2023 A Gap Year

Most of us are familiar with the, “Gap Year,” concept of taking a year out to do a side venture, some soul searching, and come back to your chosen path as an invigorated human with a bit more world experience. 2023 has been our gap year! We didn’t technically “farm” this year, at least not vegetables and flowers for sale to our community. Yet we feel like farmers more than ever because we built a farm. We fenced, tilled, budgeted, and constructed. We worked full time off farm but kept the farm construction alive every week of the year.

Winter

 We started the year off building something just for us, a sauna. While I know that's not the typical starting point for a farm, and some would say a luxury, it was intentional. For one, it was our first big construction project together. (And if you’ve ever done construction with your significant other, you know what I’m talking about when I say I didn’t need any additional stressors on the project.) We learned a lot about each other's work styles, and I’m glad we started with a project focused on the end result of sweating out our stresses. The other reason we started with a sauna is that throughout the process of starting the farm, we wanted to put quality of life on a pedestal and keep it centered there for the future of the business. I have watched so many amazing farmers who I admire sacrificing their own quality of life to provide the very best food they can for their community. Their dedication to the mission of local food is incredible. But, simply put, I serve my community health best when I serve my personal health first.

Spring

As the ground thawed, the fencing projects began. Trevor is fastidious when it comes to a tight fence and thus he is the Fencing Foreman at Feeder Creek Farms. Meanwhile the garage was experiencing a farm take over. With supplemental lighting hanging from the ceiling, seed trays of countless perennials and biennial flowers and herbs for our orchard space covered most of the garage. Baby chicks of all breeds lived in brooders by the forced air supply, and on the far side of the garage we attempted to maintain access to the tool benches and wood working equipment.  We adopted another 4 kids (baby goats) from Amaltheia Organic Dairy, and bottle-feeding season was on! And I began breaking ground for the big experiment of the year, our orchard.

The highlight of my year was inviting our parents to Montana over Memorial Day weekend to help us plant our orchard. We had done the fencing and much of the ground work prior to their arrival, had Happy Trash Can Compost set to arrive the same day they did, and moved all the plants out of the garage to harden off. When I say “orchard”, I perhaps didn’t fully explain to them the quantity of planting we were setting out to do. In addition to the 9 fruit trees that make this 80’x80’ plot an orchard, we intended this plot to be a thriving perennial garden, beneficial insect habitat, homestead fruit basket, medicinal garden, cut flower experimental station, and visual buffer between the yard and the farm. In three days the six of us were able to spread seven yards of compost, shape all the beds, transplant the perennials from our annual garden, and plant 1800 plants. About 1200 of those were grown from seed in the garage. We also snuck in some delicious meals and an afternoon in Hyalite. Efficient, productive, hard-working and the most rewarding fun. We’re beyond excited to bring our parents back to enjoy the fruits of their labor in years to come.

Summer

The concept of balance may have gone out the window. The annual 40’x40’ garden was in full swing, with the orchard taking off, the fishing season calling Trevor to the river, and the goats out on pasture. I will be eternally grateful to my friend Brett of Northern Habitat for lending me his tractor, brush hog and rototiller on the weekends for me to do my primary tillage, turning the back pasture into farm field and saving my back and shoulders from doing all the ground-breaking with my Grillo walk-behind tractor. I was able to break out ¾ acre for 2024 production, move 20 yards of compost with a bucket instead of a wheelbarrow, level the site for our green house and drill the holes for our pilings with the help of this beautiful red machine! My heart and back could not be more grateful to have great friends to lean on! 

Somehow we managed to sneak in a few adventures while keeping the weeds at bay, erecting a 16’ x100’ caterpillar tunnel, preparing our spring planting beds for 2024, and taking surplus eggs to the Big Sky Farmers Market after work. The sweetest moments of summer for me were in the orchard, coming home from work to walk out and eat a fresh strawberry or 10, harvest flowers for the dinning table, salad for dinner and attempt to find room for more pickling cucumbers in the fridge. The abundance of summer literally buzzed in the orchard and it felt so tenderly sweet to have a few flowers just for me. 

Gallatin Ridge Line

Fall

When the fridge is full it’s time to start processing which heralds the changing of the seasons. Even when it's 80 degrees out, the smell of reducing tomatoes and herbs hanging to dry is a clear sign that the days are shifting to fall. The to-do list does a very stressful reshuffling at this point; the, “before the ground freezes” cards come to the top of the deck! So amidst the beginning of hunting and food storage season we began foundation work on our greenhouse. My parents came out again to help with the workload of ground prep. My mom filled the garage again with flowers for my winter enjoyment and preserved all the herbs we had planted together in the spring while my dad helped direct the tractor and lay out the foundation for this monster greenhouse project I dreamed up. I’m not a mother but raising a farm and a kid do have one thing in common; it takes a village. 

 Groundwork on the greenhouse and tucking the farm into bed for the winter was completed before our first winter scare! This beautiful second fall has given us the chance to get peonies in the ground and put the walls up on the greenhouse without moving a ladder around in the snow. The fact that I’m sitting inside on a Sunday morning with a cup of coffee, doing a piece of creative writing, looking at soup recipes and thinking about wreath crafting in the garage this evening states quite clearly that it’s Winter. Things have slowed down, the freezers are full, health is back on its pedestal (it got a little wobbly this summer), we’re back into budgets and excel sheets for 2024, the insulated carharts are off the top shelf ready for more winter construction, and our textbooks for winter are arriving in the mail! 

Winter Again

There are forms of personal growth in every season but last winter and this we are diving into the classroom. Last winter I took the New Entry Farm Business Planning course and put together the first edition of FCF business plan which was heavily revised throughout this year. I’m treating this business plan as a living document to be reviewed and revised at the very least every year. This winter I am beyond thrilled to be participating in Florets online flower growing workshop. This program has been a dream of mine for years, and I’m so excited to pair education with passion and experimentation in the flower field next year! Trevor has his nose back into pack goat training books and online courses. He’s eager to hit the trails with the goats next year! While they won’t be physically ready to pack heavy loads for another year, we’re excited to start bringing them into the mountains more regularly and get them in shape for their future work. 

Coming full circle on our year’s work we’re heating up the sauna several times a week to sweat off the aches and pains of a year of construction, and bask in the view that we sometimes have our heads too preoccupied in the soil to fully enjoy. 

Full circle on the seasons in one post…. updates will be seasonal from here on out!