Wild Russet Farm

03/26/2025

Just a casual Wednesday afternoon climbing 20 feet up a tree to collect cuttings from this prized wild apple variety to bring into our orchard. The things we do for apple trees!

03/22/2025

This is terrifying. Be outraged. The USDA germplasm database holds countless genetic treasures, a catalogue of our species’ millennia of co-existence with the natural world. Dutifully preserved by a small group of dedicated employees. Once the genetics of these plants are gone there is no way for them to come back. That’s it.

You cannot just lay these workers off and then hire them back once some committee decides their work is worth of government investment. One season could cause untold damage of losses. There is nothing efficient about this.

You may be thinking: why should I care that the government preserves the genetics for our food system and varieties of the past? Because when new devastating diseases take hold that can destroy an entire species, like fire blight or avian flu, these preserved genetics offer a chance to find resistance to those problems. Without them, our industrial food system could completely collapse. Let that sink in…

Be outraged. They’re literally destroying the seeds of humanity in our name and using our tax dollars to do it.

03/20/2025

Beautiful sky in the orchard tonight. Happy first day of spring!

03/12/2025

Pruning apple trees enjoying the last winter days of sunshine

🍎

02/25/2025

Just a grazy winter day, waiting for the snow to melt so we can start eating fresh grass again…

02/24/2025

Snow on the ground outside, but the lime tree is in full bloom this morning! Spring is less than a month away!

02/19/2025

Seed starting season has begun! Storage onions from kicking off our hopes of a positive season to come. We always remember the eternal optimism of farmers this time of year, despite what’s happening in the news. Support your local farms, we need you now more than ever!

02/11/2025

01/05/2025

The Forest provides. Harvesting firewood and lumber for next year’s building projects. I love the seasonally cyclical nature of being able to spend so much time in the woods during the winter.

12/05/2024

Winter definitely making an early appearance this year! Our second accumulating snowstorm already in this first week of December.

Certainly not complaining, with the November drought and local reservoirs way lower capacity than they typically are this time of year ❄️💦

12/02/2024

Active fermentation in sub-freezing temps 🥶🍾🍎

# harvestextension

10/24/2024

A few winters back, I was clearing pathways in the backfields of the farm overgrown with invasive honeysuckle. I came upon this tree growing near the old rock wall. It’s been years since we last saw each other, but as I was prepping the orchards to go to sleep, I stumbled on it again this week, to find super sweet wild pears hanging from the tree. What a delightful surprise it was to see! Our first wild pear on the farm 🙂🍐