Good morning everyone, and happy spring! 

We have had a nice stretch of sunny weather these past few days, making up for the high winds (always stressful on a farm) earlier this week. 

I wanted to take a moment to update you on spring happenings at Slip Away. As many of you already know, it is a bit of a different season for us this year. Ian and I are welcoming a second baby  at the very end of May and I had some difficulty finding the help I needed for the busy season, particularly with me taking some time for the baby. In January, I had to make the difficult decision to not offer our vegetable CSA shares this summer. 

But, thanks to the return of my wonderful Flower Manager, Anna Swanson, we are still able to offer our Flower (both mixed shares and single variety shares) and Bread Shares to members this year. Still a few spots available in our Saturday Flower Shares if anyone is interested! 

While we will be scaling back our vegetable production, we are growing some of the summer dinner table essentials : eggplant, peppers, summer squash and zucchini, tomatoes and cucumbers. We plan on opening the roadside stand (which will be getting an update thanks to Collins) as soon as possible with early summer blooms and then we are planning on opening the farmstand  on Friday and Saturdays as usual in July and August. 

Anna has jumped right in over the past few weeks, seeding, repairing the hoophouse, doing a bit of spring cleaning, and prepping the beds in the field for the first plantings. 

I feel pretty excited about our bed prep this year. In the fall, thanks to a trade with Working Earth, we were able to move a huge amount of our compost out to the Wasque field. These past few weeks, we have essentially been building raised beds with that compost, using the tractor to pile it on thickly on top of a section of the field that had a winter-killed cover crop of oats and peas. 

Then we pull black landscape fabric over the top for a few weeks, letting it both warm the soil and kill any weeds wanting to come up into the bed. This method will allow us to grow entirely without tillage, a detrimental practice to the health of the soils. 

Other news: lambs at the farm! Collins' and Lucy's small flock of Icelandic sheep welcomed a ram in the fall and now there are the cutest little bundles hopping around, including three born on Easter morning. One of the Easter lambs was not much bigger than a rabbit himself. 

This summer, after a smaller trial last year, Collins is raising 300 meat birds to sell. I am really looking forward to having meat available in the farmstand again -- I had to stop offering it because it became so difficult to source in the months that we needed it; in recent years, most Island farmers move their stock on their own stands and do not have enough to wholesale to others. Very thankful that Collins is taking this new project on. I'll need to purchase a new chest freezer for the farmstand: stay tuned for a fun raffle to help us do this! 

That's all the news from the farm this sunny Friday morning. Looking forward to seeing you all again soon. 

All the best, 
Lily 

Sounds like rain later this week, and do we ever need it.


In my decade plus of farming, the summers have always been dry on the Island. Usually the rain in the shoulder seasons makes up for it, refilling the ponds and the aquifer and comforting us through the dry months. But this spring was drier than any I can remember and now we are heading into many weeks of what will most likely be little rain. 

I spoke with a friend in California this morning about the ever-rising threat of reliable water access out west. She spoke of a farm up the road that normally pumps all the water for their irrigation needs from a nearby river. With the presence of severe drought, the farm recently received a cease and desist order from the state, denying them access to this lifeline. The farm has had to let go of their employees and stand by as crops wither. This is an ever increasing reality for many farmers on the west coast as rainfall becomes less and less. 

As a grower, I have watched climate change in real-time. In our fields, we have shouldered against increasing wind storms and irrigated through no-rain summers. We have had frosts in June, and then been frost-free well into early winter. We grow more crops under the protection of hoop houses, hoping to combat increasing pest and disease pressure and to mitigate unpredictable weather patterns. Who knows what lies ahead of us; this is such a tenuous game we play. 

For now, each time I turn on the irrigation, I try to pause and offer a blessing of gratitude for this wealth that too many of us count as a given. 

So, let's hope for those rainstorms later this week. If we get a good shower, you'll find me doing a joyful jig amid the raindrops! 

​Hello Everyone, 
I delivered our off-Chappy flower shares today and the island is hopping out there! I hope you are all staying out of the fray and getting in lots of ocean dips. 

Our stand was so busy on Saturday we closed an hour early. I restocked at 2 PM and when I returned at 3:45, it was as if the hords had descended. Everything was cleared out, except for one sad head of lettuce and a bunch of turnips. We were happy to pack up and head home, where I promptly took an outdoor shower in the rain, rejoicing at all the much-needed moisture! 

We had a greenhouse head-scratcher this week. For the past few weeks, Peter and I have noticed a bit of munching in the big hoophouse. Some of the dahlias were nibbled as well as a few of the serpent cucumber vines. It seemed odd: it looked like deer damage, but no way could a deer get into the house, walk through the tightly planted crops and not cause some serious destruction. Plus the openings are not big enough for a deer to pass through. 

Or so we thought. 

On Saturday, the damage was even worse and this time it was clearly deer. We finally found a few faint footprints to prove it.  Amazingly, one (or perhaps several) was indeed sneaking in. We patched up a few low holes in the plastic and decided to only crack the sides open for ventilation during the day, as opposed to opening them wide as we normally do. 

The plants should recover, but it may set the dahlias back a bit -- I was feeling particularly proud of these plants which I overwintered as an experiment. Usually dahlia bulbs are dug up in the fall and replanted in the spring. Because they overwintered and got a head start, the plants are well ahead of our field dahlias and are waist high. Or were, anyway, until the dumb deer passed through. There's always something! 

Anyway, the crops are by and large looking good out there. As we say goodbye to our spring crops and hello to summer crops, this may be the last week for the sugar snap peas. The carrots are slow slow slow this year, but hoping they can make it in the shares by next week. Cukes and eggplant are just around the corner and I did have my very first cherry tomato yesterday. Plenty to fill your bags in the meantime! 

​I am a farmer who deeply loves using cover crops in my fields. By fixing nitrogen and adding organic matter, green covers are essential in building our sandy, nutrient poor soils. Although it can sometimes be difficult to establish a good stand of cover in the field (all depending on the season, the type of seed being used, whether it gets enough water, etc.), when you do it right, it feels like you won the agricultural lottery. Not because these covers transfer directly into dollars (although, I can use the field peas in bouquets!), but because you know you are treating the land right. 

Yesterday, I watched a monarch butterfly dance through a strong cover crop of peas and land on a nearby milkweed. Bees hum through the crimson clover, and ladybugs crawl over the delicate purple blooms of hairy vetch. When I reach into the soil below these covers, I find worms and moist dirt. The wild tangle of covers (usually in our fields inevitably mixed with a smattering of weeds) stands in sharp contrast to our long rows of vegetables and flowers. 

These contrasts in an ag field are the sign of a healthy farm. In order to succeed as growers we need both disorderliness and organization, wildness and cultivation.

So this is a week of honoring the cover crops: Praise to hairy vetch so thick the flail mower can barely knock it down! Three cheers for the beautiful purple field peas, excellent at adding nitrogen and filling bouquets! And glory be to sweet yellow clover and oats, happy place for bees and other beneficials! 

Well, here we are at the precipice of the 2021 CSA season. Our first veggie share pickups begin next week (flower shares will start in early July) and, members, we are ready for you! 

This year, we are offering either a Wednesday or a Saturday pickup, and I'll be sending a separate email to remind you which one you signed up for.  

As is typical of this time of year, we have been BUSY. Lots and lots going in the field each week and our two big hoop houses are planted out. The smaller of the houses has gone to tomatoes again this year, and the larger one contains a mix of things: eggplant, sweet + hot peppers, those wonderfully-long serpent cucumbers, ginger and a few overwintered dahlias. I've included a few pictures for you. I took these photos a week and a half ago and the tomatoes have already doubled in size! 

We welcomed Anna Swanson to the crew this week. She is joining us from Maine, where she worked for MOFGA helping to organize the annual Common Ground Fair. Anna will be with us three days a week, primarily working with the flowers. Welcome, Anna! 

We are a truly small but mighty crew: Stefan, Peter, Anna and myself work in the fields and Collins fills in on some of the behind the scenes maintenance tasks and keeps the farm looking sharp. I am so grateful to have such a positive, dedicated, hard working crew here as we head into the summer season. 

The schoolhouse farm stand is now open every Friday and Saturday. Juna was excited as I was about our first day (thanks to my husband, Ian, for capturing the moment in a happy photo). You'll notice a bit of sprucing at the stand, always nice to be able to have a fresh touch to a new year. 

Looking forward to seeing you all next week, 
​Lily