New Year, New Land!

New year, new land! Imagine the possibilities!

Even with its many challenges, your farmers are grateful for the bountiful 2020 season and the strong support from all you folks in the community. As we turn the page on a difficult year, we have some great news to share with you all who are following along on the land front. Working with Poudre Valley Community Farms and the City of Fort Collins Natural Areas, we have landed (pun intended) a long term lease on a historic farm in northwest Fort Collins that the city's Natural Areas Department recently purchased.

The 30 acre farm is located on the north side of West Vine Drive between Taft Hill Rd. and Overland Trail. The land has type 1 soil and senior water rights and is the perfect size to allow us to grow the farm as well as build and maintain the health of the soil. The extra space will allow us to begin diversified grazing of our cover cropped land and bring even more vibrancy to the health of the soil. Healthy soil grows healthy crops and healthy crops grow healthy people! This new lease will allow us to focus on energy, soil, and water conservation while growing organic and economically viable crops. We are excited to integrate even more native beneficial habitat into the farm area which in turn will increase our biodiversity and give us a synergistic relationship with the City's Natural Area's goals for working landscapes. We will even be working with the City Natural Areas staff to design a trail system so it can coexist with a working conservation farm operation.

Happy New Year! We've already started work at Kestral Fields!

We will be integrating the land at Kestral Fields (Its official name) this coming year as well as maintaining the home farm at Taft Hill. It has been a long row to hoe in order to get to this point and we wouldn't be here without your enthusiastic support every season and the endless support of so many community members. We are honored and humbled to do this work for our community and can finally look forward to a long term future as a community farm in Fort Collins. Thank you is an understatement.

Cheers to a New Year!
Nic + the Native Hill Crew

P.S. The land at Montava is still in our future and we continue to cover crop it and work closely with the development team. Stay tuned for updates.

The Weekly Harvest: "Your farm is a community venture"

Photo credit: Jimena Peck

Hello Folks, 

Happy Independence Day! Wow, time flies as July always sneaks up on us here at the Farm. I hope you all will be able to pull out that grill and relax with family and friends at whatever distance you feel comfortable doing. This week's harvest should be able to get you all set up with salads of all types and grillable veggies (think zucchini, broccoli, garlic scapes, etc).  The english shelling peas are in and delicious, and will be a quick flash in the pan for this week and next, so make use of them in salads, pastas, even Mac N' Peas for the kiddos

On the Farm we continue to plant for the fall and winter and tend to the summer crops. Believe it or not, this coming week will be harvesting the garlic that was planted last October and seeding the storage carrots which we will have on hand from October through next March and beyond.

There are green tomatoes on the heirloom tomato plants so we may be right on track for beginning of August to be into the heirloom tomatoes and possibly cherry tomatoes. The peppers, eggplant, beets, carrots, Sweet onions, and beans are not far off. So lets celebrate this last push of Spring produce till it joins us again in the Fall. 

The blur of planting, planting, planting has slowly begun to slide into tending to Summer crops, harvesting, weeding, and looking towards our Fall and Winter crops. Garlic marks the start of storage crops coming out. We hope to have some fresh garlic at market and the Farm Stand starting next week or two so keep an eye out for it. 

My farmer thought of the week that I have been meaning to convey to our community is that your farm is a community venture in all aspects. We serve the community and are run by the community and strive to create community.  Thanks for being a part of it and we hope it is delicious, healthy, and brings value to your family. 

Reminder for Farmers Market goers: we will be back in our original spot starting this Saturday and onward, which we are very excited about!

Eat Local Be Well, 
Nic and The Amazing Native Hill Crew

This Week's Harvest:

• Salad Mix

• Arugula (last week)

• Spicy Mix (last week)

• Spinach (last week)

• Red Romaine Head Lettuce

• Green Leaf Head Lettuce

• Green Curly Kale

• Tuscan Kale

• Rainbow Swiss Chard

• Kohlrabi

• Fennel(last week)

• Cherry Belle Red Radish (last week)

• French Breakfast Radish (last week)

• Hakurei Salad Turnips

• Garlic Scapes (last week)

• Broccoli 

• Zucchini 

• Yellow Squash and patty pan squash (Farm Stand only)

• English Shelling Peas

• Napa Cabbage (limited)

• Broccolini (Farm Stand only)

• Cucumbers

• Spring onions (Farm Stand only)

A race with Mother Nature

Hi-Ya Folks,

Week 11 has proved to be an extra busy week on the farm and its doesn't look like we are stopping the party any time soon.  In addition to getting food out of the field we have been planting the heck out of our fall crops and starting to figure out the great cooler shuffle as we transition into mid summer on the farm. We are tuning up the carrot harvester for our big mid season carrot push and trying to make some curing space for the onions that will need to be pulled right about the same time.  Flowers are bursting, hundreds of little sunflowers with their heads turned to face the sun, make the farm a joyous place to be in late July and we are still playing twister in the cucumber and zucchini patches as we work around the monster plants that have over grown their fields. 

With food literally spilling out everywhere, this time of year feels like a race...a race with mother nature to see how much perishable food I can fit in my stomach before it gets too ripe.  Recalling the order of operations from seed to food, we have moved from leaf, to root, to fruit.  Fruit, for all of its glory, is by design a short lived being.  It holds the seeds for the next generation and when the plant drops its fruit, it will degrade and replant the seed.  Lucky for us, the fruits of many plants are delicious, but we have to gobble them up before they start trying to replant themselves. 

One way to do this is to cook them. When I can't keep up with all the beautiful fruits of the season, I know its time for ratatouille.  One of my favorite summer dishes, this can use up a lot of produce and fast.  I make an extra big batch and resign myself to thinking about winter, putting half of it in the freezer for the colder months.  One of my favorite ways to make it, is to chop up all the veggies, and add lots of oil and balsamic vinegar.  I cook it down in the oven until it is good and gooey and then slather it on some thick cut sourdough toast with ricotta or goat cheese.  It tastes just as great this way coming out of the freezer and can be served in a similar way as a quick appetizer for hungry winter guests. 

Freezer pesto is a must do in our family. We make a huge batch to get us through the long winter and now is the time to get it going.  With tons of fresh basil on hand, the kitchen literally turns green as we stay up late processing all the freshness.  Look for bulk bags at the market this weekend!

Looking forward to seeing many of you very soon!

Katie

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This Week's Harvest

• Kale

• Chard

• Head Lettuce

• Carrots

• Beets

• Basil

• Zucchini

• Cucumbers

• Heirloom Tomatoes

• Cherry Tomatoes

• Beans

• Sweet Onions

• Flowers and Herbs

• Peppers (small amount)

• Eggplant

Always new challenges here!

Hello Folks,

Hope everyone had a great eclipse holiday!  Even though your farmers didn't get to travel to a totality locality, we still were able to enjoy the magic from the tomato tunnels.  Pretty crazy experience! Now that it is a bit dryer, your farmers have been busy this week trying to figure out our new carrot harvester.  It actually works pretty well for a machine from the 1970s but now we have a materials handling problem.  The machine is too fast and we can't keep up with the washing and packing logistics.  Its always a new challenge here!  Speaking of carrot harvesting, I'm sure that you have noticed that we have been bagging our carrots at the market rather than bunching them.  No one seems to be complaining, but we changed because it is more efficient for the farm and there were enough folks at the market asking us to remove the tops before putting them in their bag.  We figured we would make it easier for everyone by getting rid of the tops ahead of time and giving you a handy bag to store them in.  Winning!

Its back to school time and we have lots of healthy, delicious stuff for sack lunches.  Carrot sticks, sweet peppers, sun gold cherry tomatoes, and fresh green beans all are easy things to pop in lunches to ensure your kids are eating well even when they aren't home for the summer any more.  We are at the glut of heirloom tomato season!  The plants will be producing high volumes of tomatoes for the next two weeks, so take advantage!  Last night the whole family enjoyed BLTs with a side of oven crisped new potatoes.  Talk about a satisfying meal.  New potatoes are great for all sorts of stuff including potato salad, hash browns, and just plan roasting.  I'm thinking of a new potato skillet hash with onions, cabbage, and sweet peppers.  New potatoes have a thin skin, so store them in a plastic bag in your fridge until you are ready to eat them.  This week we have Yukon Gold at the stand, but may have some other varieties coming down the pike.  We will probably start to have flats of heirloom tomato uglies at the market this week.  Not sure how many we will have but ask at the market stand if you are interested.  Boxes of romas will be coming on strong soon.

See you all real soon!

Katie

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This Week's Harvest (Again, please be patient with the quantities of some things, we are going to be low for a little while.)

Kale 

Chard

Collards

Head Lettuce (sort of)

Green Beans

Italian Eggplant

Heirloom Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Sweet Bell Peppers

Yukon Gold Potatoes

Sweet Onions

Salad Cucumbers

Lemon Cucumbers

Cabbage

Basil

Beets

Carrots

Garlic

Yellow Squash

Flowers