Fall Updates from the Farm
Hey there, folks - we hope this finds you soaking up the cooler mornings/evenings and warm afternoons that come with these beautiful fall days! We wanted to share some updates about our farm happenings lately:
Summer was a whirlwind around here; if you’re a newsletter subscriber, you might remember in our spring newsletter that we mentioned we’d be tripling the amount of space in our grow room AND adding a walk in cooler - well, we’re about 99.9% finished with all those updates, and we couldn’t be more excited about it!
The grow room expansion was a real feat of resilience since we were also doing our best to keep up with our 2 farmers markets and wholesale customers at the same time. It required a lot of creativity, but we made it through! (Did we mention that Kalvin did about 90% of the labor by himself?!) We’ll be sharing some more updates about the expansion on social media in the coming weeks, but here’s some of the stats:
300 square feet of growing space (upgraded from 88 sq. ft.)
High pressure misting system for grow room humidity
Treated, filtered & UV sterilized water system
64 square foot walk-in cooler (goodbye to our commercial fridge!)
Ducted mini-split system for both heating & cooling the grow room + packing shed & office space (= reliable temperature control year-round)
We continued our work over the summer meeting weekly with CEDA’s Rural Business Innovation Lab - they were a HUGE help for us as we worked our way through this expansion project over the last few months.
In early September we co-hosted a mushroom educational event with Lydia Hansen, a local fiber artist. We had a great turnout and ended it with a short hike along the Lost Creek Trail near Chatfield to check out the fall mushrooms and Lydia’s fiber art installment along the trail (this would be a fun family event if you’re local to the area and looking for a fall hike!)
The event went so well, we decided we need to carve out time in our fall calendar for other fun, educational events. In October we’ll be partnering with ReRooted Connections out of Decorah to put on a free “All About Mushrooms” class, so we hope to see some of our local Decorah folks there - you can register for the event here.
A few other exciting things to note:
If you haven’t already heard the exciting news, our family is growing!! We’ll be welcoming our 3rd little one to the farm in early January - hopefully right in time for a little seasonal slow down :)
WE’RE GOING TO BE CERTIFIED ORGANIC SOON!! We’ve been working closely with MOSA out of Viroqua, WI for this process and hope to be fully certified by the end of the year!
We’re doing a brand refresh! This summer we began working with Neighborly Creative out of Rochester to work on a logo redesign and some other marketing updates for the farm - we’ll be making some final design choices very soon, and we’re thrilled with how everything is turning out! We highly recommend working Neighborly if you or anyone you know is looking for any kind of design work.
Mark your calendars for the Feast Local Foods Fair in November - we attended as vendors for the first time last year and had a blast giving our jerky samples and sharing about our farm journey! You can catch us back there again November 2nd.
Grow kits are back in stock on our website AND we’re now selling 10lb. kits (bigger kits means more mushrooms to grow, yay!)
Starting this month you can find our mushrooms & products listed back on the Iowa Food Hub site again
Our new Forager’s Mix, which is a blend of our dried mushrooms, has been a hit at market, and they make a fantastic addition to crockpot season!
Thank you, thank you for supporting our small family farm - we couldn’t do what we do each day without the support of our fantastic family, friends, and supporters!
Cheers to new fall rhythms - sending you wishes for a cozy fall filled with good people & good food!
Mush Love - Kalvin, Rachel, Eliza & Veda
