Looking ahead

The end of the year and this growing season is on the horizon now. We’ve seen frost on the ground. Fresh flowers are over for the season. Dried flowers made their debut at the market. We’re leaning more into the harvest of storage kohlrabi, rutabaga, and celery root as the growth of our greens slows.

Although the harvest list shortens each week, November brings a flurry of activity in preparation for next season. In the past few weeks, we:

• Planted and mulched 500 bed feet of garlic for 2025 (200 more feet than last year!)

•  Constructed a raised bed for the spring tulips and planted 7,000 bulbs in 11 varieties

• Started digging endive roots to store and re-grow in March (see the April 2022 blog post)

• Dug, divided, and stored 1,000+ dahlia tubers for sale and replanting next year

We’re already looking ahead to 2025, teeing up infrastructure improvements on the farm and organizing our notes on each crop as we head into seed catalog season. In what feels like a moment of instability in the world, we find ourselves more committed than ever to the work of building a resilient, regional and deeply-rooted food system here in our community. 

And yet, even this locally focused work is deeply entwined with the larger world, so we wanted to take a moment to highlight a few ways in which potential changes to federal policy could affect the farm.  We don't have as many touch points with the federal government as large, industrial farms do; however, there are a few particularly impactful federal services and programs that we are keeping tabs on.

The National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a part of the USDA, provides some of the most meaningful federal funds to our farm and others like us. NRCS funded several of the high tunnels at Four Root Farm and has done so for many farmers in the region. High tunnels make farmers more resilient in the face of climate change and allow for season extension into colder months. (See the July 2024 blog post for more).

The underground drainage pipes and new gravel road will help prevent erosion on the farm.

Over the summer, we also received a NRCS grant to improve the drainage around our high tunnels.  We dug trenches on either side of our tunnels and added perforated pipes to drain excess water away from the fields to a new pond. We added a gravel road in front of the tunnel doors – an area of high traffic for our farm vehicles. These improvements will prevent erosion and reduce the need for outside materials to be brought onto the farm.

We also receive incentive payments from the USDA to assist with some of the work we do to improve the ecosystem of the farm and to support our Organic growing practices. This helps keep our business viable in the face of constant price pressure from agri-businesses that depend on externalized costs to keep their prices low. NRCS provides incentives for cover crop seed and mulching, which preserve the health of the soil, and the Farm Service Agency helps offset the cost of maintaining our Organic Certification every year. 

On the retail side of the business, the federal government also provides funds for the Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program (FMNP). The program provides money to seniors and folks using food assistance specifically for buying fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural products at farmers’ markets. We applaud this program for making our vegetables more accessible to people who may otherwise opt for cheaper food from a big-box grocery store. We would love to see FMNP continue and even grow.

Moonrise over one of the final Madison markets of 2024.

Fortunately, no matter what happens at the national level, we have a strong local community of farmers, producers, educators, businesses, and non-profit organizations in this state dedicated to improving the regional food system. As we look ahead to 2025, our broad plan remains the same. Keep growing the highest quality food and flowers, and continue working with our community to make these products accessible to as many people as possible.

Farming in a Changing Climate: Aaron’s work with CT Greenhouse

As Caitlin alluded to earlier this year, the FRFarmers have their hands in many aspects of our regional food system outside of just the Four Root Farm fields. For the last 10 years, Aaron has been building and renovating greenhouses and high tunnels. It started as a winter side-hustle but has now grown into an industry-changing business, CT Greenhouse.  He and his business partner Toby spent the past week constructing two new high tunnels on the farm, and it felt like an excellent time to spotlight their important work. 

The construction process begins.

What are greenhouses and high tunnels? Structurally, greenhouses and high tunnels are the same. They are metal frames covered in a clear plastic, which allows sunlight to pass through. We typically refer to the structure as a greenhouse when plants are grown in containers within it. We refer to the structure as a high tunnel when crops are planted directly into the ground within it.  At Four Root Farm, we start most of our crops in seedling trays in a greenhouse. Then, we transplant the seedlings into the ground out in the field or in a high tunnel.

So, why are these structures important in a changing climate? First, let’s take a local view. We have been experiencing increasingly intense storms and winds. Heavy rainfall, hail, and strong gusts can all damage sensitive crops like tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. By growing these crops in a high tunnel we can protect them from acute damage. 

Next, let’s take a broader, systemic view.  Much of the produce in grocery stores here in Connecticut has been shipped from California and Central or South America. As heat waves and droughts become more prolonged in these areas, we don’t know how crop yields will be impacted. Greenhouses and high tunnels help growers to practice season extension, growing more food in the shoulder seasons and even through the winter.  Even without heating a high tunnel, the soil conditions inside are warmer earlier in the spring and stay warmer later into the winter. This allows growers to plant crops sooner and continue to produce food well after the first frosts. By increasing food production in areas that experience cold winters, the use of high tunnels can reduce dependency on shipping food from elsewhere. 

Ok, back to CT Greenhouse. What’s so special about their business? Aaron and Toby both started their work in our food system as farmers in Connecticut. After another greenhouse company closed its operations, they began helping farmers in the area build and renovate their greenhouses and tunnels. They used this experience to design a better structure. Their products use high-quality, durable materials that can stand up to the worsening storms and weather. They’ve designed their kits for easy construction so that farmers spend less time building and more time growing food. They’ve also innovated new ways to deliver kits directly to the building site, eliminating hours of work unloading a delivery truck for farmers. 

By making greenhouses and tunnels easier for growers to access and install, Aaron and Toby are providing farmers the tools to continue growing and to be adaptable in the face of climatic challenges. This, in turn, should create a more stable and resilient food system for all of us. 

-Kiersten

One down, one to go!

Behind the scenes of flower farming

It’s May, and we’re fresh off the heels of a successful Mother’s Day flower weekend! As you may imagine, it’s the biggest weekend of the year for flowers. Elise and her flower farming crew worked tirelessly all week to harvest and process thousands of stems which turned into hundreds of bunches and bouquets. It was a hectic, jam-packed, and rewarding week. However, as with any difficult but worthwhile endeavor, months and months of preparation preceded it. So, this month, I thought I’d give you an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at growing some of the show-stopping spring flowers: tulips, anemones, and ranunculus. Follow me!

The process began over a year ago - even before last year’s tulips were harvested! The demand for tulips has grown so rapidly in the past few years that Elise needed to place her order for this year’s bulbs in February of 2023 to secure her favorite varieties. She has already ordered the bulbs for 2025! We plant new bulbs each year because the second year of growth is not as high quality and more prone to disease. Old bulbs go straight to the compost; new bulbs arrive in the fall. In November, we plant them into a raised bed lined underneath with hardware cloth to keep out burrowing rodents. Check out last November’s blog to see more photos.

From bulb…

… to bud!

Ranunculus and anemones are grown from corms. Unlike the tulip bulbs, we use the corms for multiple years before the yield and quality of the flowers seems to decline. Last June, we dug up each variety from 2023’s harvest. The crop plan is adjusted each year depending on the color preferences of our customers, floral designers, and Elise (being the head flower farmer has some perks!). It’s important to keep the varieties separate, so the following year’s crop plan can be executed correctly. We hibernated the corms until it was time to wake them up in January 2024. We soak corms in buckets of water with an aerator, which simulates spring snowmelt soaking the soil and tells the corms it’s time to grow. Then, they’re planted in seedling trays in the greenhouse or directly into the ground in the high tunnels and fields.

To quickly recap, we’ve secured our bulbs and corms, stored them correctly, put them in the ground at (mostly) the right time, kept them alive for a few months, and now our first flowers start to appear. It’s time to harvest! Flower harvest has loads of nuance to it. Elise targets the harvest of each variety at a very specific stage to ensure the flowers continue to open and reach peak gorgeousness when they are with our customers. Almost all flower varieties achieve a longer vase life by spending time in the cooler after harvest. This allows the stems some time to rest and rehydrate before the bouquet-making process.

Finally, on the day of or before the market, all the stems of different flower varieties are transformed into stunning bunches and bouquets with combinations of greenery, focal flowers, and delicate filler flowers. Buckets on buckets are then loaded into the truck and brought to market.

The mission driving the Four Root Farm flower team is to grow and sell flowers that not only look nice, but last a long time. The variety selection, harvest stage, post-harvest handling, and careful way in which we transport and display our flowers all supports this mission. From bulb to bouquet, there’s intention in every step of the process. Hopefully, this behind-the-scenes look adds to your already abundant appreciation of our flowers. But, if you appreciate our flowers just because they’re just beautiful – that’s 100% valid as well.

Happy spring!

- Kiersten

Happy 10th Anniversary to our Market Share members!

Daffodils brightening our rainy return to Wooster Square!

As Caitlin mentioned last month, 2024 is the 10th growing season for Four Root Farm! While our more superstitious farmers are hesitant to count our metaphorical chickens before they hatch, we are excited to commemorate this milestone. 

Last Saturday, we returned to Wooster Square for our first farmers’ market of the 2024 season. This means the 2024 Market Share program has officially kicked off! And thus, we DO feel ready to whole-heartedly, unabashedly, and exuberantly celebrate the 10th year of Market Share membership for our most loyal members who have been with us since the very beginning: Susan Klaus, Karen Wang, Andie and Jeremy Asnes,  Mary Zihal, Greg Campora, Lisa and Paul Cusano, and Robin Golden and David Berg. Thank you all for being part of the Four Root Farm Market Share for the past decade! Happy 10th anniversary!

Karen’s kids, Petra and Alex, helping us with new product development.

Thank you, Susan! Susan is a fan of the lettuce mix, okra - particularly the green okra, escarole, swiss chard, cucumbers, onions, and of course, tomatoes! Susan can be found at both the Madison and Wooster Square markets, depending on where her week takes her.

Thank you, Karen! Karen’s farm favorite is shishito peppers with runner-up status for kohlrabi. You may also recognize Karen and her family from last September’s blog post on experiments with sweet potato leaves!

Thank you, Andie and Jeremy! Andie and Jeremy are regulars of the Wooster Square market. Andie and her parents are also longtime flower share members and some of our most vocal flower appreciators.  We love seeing them each week, and I love slowly making friends with their wonderful dog. 

Mary and her amazing family! A huge thank you to you!

Thank you, Mary! While it’s difficult to pick favorites, Mary and Dena love escarole. (And we love them for that! It’s such an under-appreciated vegetable.) Their girls prefer shishito peppers and gai lan (Chinese broccoli). Mary also appreciates how the dried bouquets get her through the winter. Mary beautifully shared that the farm’s care of the land and the environment makes her and her family hopeful for the future. We couldn’t do it without you, Mary!

Thank you, Greg! Greg and his partner Dante (also known as DanteandGreg or GregandDante depending on who you ask) supported us in Wooster Square for years, and now, Greg comes out to East Haddam for our on-farm pickup day! He gets his favorite - sweet potatoes - direct from the source. 

DanteandGreg (or is it GregandDante?!) Thank you!

Can you see the resemblance? Elise and her lovely mom!

Thank you, Lisa and Paul! These two amazing humans also happen to be Elise’s parents! They adore all of Elise’s flowers, of course. The ranunculus may have an extra special place in their hearts though. They’re also huge fans of the carrots, beets, ginger, escarole, and the list goes on and on!

Thank you, Robin and David! Thank you for your support as Market Share members, as parents to Rachel, and as farm workers yourselves! Robin is the farm’s lead carrot weeder, and you may recognize David from the farmers’ market checkout table.

Rachel and her mom/lead carrot weeder.

The Berg Golden family working the market together!

Elise and Rachel making big plans for the future!

One of the joys of eating locally grown food is the sense of community that can grow as well. We see each others’ faces each week. You know the people who are growing your food and flowers, and we know all of you who are eating our vegetables and enjoying our bouquets. 

We hope you see friends and neighbors when you pick up your produce. We hope you see acquaintances and that our food and flowers can be a source of common ground and connection. In last month’s blog post, Caitlin highlighted Four Root Farm’s growing network of farms, businesses, and other food system organizations. There is also a growing network of local eaters and flower-aficionados, which includes you! Whether you’ve been shopping with us for 10 years, one week, or anywhere in between, it’s a joy and a privilege to grow for you. Thank you for being part of this community! 

 - Kiersten

The Many Tendrils of this Root System

Surprise! This is a guest newsletter from Caitlin, the fourth root and delinquent OG blog post writer who hasn't written a blog post in ... 5 years? 7 years? ... and who, very characteristically, is late writing this February post in March! Very few things never change in the world, but apparently my inability to write a blog post on time is one of them.

Somewhat unbelievably, 2024 is our tenth growing season here in East Haddam. Next winter will usher in our second decade on this land, and we have taken this season’s hibernation as an opportunity to reflect on where we started, where we are today, and all the many ways we hope this wild experiment will continue to evolve in the next decade. As you’ve followed along through our first ten years, you’ve seen how we’ve built and designed and tweaked and overhauled, bit by bit making a farm business that can sustain our family on this land. We’re very proud to be where we are today. 

As we map out our next ten years, we are always working to find a balance between planning what we can plan and staying agile and resilient in the face of what we can’t control – so we develop longer-term ecological management practices, weigh the hard math of building a new barn, and work on improved stormwater infrastructure, all while being, frankly, dumbstruck by the amount of rain we’ve gotten this winter and wary of what strange weather this summer will bring. As ever, we live every day with both a sense of immediacy and a long view of time.

Poised at this inflection point between our first ten years and our next ten, lots of things snap into focus. A reality that binds together many of our thoughts is the exciting, scary, hilarious realization that we are not the new, young farmers anymore. Like something that inches so slowly you don’t notice season to season, and then boom you can’t believe how far you’ve moved from where you started, we have arrived at a point where we are now the seasoned ones; we are well-connected in our community, and have developed tendrils outward from our beloved farmstead into many other vibrant and vital parts of our regional food system. 

We are so lucky to be a close-knit team of four partners with four distinct and diverse sets of skills, four different areas of expertise, and four unique callings that get us out of bed in the morning; we don’t take this partnership for granted, and are grateful every day that we’re able to do the work we do together. We are also immensely grateful for our amazing team, the incredible people that have cycled through our farm over the years, taken on leadership roles, started their own farms, and, person by person and season by season, strengthened our regional food system. We see our work as farmers as a piece of a larger project to rebuild that system, and over the last nine years, our work has expanded beyond the borders of the farm to include advocacy, policy work, design and building projects, and community- and collective-building.

We’re excited to give you a fuller picture of this web of enterprises, so over the course of the season we will be doing deeper dives into some of this work. Stay tuned for further information about Aaron’s work founding and growing CT Greenhouse, my work developing design and real estate projects to build regional food infrastructure in our home region, Kiersten’s work providing badly needed bookkeeping and accounting services tailored to farmers, our participation in local commissions and agencies, and more! Along these lines, in case you missed it – check out the feature Kiersten wrote about the Connecticut Flower Collective, which Elise is a co-founding member of, in last August’s blog post.

- Caitlin

What do farmers do in the winter?

It’s a question we frequently hear! What do you do in the winter? It’s reasonable to ask given that we typically don’t attend markets between the end of December and mid-April. The short answer is… we farm! The longer answer is… 

Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, and more spreadsheets

That’s right! Even farmers work behind a desk sometimes. There are actually a lot of analytics that go into running a sustainable farm business. By sustainable, I mean, good for the earth, soil, and local ecosystem. But, I also mean long-lasting. In order for Four Root Farm to continue nourishing the community and the land, it needs to support its owners and employees financially. The farm also needs to grow the types of food the community wants to eat. 

For this task, we turn to Rachel, goddess of math and spreadsheets. As the market season wraps up, her number-crunching season begins. Which crops generated the most income? Which crops had the best yields? Rachel knows! Combine this information with feedback from customers, data on market sellthrough, annnnnnd some personal preferences of the farmers - et voilà!  You get the crop plan for the upcoming year. 

I made the process sound very magical and easy. It actually involves a series of meetings (yes, farmers have meetings, too!), scrutiny of seed company websites for the best available crop varieties, multiple returns to the drawing board, and then, finally, the crop plan for the upcoming year. Maybe not easy, but still a little bit magical.

Seeding and planting 

Seeding and planting flowers, specifically! Believe it or not, we start ranunculus, anemones, lisianthus, and eucalyptus in January. Ranunculus and anemones like the chilly temperature in the greenhouse. The lisianthus and eucalyptus, on the other hand, begin their season in seedling trays in a small, heated room. The room is one of the farm’s walk-in coolers, which is re-purposed to keep flower seedlings warm instead of cold. The “flooler,” as this space is affectionately called in the winter months (flower + cooler… get it??), allows for greater control over the temperature and conditions compared to the greenhouse. It also keeps energy usage and costs to a minimum by limiting the amount of space we’re heating.

500 teeny tiny lisianthus seeds in the palm of my hand!

The flooler!

The ranunculus and anemones will go into the ground in a matter of weeks. So, we also used the past month to prepare their future beds in the high tunnel. Bed preparation includes broadforking to combat soil compaction, amending with compost and minerals to support soil health, and passing the walk-behind tractor over the bed to create an even bedtop. We’ll wait a few more weeks before seeding the spring vegetables. Broccoli raab, hakurei, and baby lettuce will be some of the first up when the time comes!

Those tasks from the bottom of the summer to-do list

You know those tasks you’re just too busy to get to right now? The ones that you keep pushing off until the next day, and then the next day, and then the next? Vegetable farmers get those done in the winter. Cleaning out the greenhouse - check. Organizing that pile of irrigation drip tape and hoses - check. Re-stringing the tomato trellising hooks - up next. It’s gratifying to cross these items off the to-do list and get organized before entropy inevitably sets in again around July. 

The seasonality of farm work offers a change of pace that I find valuable. If you’re a tax accountant or school teacher, maybe you experience similar seasonal rhythms. We’re still working in the slower months, but the type of work and the level of urgency shifts. I enjoy that tasks and priorities shift along with the weather. It keeps me interested, engaged, and excited for the cycle to begin again. While we miss seeing your faces at the markets each weekend, know that we’re still hard at work to bring you an awesome 2024 season of food and flowers!

-Kiersten