came to Sunbow, they started the email list and home delivery service model that we still use!  It's what has helped us rise to the occasion of sudden, higher demand. Making food available directly to households is a labor of love that Harry and Cheri have held in their hearts for a very long time. If you know them, please help us in thanking them for... Read more...
Megs Eggs
Being a small family run farm means we can engage with our peers in a ways that are meaningful to us. In these pandemic times we're looking around to see who needs a boost from a fellow farmer so when we got a call from Meg Shaughnessy asking if we could help distribute her eggs, we discussed and agreed that yes, this is exactly the kind of thing we love to do. Here's what Meg has to say about her eggs: Our hens arrive here on our farm as day-old chicks... Read more...
A few words on health and safety
For the last several years, our standard procedure has been to wear food safe gloves, frequently wash our hands, sanitize surfaces, and stay home when we're sick.  Having the privilege of growing fresh food puts us in a position of being extra sensitive to our health and how we handle harvesting, washing and packing. With the Covid pandemic we are making some additions to our protocols, we hope you'll join us in our efforts to mitigate exposure risks. Our work trade program is on pause. Nate and Yadira will be... Read more...
The Glory of New Potatoes
The Glory of New Potatoes
Do you find yourself wondering why people get excited about new potatoes? Or maybe you feel like you missed the memo and aren't sure what the difference is between a... Read more...
2019 Planned Closures
We don't relish having to close but sometimes weary farmers need to take some time off to rest, spend time with family and as is the case for us this year, get married! General Farm Closures and Schedule Adjustments: July 2-9, closed for all farm business. Re-open on July 10 to resume business as usual. Monday July 15th, deliveries will happen between 1-3 pm.No change to on-farm pick-up. August 20-29th, closed for all farm business. Re-open on Friday August 30 to resume business as usual.   Read more...
2018 Wrap up
2018 Wrap up
The food traditions you hold are part of our daily lives. Your food ways affect us. We are humbled to be a part of them. Read more...
Oh deer...
Oh deer...
I think we've all noticed the weather patterns seem different this year. We enjoyed a mild and drier than normal spring and prolonged summer. Now we are enjoying a glorious... Read more...
Fresh ideas: New Potato Salad and Fennel Slaw
Nate's Dilly Slaw As farmers we don't always have time prepare the kinds of meals we prefer to eat. We love "slow food" but sometimes you gotta get creative with limited time and the need to clean out the fridge. This past week Nate threw together these ingredients as a sandwich spread and it was delicious. I took the left over dressing and made slaw last night, another success! In the original recipe he used fermented kale hot sauce that was gifted to us by one of our long time... Read more...
Wrapping up 2017
Happy New Year!  Thank you all for being a part of our community. We are deeply grateful to each one of you who came out to pitch in with farm chores, ordered food, stopped by the farm stand, referred a friend, dropped off treats, made it out to an event to say hello, or asked to be added to our weekly list. 2018 marks our fourth year as farmers/business owners at Sunbow and each year our goal is to go bigger while making strides towards excellence. Our version of that is mostly... Read more...
It's December Already?
Yes, it's December already.  The farm pace has slowed. The plant growth has slowed. The light levels are almost at their lowest for the year.  It's a welcome change after the hectic autumn season. We find ourselves digging out our project lists to work on the things we set aside during the rest of the year. One of my list items has been to start a blog. While we like to do a narrative on our produce list once in a while, we know its not be best place to... Read more...