Category: Farmer Notes

It’s been a busy month here at Bluebird. All the young birds have fledged, even the natty little house wrens that seem to always take up a nesting spot on the porch rafters of, well, our house!  Right above where I sip my morning cup as the sun works its way up the back of Ramsey Peak, where it likes to pop out these days. Young bluebirds flit about the apricot tree, sometimes dipping to the birdbath there while at others, they swoop back up to their box. Robins and robins and robins hunt around the watered lawn. I marvel at their deftness as they pull worms from the ground and never, ever have I seen them break one!

I can not recall a July as cool and pleasant as this one. We’ve even had a few showers and it was just the other day that temperatures rose to 90 for the first time all season!  Fine with this farmer, and I believe most. Perfect weather for growing grain and perfect, cooler weather for our basin here where we had below-average snowpack.  On our later planted grain – the emmer we put in June 1st – I never turned on the irrigation until the second week of this month. Now, with the emmer all heading out I’m watering deeper but will be shutting the water down for good by the month’s end. Very little supplemental watering on that crop could be a good thing?

On the earlier planted einkorn, I turned the water off for the season a week ago. As it tosses about on thin stalks in the recent wind – acting more like a spring-full river than a field of grain – it is beginning to turn color from an almost lime green when it begins to head, to a slow tannish tint as it begins to ripen. A month from now it should be ready to reap. So far, the crop looks really strong.

We mowed and grew out our winter peas well into this month, finally just taking them down a week or so ago. Lots of available nitrogen there, where I’m thinking of sowing an older variety of red winter wheat this year.  Our spring pea cover crop we worked in as well, and I let it go a little further than I wanted so I’m backing that cover crop up with a mid-summer crop of buckwheat plow-down.  Here, I’ll sow our killer winter “Treebeard” rye…late August.

Levi and Tanner, our two new hires, have been doing well here at the granary where the summer lull of orders has been somewhat welcome so that these guys can get their feet on the ground before the usual pick-up in sales beginning next month.  So nice to have some solid help here, again! And help that takes initiative. Thank you, guys!

And young Clyde is trucking along in the fields, in the streams and generally getting the “lay-of-the-land” with some help from ole’ Tucker.

We are headed on our annual pilgrimage back to my “homeland” in New England. This will be the first trip for us when both my parents will be gone. During our visit, we will be having a mighty celebration in honor of their lives.  In true fashion, we’ll be having it out behind one of the barns – known as “Uncle Fred’s” barn –  in one of the pastures that have been farmed there for 200 years. I guess this “farm thing” has been in our family a while.

Upon return, I’ll be getting the Gleaner all spiffed up and suspect we’ll be ready to harvest the first of our grains mid-late August. This, of course, is very weather dependent. For right now, we’re all very grateful that we’ve no big fires around here yet, and we’re “smoke-free.”  So…

Please enjoy the turn to the second part of summer!  It seems to be going by awful fast.

Yours, Farmer Sam

Two months have come and gone since my last Notes.  As has Summer Solstice. Time waits for no one, truth to tell.  Country living with the rain and birds and wind, or in the city where traffic and morning commute sets the rhythm – it seems to make little difference insofar as the pace of the passing time.  

Plenty has happened in 2 months here at Bluebird Grains,  including spring planting, spring growing, and even spring mowing!  A whole repertoire of birds and birdsong beginning early spring with the meadowlarks, the wonderful snipe, robins, has graduated to tanangers, sparrows and wrens.  The tanangers had a hold on the noisiest early morning birds, until now when the house wrens seem to have taken over. All the while, lots of quail, grouse and our beloved bluebirds… back at the oldest, least kept up bluebird house we have around our yard.  Same every year. Blessed they are!

With all of Nature so busy, I figured I better get with it myself and after spring cultivation I planted our first einka field on May 2 – 3rd.  It rowed nicely in a weeks’ time. Then I moved up the valley to continue on with more einka and emmer. Here is when things sort of stalled out for a bit, as we lost our main granary operator.  Not the best of timing, however, we were over-loaded with orders so I got to step back into my old-time granary role.  

It was interesting being alone in the granary for the first time in quite a while.  I got to review our systems – daily! And I found my own rhythm as I contemplated what it is we truly do here to make Bluebird products so desirable.  Processing grains we know well and on a custom basis,  is the main cornerstone to consistent quality, and to our family farm. Particularly the hulled wheat (einkorn and emmer) as they hull fairly similarly, yet are two pretty different grains.  Once they are hulled, then graded, their end use differs in some cases as well. We all know the boldness and chewy delight that our emmer offers. The einkorn is much more petite and is sought after more for flour than the emmer in some cases. The fresh milled einka flour has a sweet aroma like no other.  At the same time, it is terrific as a lighter whole grain in broth or chilled for salads.    

I love both the emmer and einkorn but here again, in different ways. Agronomically, the emmer has a lot of “get-go” wherein once sown, it jumps out of the soil in 5-6 days and keeps going.  It’s a thinner leafed plant, wispy almost, but keeps growing every day. The einkorn germinates as quick as the emmer in many cases, but once it is up, it seems to sit around forever to “make its move”.  Therefore, it is not as “competitive” with undesirables (weeds) as is the emmer. That said,  about any day now, certainly early July, and einka will take off. I swear, it grows a foot a week for about 3 weeks and ends up towering over all else.  Including the emmer.

The einka is a stubbier plant to begin with, and that heftier straw structure enables it to stand tall as opposed to the emmer which in heavy weather will sometimes go down (lodge) as its heads of grain are heavier than the wispier stalk.

Our strain of einkorn wheat, which we’ve worked years on selecting premium seed from, goes black when it cures.  The emmer turns a really light, almost tan. But wait! We’ve got a lot of growing left to do before all that. Fact, we’ve got to get back to the planting…  

I picked back up field work late-May and sowed the rest of the einkorn, and emmer at the end of May, finishing on the first of June.  Both crops rowed quickly, and have had a good month of growing. I’ve yet to irrigate either of the later crops, as there was a lot of moisture in the soil profile, and why irrigate weeds?  Let the grain go. I was getting close to adding water here at the months’ end when lo, after a week of wind, rain, and small hail. And the rain! I think it better, always to let Nature do the watering if possible.  Not having to irrigate a crop for a month after planting I feel will be a good thing.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a few new charges around here.  In late April, I went over the mountains and collected Clyde, our third black Lab in a row now;  second from the same kennel. He came out of the ground quickly, and has been growing ever since!!  What a fundamental joy he has been, to shadow 9-year-old Tucker around the fields, in the ditches, on the trail, and someday in the blind.  Lucky him! Lucky us.

What’s more, we have brand new help in the granary with Tanner White stepping in right after high school graduation, and more recently, Levi Knox who plans to be our lead for a long time to come.  Great guys, both of them. Welcome aboard!

June has been sweet.  July and its heat and hopefully clear days will pull all those June juices up to fruit.  When I write next, we should have a good idea about the crops. So, welcome summer… sort of? 38 degrees and damp this morning, but we’ll take it!

Yours, Farmer Sam

Spring! Sort of. Truth to tell, the birds all seem to think spring is here though April has come along begrudgingly.  I’ve begun the seasonal habit of taking coffee on the south porch as opposed to fireside, to better hear and see what really is going on.  From this perch I’ve been listening to both ruff and blue grouse in their separate drumming rituals: The Ruff down along the creek; the Blues up along the greening hills.  Robins galore, towhees, flycatchers, meadowlarks, and our beloved bluebirds. Geese honk about along the valley below. We had the first hummingbird show yesterday and today all at once, swallows!  These early arrivals have worked hard to set my mind at ease after the winter’s peculiar sightings. Alas, perhaps “the world” has not lost total alignment after all?

That fast right around the Spring Equinox, winter let go.  The mercury rose to the 60’s and during the final week of March, almost all of the snow here at the granary disappeared.  The good news is that the moisture went right into the soil profile. The not-so-good, there wasn’t a lot of moisture content in our mostly cold, fluffy snow.  That goes not only for here in the foothills, but up in the North Cascades as well. Quite different than the past couple springs indeed, when we had large volumes of surface water.

Once again, however, we’ve had a delayed beginning to the farming season, just as with the past two springs. This April we’ve had enough consistent rain showers to keep the awakening fields just a tad too wet for travel.  To be sure, we could run the machines out there but one can go backward in a hurry by getting on the soil when it is too moist still.

Compaction is the main concern. On the whole, compaction is a major issue with soils worldwide.  What I look for when I check the soil is to collect a bunch in my hand and squeeze it in my fists.  The ball I make I want to be moist, but it should crumble apart fairly easily. If it sticks tight together and doesn’t have any crumbling qualities, it is still too wet. Not only will tractor tires exacerbate the compaction, but the soil must flow through whatever implement we are running, too. If the soil sticks to the discs or plugs up in cultivators or worse, the seed drill,  then unevenly distributed soil or seed inevitably will come back to haunt.

The worst issue with compaction is an anaerobic soil profile. This results when oxygen and biology are smashed from the soil. Correcting compaction can be a long process, too. Sometimes it takes several seasons.  Here again, if we start with good biology, our soils are less susceptible to compaction.  Let’s not forget plants need water and adding water, either through supplemental irrigation or from the sky, is also the main contributor to compaction. Look up the impact of one raindrop sometime if you are curious.

With that dissertation behind us now, we’ll likely be able to get on our fields this week! Which is about when we did last year and the year before. Both of which proved to be good crop years and so…

It’s been a busy week here at Bluebird, as we cleaned up our first batch of einka seed. My goal is to get some grain planting done during the latter half of the month, as close to the full moon as possible.  Alas, I’ve got to sow some early season cover crop on a couple of our smaller fields, first. I missed the winter peas window on these fields last fall. Then, I’m hoping to sow in some einka after a couple of rounds of light cultivation and then adding our nutrients. I’ll move up the valley from there, and keep rolling with the same program. At least that is the hope! By the next newsletter, I’ll be able to report!

We had a very strong first quarter here at the granary thanks to many of you. People just can’t seem to get enough of our einka flour, our whole grain emmer, our cereals, and the likes!  We love it!

Here’s to enjoying the awakening once again, of Mother Earth. Please keep her always in mind and tread lightly.

Yours, Farmer Sam

The mercury is finally above 20 and Spring Equinox is here. Alas, the birds are the reminder that daylight grows and, true enough, daytime now runs 6 to 6. Ahh, the bird….

What a wacky winter for birds. I know this has been the “Farmer Notes” theme season-long but I can’t help myself! We had the bluebird family here around winter solstice – completely goofy. We’ve had robins on and off all winter. Red-wing blackbirds showed early in February in some spots, and have yet to show in others where they always have by mid-February. At one point with the mildest of December and January in many years, I began to think we might be in for a very early spring. But no; February was as cold as any I can recall, and here winter is rolling on right into March.  As “they” say: Go figure…

Figure this, no two years are alike. As a farmer colleague in North Dakota once claimed: “I’ve witnessed 39 unusual farming seasons in a row.” With that in mind, I’m guessing all is well. Our snowpack has grown and with this moisture gain, I’m leaning toward a later spring, as the previous two have been. The “3-year trend” here in the Methow seems to be a later start to winter and a later finish. Truth to tell, we’ve just had our two latest farming starts and two of our earliest harvest in 2017/2018.  ?? So, Mother Nature continues to make amends and continues to keep us on our toes. I’d have it no other way.

The juggling act of being a producer/processor, as is the case here at Bluebird, in many ways connects the seasons altogether. When we fire up the cleaning line to run weekly orders and we see the hard, deep-colored emmer kernels released from their shiny, bright hulls and go pouring onto the gravity table, another season entire is brought to our senses – snowstorm be damned! It is that sun-cured, summer ripened season that graces many a palate year round no matter what the calendar reads. This is what brings such pleasure to this farmer. This sanctifies what we do at Bluebird, with the final joy being able to share the richness with so many of you.

By producing these grains and then truly custom milling them, not only do we get to know our food from plow to plate but so do you! I’m not sure there is another way to ensure the freshness, and therefore the flavor other than doing the cleaning and milling on an as-need basis.  When we fire up our flour mill and the whole grain einka gets ground into a light, fluffed sweet smelling flour as it does every Monday, we know your customers are getting the soft, amber light of a season released.  And, thanks to so many of you, we’ve had a busy past month cleaning and milling and delivering the goods for sure!

This upcoming farming season – and yes, it will come – I’m going to concentrate on really growing out our seed stock for the einka and emmer.  We’ve now been growing these two Mother wheats many years here in north-central Washington – the Methow in particular – and therefore feel we’re nailing down some of the best of these varieties for this northern climate.  By next month, we will be selecting some of the “best of the best” and making sure we plant this seed out. Now that we’ve arrived at the consistent, nutrient-rich grains that we’ve had the past 3 years, we want to ensure that the seed stock from these crops flourishes for seasons to come. Seed selection and seed saving, after all, has been the age-old cornerstone to all farming. As some of these tricks to the trade get ever impinged upon, it is even more important to keep this tradition alive for the generations to come. When all is said and done, if Bluebird accomplishes nothing else, we hope to at least accomplish this.

I look forward to sharing next months “Notes” when it is…. Spring??!!

Yours, Farmer Sam

The New Year is barely a month old and one can already feel time slipping away! How can this be? To use one of my daughters once upon a time go-to lines when frustrated as a child: “Not Fair.” Well, I suppose fairness is as an objective assumption as any, yet it just doesn’t seem fair! But what about that Wolf Moon eclipse!!  Now there was a fair sight to behold.

I believe I left off last years notes with some concern about the “order” of things as I reeled from seeing bluebirds in our yard the middle of December. I wish I could say I resolved this mystery, or that I witnessed no further oddities but this isn’t the case. True the bluebirds moved on but just yesterday while walking the dogs along the creek I heard the unmistakable voice of the robin. Truth to tell, I’ve heard them off and on this winter and remember seeing them in our drainage earlier in December. I also observed a shift in migratory wildfowl while out hunting this season… one that left our freezer a little low I might add! Word was a significant change in bird activities this winter… even the experts say.

So what does this mean for farming and grains and flours?  Hmmm…. Although the winter has been perhaps milder than some, we are catching up on precipitation here in the eastern foothills of the North Cascades.  Following a lovely, albeit dry fall, this first half of winter has brought several smaller storms from the south that have gradually added up. As of this writing, I believe snowpack is about average, and given that the ground never totally froze before the insulation, already I anticipate good infiltration of the soils come spring.  This will also help our fall cover peas which we’re finding are really helping the health of our spring grains.

The emmer we’re running right now is off of our Big Valley lease and I have to say is about the best crop I’ve grown. Our clean out is low (percentage loss of unusable grain) and the density and color very deep and consistent. This has to be attributed to our soil fertility – part of which is the winter peas in the rotation, of course, the weather is always a factor and… well, maybe good farming practices? Too many things out of my control factor into a given crop, so I’m always reluctant to take much credit. For you inspiring farmers out there, take note. It’s amazing how much more I thought I knew about farming 25 years ago!

The granary crew is delighted with the growing daylight and dropping temperatures – well, at least the growing daylight. Traveling up the sometimes plowed and sanded Rendezvous to work by itself can be fun. Then plugging in cold tractors and hoeing out grain wagons and plowing out the driveway and granary and scheduling out-going freight and then meeting trucks …  Truly, they are doing a swell job. After the predictable post-holiday lull, we are cranking again in full form with orders pressing time-lines. Just the way we like it!

We had another year of growth in 2018 thanks to all of you faithful and all of you new!  For this, we are very grateful. We love the idea of offering fresh grains and flours – the majority still grown here in the Methow – far and wide.  Yes, I have to admit that it is hard sometimes to send our “primo”  emmer far and wide yet not everyone in Washington is hooked -yet! And our einkorn flour seems to be almost as popular! We mill A LOT of einkorn flour each week and it may well be our most popular flour.

So… keep baking and cooking and eating this year!  We love it. We promise to keep doing the important parts of what we do in keeping the soils strong and our grains tasty and working more to spread this ethic to others down the road.

Yours, Farmer Sam

And another year has come to pass. At times it is easy to think it has all been a blur, yet if/when one can find time to reflect and can begin piecing the year back together a bit at a time well, the pieces can easily fill up a year.

Winter should be this time for reflection: short light, colder days and a seemingly slower pace.  Good time for holidays as there suddenly seems to be more time to gather round and count one’s blessings even after checking off, perhaps, substantial losses. Does life come full circle at the end and the beginning of the years? For some.

Birds bring so much into focus as I still think they are always sanctifiers of Nature. Generally, if the birds are doing what they “should be doing” such as migrating at the “right time”, singing at the right time, hatching at the right time and so on, all is bright in the world.  Which confounds this farmer even more, for I’ve been trying to make sense of our beloved bluebirds! Not a week before Christmas I was standing in our kitchen one morning and looked out to see a flock of birds in the apricot tree.  Upon closer inspection, and with the confirmation from Brooke, indeed they were a small group of bluebirds. What’s more, they all soon were fluttering around the nesting box they’d hatched from in early June! What?? There are a number of ways to get hold of us here at Bluebird – none of which I really know how to use: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest  (thrust?) etc. But please, please enlighten me to why winter Bluebirds? I have a couple hunches but none are satisfying. So…. I look forward to hearing from y’all.

Meanwhile, “Santa’s Workshop” here at the granary was whirring away indeed this past month.  Lots of gift basket orders thanks to so many of you. Lots of local stores bulking up on our dry goods for the holidays, as well as many distributor accounts and a variety of home bakers. It is our pleasure to service one and all. The fun of ferrying freight out of the Rendezvous has begun in earnest with the first snows, yet despite the complications that winter weather can sometimes present, I’m mostly glad for the snow and cold and extra challenge because if it were otherwise this time of year well, it just wouldn’t seem “right”!

The workshop crew came through shining and we are grateful to our entire staff here – some quite new – some longtime employees.  One and all deserved the nice holiday dinner Tappi in Twisp hosted for us just before Christmas, where we were treated to a scrumptious 5-course meal highlighted by baked split emmer with cheese topping, and slow roasted pork.  Wonderful Italian wine helped us digest it all and it was a fine celebration to end another year. This past week between the two holidays is the only week that Bluebird shuts down during the year. Fear not, the milling line will soon be back running to mill new flour orders and clean more batches of our hulled grains that are cleaning beautifully this year.

Please keep those less fortunate in mind during this joyous time for many, yet hellish time for many others. Please keep the faith that the winter bluebirds are a harmless oddity that will be explained satisfactorily. Please hold hands and embrace one another and, above all, our Mother.

You’ll hear from me soon next year!

Peace, Farmer Sam

“The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,”

Oh, I can’t help but quote Robert Frost’s My November Guest when one of my absolute favorite months settles in.  Indeed the trees are bare, and skies have turned heavy here right around the year’s earlier Thanksgiving.  This, however, only after weeks and weeks of stunning high pressure with crisp blue sky, lengthening shadows, and a quiet that stretched across these foothills.  Tis’ the time of year I swear I can hear the earth sigh as she begins a winters’ rest following the business of summer, and all of its demands

Seems we could have used more rain this fall. A few systems came through in early October but really we never ended up with the measures we would have liked, particularly following the dry summer.  I’ve mentioned before that we count on fall moisture here to open up the parched soils after a dry summer, so that the following (hopefully!) snow can percolate down into the profile come spring.  Our ground is not yet frozen, but we’ve very little snow cover so far and surely it could freeze any time.

Alas, a sure sign of the changing season: Waxwings in our elderberry bush, chickadees and finches back at the feeder while a few stubborn robins still prowl the creek bottom for chilly worms I suppose.  Owls hoot outcome dusk and a few hawks still sore along the hillsides but most, too, have left.

The extended good weather enabled Jolly and me to finish up fall tillage in pretty good shape. The winter peas enjoyed the cool, sunny days and should go into the winter at a solid growth stage to fix next years nitrogen.  We were able to get an extra tractor back up here to the granary to help with winters work: plowing, loading freight etc. Oh, and pulling people out of snowbanks!

This year’s crop continues to clean and mill very well. The granary has been steady all fall, and now with the end of the year holiday’s upon us, we are anticipating the usual bustle in our packaging room. We were delighted to see so many new faces at our annual Open House and Granary tours Thanksgiving weekend. One thing Brooke and I sometimes miss being in the day to day is the perspective from the outside. Smiles and very generous compliments from so many certainly helps sanctify what we’ve set out to do here at Bluebird. So, THANK YOU all!

Other big thanks or at least something I’m always grateful for is Mother Earth.  Mother always seems to give us what we need to survive.  We can’t always understand why Mother behaves the way she sometimes does.  With the recent violent fires in California, and heavy flooding on the East Coast and often times general “Mayhem”… understanding can be a stretch.  And acceptance even harder. My heart goes out to all and although these misfortunes shouldn’t be reason alone to count our own blessings, they certainly serve as good reminders of how fast things can change, and sometimes change for the worse.

So… be grateful! Be grateful for the gray skies, the blue skies, the snow the rain the withered fruits the soggy field. This is the season to rejoice in what we have and certainly to lend a hand for all those less fortunate. Enjoy this final season of the year by spreading peace.

Yours, Farmer Sam

To be sure this October has been fine as any I can recall. Following the sowing of our winter peas we received a good ½ inch of rain here – our first, really, since May.  And after some mountain snows and blustery early October weather, the high pressure settled in. For almost two weeks now we’ve had carbon copy days of “Indian Summer” weather wherein the nightly lows in the high 20’s, soar up to daytime highs in the 60’s with nothing but blue skies and the countryside dappled in orange, red, purples and tans. Glory be!As mellow and lovely a landscape one could ask for.

This is the weather that might make one want to just lay down on a grassy slope, mid-afternoon, and stare up at the hawks and harriers soaring above.  Or listen to the late season crickets and the rustle of birds scratching up fallen seed and squirrels gathering up for the northern winter.

Scores of robins awaken and each morning just after dawn, and fly about the creek and rose-hips and what’s more, we’ve seen gatherings of western bluebirds and their unreal blue dot the now crisp shrub-steppe seemingly far later in the season than usual. These birds apparently enjoy the extended weather as much as farmers.  At dusk, one might here to hoo-hoo of the Great Horned perched in the aspen above the creek.  The owl’s low and steady voice surely puts an end to the purring quail talk as they get ready to roost.  Sometimes there are no sounds at all; the hum of silence perhaps the most profound.

I’ve applied our microbial straw digesters on the grain fields, and disked in the heaviest of our straw and sown the winter cover crops. To date, the peas have poked up and the warmer afternoons are giving them a good kick and hopefully they will reach 2-3 leaf stage before the ground freezes, and/ or it snows.  I’ve more field work to do if time allows, such as chisel plowing and a few other tillage activities.  That said, we’ve been most consumed up here at the granary where orders have been fast and furious!

Our new crop emmer continues to clean very well, and we are getting big cuts of #1 whole grain emmer when we hull. No sweeter aroma than fresh hulled emmer and custom milled emmer flour. The cooler mornings have our daughters requesting emmer pancakes often these days, and so “quality control” of our Bluebird goods has come front and center.

Yesterday I received the first load of hard white spring wheat from our grower Tom Stahl in Waterville. Once again, the wheat had excellent weight and falling numbers, and tested over 14% protein.  So, way to go Tom!  Even though Tom grows under dry land conditions, he uses similar fertility as we do at Bluebird:  Green crop rotation (generally peas) liquid fish and some pilled soft rock phosphate and calcium blend. The kernels look beautiful and I’ve little doubt that it will mill up into fine, yellowish whole grain flour good for baking just about anything.

As daylight wanes this time of year, shadows lengthen and this is my favorite time to be out on the land. I hope that all of you get the chance to enjoy this hallowed time of year. Be careful of the gloom spooks!  And all the little tricksters out there emerging from the great pumpkin patch! Now that I think about it, was that an owl after all??

Yours, Farmer Sam

Sandhill cranes sanctified the autumn equinox, making their punctual southbound journey way up in our September sky just a couple days before the “official” calendar date. Each September, I anticipate their lofty chatter. Sure enough this year we heard them, and then looked way up to see 100’s scarcely below the puffy afternoon clouds: at times resting by catching the thermals and riding round and round, before continuing on. Epic. Ancient. Humbling.

Besides the changing colors of the Oregon grape, the aspen trees, and the serviceberry one other mark of autumn is Harvest! This year’s harvest will go on record as the earliest in the history of Bluebird.  Amidst the sometimes dungeon of smoke here, and finally a couple of clearer days in the end, we finished harvest on August 31^st! Never have we finished cutting before September. Some years we’ve barely gotten started by then. Alas, the grains were ripe and the equipment held up with nominal repairs required and our trusty truck driver Jolly and I went to it. What’s more, it was a decent crop with an over-all average yield and good quality with a second year now of absolutely no weather damage. I’m not saying I like these smoky, dry summers but it does seem to make for good harvesting.

Each year I know less about what actually makes a good crop. So many factors play into it surely has to be a combination of things. What I’ve determined is one has to set a plan, try and keep to that schedule, and be ready to change everything. And certainly, it makes little sense to try and anticipate any particular results. Simple!

I believe some of the quality of this year’s crop is attributed to our fertility program, yet we had a cool summer as well. The only real heat came the last 10 days in July and early August and then when the smoke settled in, the smoke actually kept the temps. well below average for August.  Our emmer and einkorn are so close to being wild grasses; grasses like it cooler so… maybe the grains thrived due to this? That is one of this year’s theories.

I’m not sure we’ve had as busy of a later August and September at the granary. Lots of bulk and retail orders weekly and we literally were hauling some loads of emmer straight into our cleaning line to process orders. Field to Table? This grain is about as fresh as grain gets I suppose, and our emmer is cleaning very well again this year. Very pleasing. Kent and Jorge are doing a fine job cleaning and milling up all the orders, including keeping the gals (Tiffany and Sheah) fully stocked for a glut of retail orders from all over. Thank You!

Tom Stahl our wheat growing up in Waterville has cut our hard red spring wheat and reports the protein tests to show over 14%. This is a premium reading. Now he is into our hard white spring and he feels since it is seeded on similar ground, results should also be good. Go, Tom!

September has been cool and finally, the smoke has cleared out for good and this comes as a luxurious reprieve for all of us here. We’ve still not had more than a rain shower since May but the irrigation supply held up due to the big recharge last winter. I was able to use our pivots to apply digester to our grain straw – a combination of humates and microbes – and here at the month’s end I’m busy using our no-till  drill to sow Austrian winter peas on a couple fields that are due to be rotated out and given a year’s rest form grain. In October we’ll begin fall tillage, primarily working down the grain stubble now that the digester has had a chance to begin “chewing” on the stalks for a few weeks. This helps turn the straw into more soil, ultimately, and by kick-starting the decomposing with microbes, less nitrogen is needed to break down the biomass. Which, with both the emmer and particularly the einkorn, we have a lot of!

As I mention most every year, fall is my favorite as the shadows lengthen along the hillsides, birds gather, fat clouds seem to stall overhead and the whole of the earth comes close to stillness.  September is perhaps the mellowest month of all, with October a coming treat unto itself.

Please remember the ritual of school this time of year, as well.  And all the little ones are on the streets, and darting around so… be mindful driving. And enjoy this beautiful season!

Yours, Farmer Sam

We all know much can change from month to month. Here in the Methow following as nice of a June/July as I can recall, August arrived with our first wildfires of the year. The good news: fires held off until August this year! The bad: the West is stuck in this seemingly endless annual fire cycle. And it’s not as bad up here the Northwest as in ravaged California.

Yes, this all affects our weather. Yes, the weather affects agriculture. Yes, these both affect the birds! This past Sunday morning I woke to the voice of a chickadee. I’d not heard a chickadee in a long while. Since it was one of the few mornings all month when the air was relatively not smoky, I had coffee on the porch and soon heard a meadowlark. Just the other day I watched a number of bluebird young dance and splash in the birdbath. And the swallows have gathered and gone. That fast, the waning of summer is upon us.

What troubles me much as anything, however, is while on a dog-walk that Sunday morning I came across a fledgling yellow warbler, alone on the roadside and unable to move. Its bright yellow chest heaved as the bird tried to nestle its head back into its downy shoulder when the dogs and I approached. What had happened I’ve no idea? I was reminded of a line from one of my favorite poets and fellow bird hunter, Jim Harrison. In the poem he’s summer driving across eastern Montana and hits a young meadowlark: “Everywhere we go we do harm…”

When the dogs and I returned baby meadowlark no longer struggled.

Although weeks on end of smoke and nearby fire can sure drum up the gloom spooks, I began harvest mid-month just the same. And our first field of emmer was in excellent shape and ran a strong 15% above average on yield. As did our field of einka.  Both gave the Gleaner a heavy work out, and I managed to have a few mechanical hiccups but all is clear for the time being and I’ve moved onto our fall rye, and just finished our winter wheat crop we planted for seed-stock. Alas, another unexpected change came in: Rain showers!! And temps. below 70!  I’m not sure one could anticipate this for the last week in August – likely the last weekend one would think of for rain– but here we are. A minor hold up on our harvest is more than a fair trade for some cleaner air and a boost for firefighters.

I just moved the combine back down the valley where the majority of our emmer is ripe and waiting. If these fields run anything like our first, we should be in good shape indeed.  Good news for Bluebird, and all Bluebird fans!

This whole time the granary has continued to operate and business remained steady through all.  Our custom milled flours and fresh grains will continue to give us health I hope, and help us survive the vagaries of Mother Nature who always does what’s best, whether convenient for our humankind or not.

I trust the shortening daylight; cooling nights and stirring air will one day tamp down the fires and clear the air for good as autumn gradually weighs in. Meanwhile, try and enjoy the bounty of the season as it so seems to have been a great growing season above all!

Yours, Farmer Sam

Fledgling bluebirds, flycatchers, hummingbirds and yes, wrens! One morning about 3 weeks ago I stepped onto the “coffee” porch for the early hour and suddenly, all was quiet. After a month or more of ‘wreny’ chatter, it had ceased. That fast.  Soon I spied a few chicks taking short flights, and they were gone from the nest above on the rafters for good. Then the bluebird young were at the bath, and the flycatchers took over being the noisy ones. Truth to tell, I’m not sure how/if the “John Deere wrens” survived?  They no longer ride around the granary yard, tucked up in the wiper housing… So I can only hope they are happily off somewhere.Hmmm.

I’m not sure I can recall a prettier July here, with the temperature staying very pleasant all the way up into the final week. We’ve not had any long-lasting fires yet, and just now the skies are getting smoky from Canadian fires. The reprieve, or reprieve until now, we are most grateful for and now are reminded that another bad fire cycle could begin anytime with the real heat is here to stay.

An overview of the grain crop is a positive one at this point. The crop looks strong, hasn’t weathered any real stress at all during the developmental stages and just now is feeling the heat which should prove to be perfect for finishing the grains. With sustained sun and high temperatures, the crop should cure in a classic fashion we often hope for, and receive here, east of the Cascades. I turned the last of the irrigation off on the 23^rd and I look to start harvesting our winter grains in a couple weeks. There should be little lapse in harvest as we head right into all our spring emmer and einkorn after the winter rye and wheat.

It is during this time between irrigation and harvest that I service the ole’ Gleaner, as well as perform mid-summer service on any other machines that may need it. After draining last year’s oil, blasting out the Gleaner’s air filters and topping off fluids after a full greasing, I climb up into the cab, shove the throttle all the way to full, turn on the key and, without fail –even after sitting for 10 months – the Gleaner always fires right up and idles like it has been running every day. Truly amazing!  I had a few sensors that weren’t reading accurately, but that is all remedied for now and near as I can tell; she is “ready to roll”.

Another mid-summer project is turning under our cover crop. We fired up the red demon (aka International 1086 tractor) and began disking down the vetch with the off-set disk. Nice to know these green goodies will protect the soil during the heat, as well as add back a bunch of green nitrogen for next year.

There has been no lull at all with orders at the granary even as the heat settles in. Very lively pace all summer, and we are grateful. Nice to know that we have such a loyal group of buyers both on large scale, and the home users. In our 14^th year now, who would have known!? Guess we better keep on doing more of what we do.

I hope this finds all of you enjoying the full summer. My reprieve has been a few evenings to a favorite trout stream, where our Lab Tucker can wade alongside me while I try and catch dinner. I’m not sure who enjoys this more! Indeed, it soothes the mind and body after working in the heat. Or, in Tucker’s case, sleeping in the heat.

I look forward to reporting on the harvest next month.  Until then, stay cool!

Farmer Sam

The common house wren – easily confused with the winter wren: Tenacious, noisy, spider-man like the way it clings sideways to siding, posts, tree limbs…alas, does not just like houses. For two years now one particular mother has nested up above the exterior lights in our John Deere’s cab. To be exact, directly on top of the wiper motor. This is our smallest tractor that we use mostly around the granary unloading grain, moving totes, pallets, loading freight etc. However, once in a while we do still use this machine in the field.  We were using it earlier this spring, before she returned.

The fact that all the sticks she’d left last year “sticking” out every which away – wren like – was lost on this unobservant soul. Even after I burned out the wiper motor this winter snow plowing. Dah… did I bother to take the top of the cab off, dig out her handy work then button things up again before spring? No.  And of course, she returned. For a month now every time we hop in to use the machine she flutters out and sits on a nearby post, or side of the granary, waiting out the activity so as to return. Just the other day I could hear the chicks, and now she was ever busy back and forth with food.

One characteristic not always associated with wrens is patience, yet she has showed great patience, forced or not, due to her “mobile home” situation. Fair enough; shelter in the driving rain we’ve had a couple times so far; shelter from the building wind. And though I’ve wanted to pull the John Deere and use it in the field for some lighter duty work, I dare not! Did I mention I have an affinity for wrens?

Which brings us to June.  Around here, we often call June “Junuary”. Although not as wet of a month this year as June often promises to be, it has made up for lack of moisture with much cooler temperatures than this May ever had. Truth to tell, this year the two months swapped. There was a light frost in parts of the valley earlier this month, and here it is the end of June with morning temps. still in the 40’s, and daytime barely 70’s. Ideal grain growing conditions. And our grains are digging it.

We are grateful for the supplemental irrigation. As mentioned, we’ve not had a lot of moisture this month but plenty of wind. A couple fairly violent downpours did come through not long ago with small hail. but the crops seemed to have survived. Our earlier plantings have hit flag-leaf stage and I’m applying a second round of fish and sugar at this critical developmental stage in the cycle. From the flag-leaf come the eventual grain heads. And within the next week, some of our emmer will be booting out. From that stage, we’ll get a couple more rounds of irrigation and then be shutting it down to let the curing begin. Wow, the cycle is fast! And intense.

So far I’m pleased with how most of our grains look at this stage. The emmer shows excellent color and uniform growth. How this will play out into the filling cycle of the grain is anyone’s guess and I’d be more the fool for trying to predict. So much can happen between now and harvest. If things go well, I could be harvesting our rye, and possibly our two experimental winter wheats by the end of July. Alas, we’ll have to wait for the next newsletter to report on this.

Meanwhile, I want to give a special thanks to Brad Halm who came on board the “Bluebird” boat 3 years ago and has been a huge help – first in the granary where he ran the processing and milling operation – then transitioned into office work, where he documented many of our systems and also took over keeping track of our sales and was our main contact as far as outreach and marketing. Brad has been a steady, cheerful and thoughtful member of our crew here and we’ll all miss him as he moves on to a new career. We wish him the best in this. At the same time, we welcome back my wife Brooke full time! Brooke will be working along-side me once again, as we steer Bluebird into the next chapter.

Enjoy the long summer light! Surely temps will rise up as the intense sun of July will soon be upon us.

Very best, Farmer Sam