INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 5/7/2026

We woke this morning to overnight lows that dropped to 25 degrees! It has been cold but that is just a little too cold! Our apples, pears and cherry tree are all budded out, so we will see how they fair. Frankly our apple trees are so full of flowers losing a few would be OK. The pears not so much. Our tunnels stayed above freezing so all should be OK there. Our outdoor veggie beds are way behind so no major concerns there. We are ready for it to warm up!

Baby goats are here as well as our baby pigs! More details on that below.

Check out this latest update from our homestead and garden! Thanks as always for reading.

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootshomestead

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Baby Animals, Spring Projects, Summer Plans

Baby animal season is pretty fun around here! We had only one pregnant doe this spring as the other doe was a bit too young to be bred in the fall. Opal has been a fabulous goat for us, she’s a great milker, has a nice temperament and is quiet (we’ve found this is a big deal with goats). She delivered two baby girls a couple of weeks ago, all is going well and the babies are growing great. One is black and white and the other has markings similar to her mother. Ingrid is milking in the mornings and we are enjoying the bounty of fresh milk, it is sooo good.

I made the drive to pick up baby pigs on Saturday. It was a blessing to meet a lovely new homesteading family and learn about them. The piglets look great and are doing great. We still have them tucked away in the barn as the temps are cool and we are letting them acclimate. After losing a pig last year and having another sick pig we decided to vaccinate for a sickness called erysipelas. It lives in the soil and has been an issue for our pigs over the years. The vaccine is given orally. I was concerned but it went really well. We just filled a syringe (no needle) with the proper amount and the pigs are so curious they let us put in their mouth and squirt it in. We will need to do a booster in a few weeks. We are also doing some deworming for the pigs. As they leave the barn we plan to have them do a little work tilling up our pasture where we have some invasive weeds. We will slowly work our way towards the pig pasture where we will move them in permanently.

We’ve been working on projects here and there when time allows. Turning compost is a big one these days. A lot of our time early in the spring has to be committed to the garden, getting everything set up there and getting the farmstand open.

This summer we have some trees to cut down and some wood to cut up and split for next years burning. I am hoping to get the kids involved helping me with some of that work. Beyond the tree work we will just have to see what we can get done. I have a little list of bigger projects but also recognize that time is sparse! So we will see.

MARKET GARDENING
Farmstand is OPEN! Crops Look Good

Tomatoes all tucked in for a cold night.

Beautiful radishes fresh from the garden.

Garden work continues! We are continuing to plant new things weekly, nurture the plants we have in the ground and harvest now as well. The farmstand opened on May 1, right on time this year. We’ve had salad mix, radishes, arugula and super salad available. All those greens are growing in our tunnels. The outside beds are really struggling with the temperatures being so cold. So the question will be how long we can limp along the tunnel crops until the outside beds can catch up. The problem of course is soil temperature, when the dirt is too cold the seeds just don’t germinate well. The forecast looks a little warmer over the next couple of weeks so here’s hoping.

The tomatoes are doing OK. The cold temps have them basically in a holding pattern but with our row covers and the high tunnel we are able to keep them pretty toasty during the day. Last night we got down to 35 degrees in the tunnel, under the row cover. They will be fine but they certainly don’t like it!

With the temps staying cool we have been postponing some plantings which means two things. It messes up our plan and timing of the plan. Remember we plant multiple crops in each bed each year. So when the beets are 2 weeks late, it messes with everything downstream as well. The other issue is just keeping the plants alive in the trays. They are desperate to get out of the trays. So far we are doing OK but again, warmer weather would help!

The farmstand opening went really smoothly. We have a new computer system in place for self checkout and it has been working flawlessly. It is a little more intuitive for people and we hope for an elimination of some of the issues we struggled with in the past. It was a pretty big undertaking getting the stand cleaned up and ready for opening day! A winters worth of garage projects, snow blowing, tools everywhere, etc. We got it done in the nick of time and all looked good. We always start a little slow, which in some cases is OK. This year we’ve got a great supply of veggies and are looking for a few more people to come through the doors! 🙂 We’ve never really pushed for traffic off the road, we have our one little sign on the driveway and I think most people find us online. But we are working to get a few signs made to make it more obvious we exist to all the cars who pass by daily. All the fun things with owning a business!

We still feel strongly for our mission of feeding people good food, meeting people at the stand and sharing the love of Jesus through this work.

Farmstand looking shiny and nice!

Apple blossoms!

CLOSING
Update on the Kids

Elias has been running hard! Setting lots of PRs in the 1600 (mile). PR is 4:43.

Bergen has learned a ton and had lots of fun playing volleyball!

The kids have been deep into their own little worlds and activities. We’ve been working hard on school at home, doing a few concerts and recitals and each of them (except Anikka) have been doing sports. Espen and I made the trip to Washington DC and it was wonderful. We went with another homeschool dad and his son, who is a good friend of Espen’s. I was blown away by the experience! D.C. has never really been in my mind as a spot to visit but it was all just very cool and seeing the history of our nation firsthand was very fun. Anikka is also doing great, she is happy, sleeping great, eating great, busy, chatty and all the best things about being 3 years old! We are in a busy season, but it is a blessing to watch our kids blossom and find their way!

Espen and I in DC

Youth turkey hunt. No luck but fun to be out.

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 4/16/2026

We’ve been riding the weather roller coaster lately. Just taunting us to try and put in our summer crops early. 🙂 We are currently in a nice hot streak, it certainly feels like summer! But we look in the forecast and see lows in the 20s this weekend! This is a good time of year to practice patience, we’ve gone too early in the past, we’ve lost hundreds of tomato plants, we’ve lived and learned and we will certainly have teaching moments again in the future. Its a busy time with 3 kids in full time sports, baby goats and pigs on the way, our garden business cranking up and of course the little 3 year old demanding time as well. With all that said it is a beautiful season and we are loving it!

Check out this latest update from our homestead and garden! Thanks as always for reading.

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootshomestead

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Spring Clean Up, Homestead Garden and Orchard Updates

Homestead garden freshly tilled. In the background are our many compost piles.

We’ve been making really good progress around the homestead this spring. It has been a lot of fun. The warm days keep us going through the coldy, rainy days that are just a part of living in Wisconsin in the spring. Lots of updates here for you.

We’ve made some major changes in our homestead garden. What was once a plan for a garden/orchard is now just a garden. We had a heck of a time keeping our trees alive down there. We started with 20 trees, replaced a bunch last year, and then lost a bunch more. We had issues with deer and rodents. So we pulled the 4 good trees we had left and are finding new homes for them. This week we reworked the garden and used our new BCS tiller to till the whole space up. We then added 20-30 skidsteer buckets of compost and then tilled it one more time. This will be the home for onions, potatoes and squash. We need to figure out weed and pest control down there! But here’s hoping all goes well.

Our orcharding experience originally started with tart cherry trees. My parent planted close to 30 trees. We are now down to 1 cherry tree. We ripped out 6 more this week. The trees got a fungal disease and there was basically nothing we could do. It was sad. We got many years of beautiful cherry harvests. Hopefully our 1 tree continues to produce. 🙂 In the space of a few of the cherry trees this week we dropped in 3 of the apples we saved from our homestead garden. I ripped out the cherry trees with the skid steer, which always makes a huge mess! The family gathered this morning to try and level things back out. Mixed success!

In the next few weeks we will welcome baby goats from Opal who is very pregnant and 4 new baby pigs. Hopefully we will get consistent good weather for their arrival! The pigs will probably spend a few weeks in the barn before we transition them outside.

We finished up our syrup cooking. We had high hopes of finishing in a day but it took 3. 🙂 Really just 2.5. We ended up with 130-150 gallons of sap and finished with 4.5 gallons of syrup. All went really well! Its great to have the shelves stocked again.

We’ve made a little more progress on the sauna. I did a couple coats of waterproofing on the floor. We will then laydown a heavy duty rubber floor over the top. Next step is laying tile down where the stove will go, finishing our foil vapor barrier. The ceiling is done, just need to do the walls. Then we will be on to the wall paneling.

Finished syrup.

Apple trees replacing cherry trees.

MARKET GARDENING
Beds are Filling Up Another New Tool!

Full rack of seedlings!

The kid crew working to prep beds.

The garden is looking really good! We are filling up the high tunnels with lots of greens, radishes, turnips, peas, and carrots. We’ve also started planting the outdoor beds and we are seeing a lot of germination there. If the weather cooperates we may actually have something to sell for our planned opening day of May 1. We will see how it goes. We can only do the best we can on this front so if we have to push it back a few days we will.

We have decided to swap a few of our beds for perennial crops. Meaning crops we don’t have to plant every year. We are planning a bed of blackberries, a bed of asparagus and a bed of rhubarb. Ingrid got to work this week splitting some of our current rhubarb and adding it to the bed. These beds weren’t super productive for us so I think this is a really good plan.

Our indoor seedling racks are starting to overflow as well. We’ve got a ton of tomatoes getting close to going in the ground, beets, cucumbers, kale, and more. We had terrible pepper germination that we need to figure out, could be old seeds? We are keeping these seedlings happy, as they get closer to going in the ground we will bring them outside for a few hours to get them used to natural light.

Last month I mentioned our excitement over getting a new tool for the garden. A new BCS 850. Well……….. a few weeks after getting that machine ready, another one came up online and I bought that one too. It is a BCS 853 and is 20 years newer than the other one. It also came with a nice brush mower. The machine was barely used and is in perfect condition. I listed the other machine and have someone picking it up this weekend. Can I just say that we spent a long time justifying not needing a BCS over the years. I can safely say that this is one tool that completely lives up to the hype. It is super powerful and does a beautiful job. I am very pleased with the new machine!

The new BCS, look at those beautiful beds!

In the farmstand we are working on a few new ideas… we hope to have some new products including loose leaf tea, tallow skin care products, and granola. We’ve also been working hard to expand our offerings by offering amazing products from other local farms. The food hub model is an idea that is growing and if we can be the hub that helps other farmers and makers sell their goods that is great for us. We can only grow so much in our little space but don’t want that to stop us from getting great products into the hands of our customers. I also upgraded our self checkout system. That is a work in progress but it will hopefully make for a more seamless experience for our customers.

CLOSING
Living in the Moment!

Easter photo! We had a blessed Easter.

As a young dad I remember doing my very best to stay positive about the stage of life my kids were in. Yes, there were difficult season, some more difficult than others. But there was also so much to love in every stage of life. While I tried to stay positive, people would frequently let me know that the worst was yet to come. 🙂 Yes, 2 isn’t so bad, just wait till they are 3. And so on… It was a bit annoying and now that I am an older parent I try really hard not to give new parents that impression.

Each season, each age, each difficulty also comes with beautiful changes that you never see coming. Raising children is a REALLY wonderful thing. Watching little people grow up, try new things, learn lessons and figure life out is amazing. Now with a 16, 14, 11 and 3 year old we are again in the most amazing season. I work hard to savor the past and enjoy those memories but not dwell on them, and I also work hard not to worry about the future, because as the bible says the future will have it’s own worries. So we are working hard to live in the moment. Life is moving fast but it is so fun, and such a blessing!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 3/18/2026

We have had a wonderful finish to the winter season and now with everyone else we are cheering on spring. We have had tastes of it for sure but a fresh foot of snow this past weekend has put a damper on things. It was minus 6 yesterday morning! The extended forecast looks good for melting snow and we will be thankful for the moisture in our soil. We are neck deep into early spring work on both the homestead and the farm. It is a fun time of year full of plans, expectations and excitement for what is next.

Check out this latest update from our homestead and garden! Thanks as always for reading.

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootshomestead

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Spring Homestead Projects are Underway!

Tapping our maples!

Snow was gone. Now its back!

Spring is such a hopeful time on the homestead. Winter is (for the most part) behind us and we look forward to things greening up, temps warming up, snow melting and just generally being able to be outside without being bundled up. The first warm days of spring are some of my favorite. The mud I can do without, but it is all part of the process for spring to come.

We are still in a relatively quiet time period on the homestead. We are caring for our chickens, ducks and goats. Ingrid wrapped up milking our one doe, Opal, a couple of months ago as we let her body prepare for giving birth and feeding her new babies. We had Opal bred in the fall, we also have her daughter but choose not to have her bred as she is still pretty small and was a bit young. I am on the hunt for our batch of pigs that we will raise this year and have some good leads working.

Elsewhere on the homestead we started the arduous task of pruning our fruit trees. I can’t even tell you how many trees we have right now which is a good indication that I am in over my head. 🙂 I made a good dent on one of our pear trees and our largest apple before our latest round of snow and cold. As the snow melts I will get out there and finish up. Pruning is something where I always feel a little intimidated. We purchased a new book that we are really liking and learning from, it is called: Fruit Tree Pruning: The Science and Art of Cultivating Healthy Fruit Trees. There is a link there if you want to check it out. One of the things that I am interested in, is implementing some summer pruning. With the aggressive growth of our trees I do a lot of winter pruning which seems to create a cycle of wild growth and heavy pruning, summer pruning seems to have some hope of curbing that cycle.

We’ve also started our annual maple sap collection process! We had perfect sap weather while we were out of town earlier this month but I don’t think we missed much at all. We got our taps in March 8. I think we have about 20 taps in about 8 trees. I really should know those numbers for sure but there is a foot of snow outside and it is cold and I don’t want to go out and look. 🙂 We actually taped some new trees this year which was fun. We’ve collected 4 times and have 80-100 gallons of sap so far. We will see how collection goes this week, take a look at the forecast and decide if we are going to cook this weekend. I am thinking we will only cook one time this year. Though, honestly, I think I have said that before! The trick is timing it so that you get the most sap possible, while keeping the sap you have fresh, and picking a good day for cooking with nice weather and no rain. We actually shockingly have syrup left from last year, which has never happened! Homemade syrup, cooked over a wood fire is the absolutely best thing in the whole wide world. Thus the effort and time committed to this project!

My sauna project continues. As with most things of this nature it is going slower than I want. We have walls framed up in the shed, the walls and ceiling fully insulated, and electrical completed. The next two steps are pretty intimidating thus maybe (probably) the delay moving forward. I need to get my sauna stove pipe ran through the wall, also can I add, who knew stove pipe was so expensive! I think it must be lined with gold! After we get the stove pipe ran we have to do the vapor barrier. The vapor barrier is made of tin foil. Now imagine yourself in a small room attaching a giant piece of tin foil to the ceiling! This is going to be very interesting! I will keep you posted on progress!

MARKET GARDENING
Seeds are Started! And a New Tool

Ingrid prepping seeds for planting.

Full trays of plants in the germination chamber.

Ingrid broke ground this last week, not literal ground but she stirred up soil mix and got a bunch of seeds planted in trays. I believe she mentioned kale, bok choy and broccoli among other things. The seeds are cozy and warm in the germination chamber now. Once the seeds pop we get them under lights in my office. We were scheduled to get seeds in the ground in our high tunnel this past week but with the forecasted temperatures and snow we decided to wait. The clock is ticking now and we will work to get a few rows planted as soon as we can. In the meantime we’ve been spreading compost on our tunnel beds we will rake them out and then do a shallow till to help get the soil ready for planting.

Speaking of tilling! We took the leap and purchased a new machine for the garden. It is a BCS 2 wheel tractor. Officially for those of you in the know it is a BCS 850 with a 14 hp Briggs and Stratton engine, it is a new to us machine and is 25 to 30 years old. It came with a snow blower and a sweeper attachment and we just purchased a tiller for it as well. We have been able to test out both the blower and the sweeper and they work great! In fact this past weekend the blower out performed our current snowblower by a long shot! I was glad to get to test the attachments as we weren’t sure we would keep them. We purchased a roller attachment with the tiller that allows us to till very shallow! Like 1-2 inches. We work very hard to limit deep tillage. In fact we only really deep till when we are starting new beds. Prior to owning this machine we wouldn’t till at all on the surface and were just using hand tools. But as we’ve grown we’ve seen the need for a little mechanical help for prepping our beds. Bed prep is a huge part of what we do as most of our beds will have 2-3 crops in them each season. So the plan is for this machine to help us with that task, mix the top level of the soil, stir in compost and chop up some of the leftover plants from the previous planting. It should give us a nice solid base to get our next crop in.

The jury is still out a bit as we haven’t been able to put it to work yet! Currently the machine is in the garage with 1 foot of snow between it and the tunnel. We will get there soon enough. I have had to order some parts and make some fixes to the machine, that was expected when we purchased it. It feels like it is ready to go now!

The new BCS 2 Wheel Tractor

Our garden plan is FULL and we are excited to start putting that plan to work. It should be a good year, fingers crossed for a quick and beautiful spring!

CLOSING
A Trip South for Some Rest and Sun

Hanging out at spring training.

Beautiful sunset over the ocean.

We escaped winter for a couple of weeks at the end of February into March. The stars aligned and Ingrid’s parents were vacationing in Florida with a little extra room in their rental for us, my parents are living in Florida these days and also opened their doors to us. So we spent a week with each set of grandparents and had a blast. We fished, went to the beach, went to Twins spring training, did warm walks and hikes, sat in the sun, relaxed, swam, played mini golf, ate really good, and generally felt so blessed to be with family.

Being gone 2 full weeks is more than we have vacationed in a long time! But it was so worth it and we had great farm help back home to make it possible for us. Life is busy for us year round so when we found a little window of time with not much going on we jumped at the chance to get away.

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 1/9/2025

I hope that you all had a good holiday season! For us it was a blessing. Lots of time with friends and family, good food, lots of fun for the kids with their cousins and celebrating the birth of Christ. We enjoyed fun baking days with both Ingrid’s family as well as my own. This is where we all gather and make cookies, candy, gingerbread houses, etc. My favorite each year is our chocolate covered toffee. So good!

We did have the common illness that seems to be everywhere right now go through our house just before Christmas. I was the last to fall and at the worst time, the fever struck me down on Christmas Eve as I went to bed. Christmas Day I woke with a pretty high fever and thought I was doomed to stay home by myself while the family traveled. Thankfully just as they were prepping to leave I took my temp again and it was normal. I still felt rough but the family thought I should come anyway. So I did and was thankful I did.

We are still deep into hibernation mode around here though we do have a fun new project on the homestead and are starting to think towards Spring!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootshomestead

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Finishing 2025 Strong

The new shed in place!

As we closed out the year we had a lot of fun on the homestead. Fresh snow in December meant lots of sledding, plus some downhill and cross country skiing. We work pretty hard to keep our project list minimal during November and December as they are busy with holiday activities and we are trying to rest.

With the cold temperatures we really kept our wood stove cranking. To me there is not much better than a nice warm house heated by wood. A few years ago we tore out a giant brick wood burning insert and replaced it with a cool cookstove. The cookstove gives us great versatility as we can cook and bake with it as well as heat the home. We don’t do a ton of cooking and baking on it but the option is there is we need it! Mostly we work to just keep it running to heat the home. That means daily hauls bringing in wood from our woodshed to the house. The shed is well stocked and we’ve only made a small dent in our supply this year.

It is hard for me to believe that just a few years ago, we were scrounging for enough wood to burn. With the emerald ash borer taking out a ton of trees, and other projects of clearing trees we now have plenty and as long as we have the wood I would rather burn that than burn our propane. So everyday we get the fire going when we wake up and keep it stoked all day, we let the fire die towards evening so the furnace will kick on overnight and warm the basement where the boys sleep!

I did a lot of hunting at the end of November into most of December. I took Elias and Espen both along for a few hunts. Espen was holding the gun on the two chances we had, he did get a shot at 1 deer but missed, leaving just a little hair on the snow. With many more solo hunts I saw LOTS of deer but they were all too far away for a shot, or coming out just after shooting light. That is hunting! We will likely need to stock up on some ground beef to fill the void for our lack of venison. I do intend to get both my boys shooting more this summer. That way next year we can separate and cover more ground with multiple guns.

The biggest news on the homestead as we entered the new year was the delivery of a new shed! It looks great! Hats off to the guy who did the delivery for us, he did a masterful job squeezing the building between our house and garage. The shed now sits behind our garage and is waiting for a little work to be done on the inside. We plan to convert part of it into a sauna, with the other half being for changing and hanging out. I enjoy the sauna experience frequently with friends and just really wanted to bring one to our property. We are now planning out the interior and will start the building process soon. Look for more updates to come!

MARKET GARDENING
Water Access in the Garden and Planning!

Water line going in for the garden!

When you live in COLD Wisconsin, the winter months are for garden planning and dreaming and not so much actual gardening. We’ve done some initial planning. I have all my tomatoes plantings planned, and seeds ordered and we’ve started with some of the rest of the garden but have plenty more to do.

Before the end of the year we knocked out a HUGE project for us. Water access has been an ongoing challenge for us in the garden. The garden shares a well with my parents (God Bless them), and so we have a water line running from their house, to the barn and then through the roof of an unheated garage to a spicket on the outside of the garage wall. All of our irrigation ran through that spicket. In the shoulder season we couldn’t leave the water on because it would freeze in the garage. So we were frequently draining the lines and it was painful.

Earlier this fall we discovered that the water line between the house and the barn was leaking, and it was leaking under the barn slab. Not good! So my parents contracted a crew to come and replace the water line. They used a directional boring machine (amazing technology) to run the line from the middle of the yard under the barn foundation and into the barn and then under the house foundation and into the house. They then connected the lines in the middle. While they were there we had them also run a line from our garden area under the barn and tie it into the water line. So we now have a frost free hydrant running straight out to the garden. We are so excited about the ways this is going to make us more efficient this year.

Yet this winter and spring I would like to build a few greenhouse tables for the greenhouse space, and we need to recover one of our tunnels. Those are our two big projects for the spring season. I feel pretty good about that based on the fact that a year ago we were planning for a huge tunnel build!

CLOSING
Finding the Sun on Cloudy Days

As I look our my window writing today I am blessed to see the sun. We’ve had way more cloudy days than sunny days lately here in Wisconsin and the sun is a welcome sight. As we move through this winter season I have found it important to be pretty intentional about how we treat our spirit and mood. The cloudy, dark days can easily bring us down, maybe you feel that too.

For me I have found staying busy and active helps. Walking or working out, sledding and skiing, things like that. I also find it helpful to stay busy socially, and work really hard to avoid isolation. Building and growing community and then being intentional about spending time in community helps tremendously! Lastly we’ve planned a trip, and we are going to leave the cold and snow towards the end of winter. We pray the trip is a blessing and helps us get through those last few weeks of cold before spring breaks through. I pray you are finding peace during this season!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 12/18/2025

We are working our way through the holiday season! What a gift this December has been with SNOW! It has been a few years since we had a good snowy December. The kids have been sledding daily, we have cross country skied a couple of times and they will ski downhill at the end of this week as well. As for homestead tasks with the cold temps we’ve had to put in place all our tank heaters to keep the animals waterers unfrozen. We’ve also started ordering seeds for next year, partially just to get the expense on this years taxes. In this weeks newsletter we are looking at October on the homestead and the garden. Thanks for following along as we play catch up!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootshomestead

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Slowing Down in October

The pace of life took a nice step back in October. We still have plenty going on but there were less pressing items on the calendar that needed our attention. The month was highlighted by our big trip to British Columbia, Canada. I spoke more about that in the post just before this one. We again had some great farm sitters come to the farm to keep an eye on the animals. We also managed to keep our farmstand open during that trip, which was nice for our customers and for us. Leaving the homestead is always a challenge. We really try to make it pretty easy on our farm sitters, this year the timing worked so that the pigs and the meat birds were both gone, which is great.

October is a really beautiful month in our part of the world. We had near perfect weather as well. After a busy season of work in the garden and on the homestead it is nice to take a breath and enjoy some warmer days with the fall leaves before winter truly sets in.

We continued chipping away at some food preservation as well. Harvesting many pumpkins and squash, peppers and tomatoes. For the first time we did fermented hot sauce with a bunch of our peppers. It turned out really great! The trouble is I am unsure if I could ever replicate it! Ingrid roasted a lot of our squash that wasn’t perfect for preserving whole and then bagged it up in quart bags for the freezer.

We took care of a few other fall tasks like getting the tree guards on our apple trees, sadly we found that ¾ of the apple trees we planted in our homestead garden were girdled at some point. Girdled is when rodents eat the bark all the way around the tree, killing it. Usually this is a winter issue, with snow fall? I am not sure what compelled the critters to wreck all those trees before we could get the guards on. I know that it didn’t help that we didn’t do a great job of keeping the grass down around the trees. I also know that we got those trees very cheap, which only slightly makes me feel better. Just one of those things that got neglected and we paid the price. I think we are going to modify the plan in our homestead garden going forward. I would still like to have trees present but maybe just on the ends with pure garden space in between. I am also committed to some good mulch around the trees that did survive next year to protect them. Near about this same time last year we lost a bunch of trees due to an angry buck getting into the garden and shredding the trees with its antlers. So maybe it just isn’t meant to be down there!

The other big project for October was managing our compost and leaf piles. The guy we partner with for leaves brought many loads through the month of October. He would dump them and then I would go with the skidsteer to pile them. I am trying out a new location this year and also trying slightly smaller piles. The leaves will break down over the winter and then we will turn the piles with the skidsteer a handful of times next summer. That will leave us with beautiful compost next fall for the gardens. I was also busy bringing loads of compost up to the main garden area with our dump trailer. Based on the layout of our garden and the tight quarters we work in that is a challenging project. It is something I am thinking about improving for the future.

MARKET GARDENING
Completing Garden Projects!

Finished end wall, looks good!

Leveled green house floor.

I did a fall garden tour and posted it to YouTube. Check it out here! https://youtu.be/_dDrBneWHww

We knocked out a couple really big projects in the garden as the season wound down. With the movement of our high tunnels this year we had one tunnel that went all year with no end walls. It just wasn’t a priority for us this year but it certainly cost us with the growing of our cucumbers and zucchini. Without the end walls we planted later and the plants took longer to develop. I took an hour or so on a couple of days and put up wiggle wire track and some framing for the end walls. The track is what we use to hold down the green house plastic. We then needed a pretty windless day to put the plastic up. Ingrid and I tag teamed that, thankfully being able to recycle some plastic from other projects. The plastic went up pretty easy in a couple of hours and it was so nice to knock that off the list!

The next big project was tackling the ground in our new greenhouse space. Our new high tunnel has 50 feet of growing space and another 25 feet or so of space that we hope to use for storage and starting plants. The ground in there was a mess, it was very unlevel and there was a giant tree stump in the middle of it! The stump was underground but when we put the tunnel up we had to do some grading and the stump suddenly became a big issue. The trouble now was that it was in a covered space, with difficult access. So I rented a stump grinder, the grinder literally fit with a ½ inch to spare on both sides of the door! We used that grinder to get stump ground down as far as we could go. I had a suspicion that there was another stump in there too, but we couldn’t find it. I was then able to use the stump grinder on several more stumps around our place. Next I rented a mini skid steer. We used that to level the ground and then bring in a bunch of fill material to flatten it out. All in all the plan worked really, really well. We of course did find that other stump which caused us some slight headaches, but overall we are super happy with how it turned out. We will next cover the floor with landscape fabric and then build some tables in there so we can bring plants out this spring. I also need to install one more vent in the greenhouse space to manage some of the hot air that builds up in there.

We are currently working on plans for this years garden. Each year we try to think about what we can do to improve our product, efficiency and our own ability to manage it all. We got our first seed order sent in today, with probably a couple more planned. The biggest challenge with growing at a large scale is just making sure you have enough of what you need but not too much. I think we are pretty close but still struggle to have enough of our salad greens in the heart of summer. So we will again try to create a winning strategy around that.

CLOSING
Christmas!

The holidays have always been my favorite time of year. I just love the traditions, the family time, the good food and really the joy that surrounds the whole event. It is the highlight of the year for us as Christians as well. A time to get more intimately involved with our faith as we remember the story of Jesus coming to earth to ultimately save us from our sins.

The season can get so busy and dare I say STRESSFUL. I work REALLY hard to just settle my heart and really try to enjoy the time and remember the purpose for the season. I pray that you are able to do the same this year. Take time to remember the WHY. Have patience with your family members. 🙂 Love your people and all the people you come in contact with even if they steal your parking spot at the mall. 🙂 Have a blessed Christmas!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 11/26/2025

Hello and Happy Thanksgiving! It has been a busy, busy fall! We have a lot of catching up to do, I likely won’t do it all in one email. 🙂 I will say the fall has been extremely productive and with the extended nice weather we got lots of projects done. With the projects on my list, the nice weather and a busy season at my desk job, every free moment was full, leaving this little newsletter to be idle. The transition has now begun, rain is falling now, it will change over to snow overnight tonight and I will suddenly have back a fair bit of time. I will add I am so thankful for this long fall of beautiful weather. Even last night as it stayed mild and warm I took extra time to enjoy it knowing that winter is coming! We will share a few updates in this post and try to use a couple of posts to catch up on some of the bigger happenings here!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootshomestead

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Busy and Productive in September!

Pigs in their last days.

Chicken butchering day.

Apple picking.

Getting ready for cider!

The homestead has remained quite busy during this busy season! I am going to go back to September to update you on a few happenings that we missed during my quiet period. September was pretty crazy, dare I say it is our busiest month of the year? We continued full throttle in the garden, added in homeschooling and our homeschool coop, added in piano, violin, guitar lessons, added in a high school cross country runner and two younger cross country runners, continued fall ball for lacrosse, continued a lot of food preservation and did some fall harvesting for things like apples and berries. It was pretty wild!

Touching on some of the homesteading highlights, we processed a lot of tomatoes! September is the time when our tomato sales dip just slightly but the plants are loving life and still producing a ton! We turn a bunch of them into soup that we sell while also producing a bunch for ourselves. Stuff like salsa, tomato sauce, pizza sauce, enchilada sauce, tomato soup, ketchup and more. Most of this gets canned up and then put up for the rest of the year.

The pigs had a healthy last month or so and we got them to the butcher in September. We did so in two batches a week apart. So 2 at a time. It went REALLY well this year. Our system just worked and it was a huge relief. We did a video on the process this year: https://youtu.be/EdeS05sPCOY. The pigs were big, just a little too big for my liking. We got caught a bit this year as the pigs were born early and our butcher is a local college, so we can’t butcher till they start school. So due to that we got pushed back a bit into September. Hopefully this next year we are able to time that a little better and save on some feed costs. The pork has been amazing and I am super happy with it!

Apple harvest was down a little bit this year. We had two of our largest trees not produce at all. The apples we did pick we did sauce, cider, and dried apples. For the cider we got together with another couple of families and pressed together. I think we ended up with 16 gallons or so. Ingrid then canned ours in the pressure canner which effectively turns it in to apple juice. We used to freeze it but our freeze space is at a premium so canning works pretty good. We love apple sauce as well and have a good supply stocked up. Generally our apples were pretty ugly again this year. I would like to get on a more successful system for organic pest management, but need to do some research on how exactly to make that happen.

We also squeezed in our meat chicken processing towards the end of the month. We rushed the birds a bit this year and I think still ended up with a nice final product. Our larger birds were 5-6 lbs while we had some 3 pounders mixed in. Most birds were around 4 lbs which is great for us. Processing was pretty painless. I did find through processing this year that I need to replace a ton of the fingers on my plucker before we do it again. They are breaking down and not working quite right. Chickens are rested for a day or two in our walk-in cooler and then added to the freezer.

So those are some good updates from September from the homestead. It was a full month! It is also one of my favorite months!

Canned pears!

Canned chicken stock!

MARKET GARDENING
Shutting Down the Farm Stand and Garden

The Fall Garden at Full Capacity!

What a late season! The garden continued to produce in abundance throughout September and October. For the first time we kept the stand upon through October, with the first of November being our final day open for the season. It honestly was a bit of a push through October. Ingrid being the main force for harvesting was worn out, which is totally understandable. She was thankful to see the end of the harvest season. Business definitely slows in September and October. We still have a steady stream of customers but not like what we saw in August. The slowing of customers fits somewhat with our own physical slowing and a general transition of the garden as well.

From a business perspective we were able to surpass sales from last year during the last week of October. Financial growth every year is certainly a goal for us, so it was nice to reach that. The biggest difference in 2024 vs 2025 is that in 2024 due to warm weather in the spring we had veggies to sell in mid April, in 2025 it was several days in to May before we could start selling. Because of that we were playing catch up all year long and finally surpassed 2024 in late October. As of this moment as it looks like winter is finally going to set in, we have an abundance of food still growing in our new high tunnel. We’ve been picking and eating and sharing as much as we can.

It will be fun to plan for 2026 this winter. Our new high tunnel is a game changer, that truly extends our seasons. It gives us way more flexibility as well. My hopes would be to use that tunnel to have veggies by mid April. The goal certainly isn’t to grow year round but with our mission being to feed people good, local food it feels like we should use any opportunity we have to extend our season.

To close down the garden we started with our most important beds, what we call our salad beds but really it is just our most central, uncovered beds where we grow most of our staple crops. We covered each bed with a layer of compost an inch or two thick.

We use the skid steer to load wheel barrows and dump it on the beds before raking it out.

Once all the beds are composted we cover the whole thing with a black tarp.

Sandbags hold down the tarps for us. I then use the skid steer to add a healthy pile of compost on the end of each high tunnel. Over the winter or in the spring as time allows we are able to distribute that compost onto our beds. The goal is getting a lot of the heavy work done now in the fall while the ground is somewhat dry. The spring can be very wet and moving compost with the skid steer can be a huge mess. The high tunnels keep the piles dry and make things pretty easy for us in the spring. For the tarped beds, we are able to simply pull back the tarps and plant right away in the spring, which works awesome.

Fall was a great time for projects in the garden and I can’t wait to tell you all about them the next time I write. We’ve got 3 good projects to share, that were major game changers for us.

CLOSING
The BEST Trip!

Stunning,

Early October found us on an amazing trip to Riondel, BC. We stayed with some new friends at their camp, The Harbour (https://www.theharbour.net/). We traveled with a group from Ingrid’s parent’s and brother’s church. It was a great group! The Harbour does a number of wonderful things but most notably they do discipleship training for young people during a two month intensive session in the summer. The plan for us was to get a taste of that program over a week. As a bonus, the owners of the camp have 3 kids similar in ages to our kids. They had an amazing time!

We learned a lot, got to spend some quiet time with God and our families, ate amazing food, swam in hot springs, explored and hiked, and got to take in the scenery in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. What a gift!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 9/10/2025

Thanks so much for taking the time to read through our latest update from the homestead. I am happy to report that all is well! It’s been a frenetic end to the summer season as we now turn our attention towards fall. We’ve had a few trials on the homestead but seem to be keeping our head above water. The kids are keeping us on our toes with lots of activities and we’ve started back up with educating the kids at home as well. Check out the updates below and feel free to ask any questions that may come to mind. We love to help!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Summer Transitioning to Fall

Happy pig drinking some milk!

The meat birds.

We had a little taste of fall last week and now feel heat and humidity returning. We were hoping summer wasn’t quite over yet! Heavy on the list for this season is preserving food. It can be hard to fit it all in but we know we will be thankful for the hard work now in the winter months. Right now we have potatoes, pears and lots of tomatoes on the list and waiting. The potatoes will be peeled and diced and pressure canned. These are potatoes at aren’t quite right for long term storage, so we can them up. Pears will be canned in a light sugar syrup, this is our first big pear harvest from our orchard. For the tomatoes we will do straight tomato sauce, salsa, soup, enchilada sauce, pizza sauce and more. Our apple harvest is really close as well. We plan to make some cider, preserve some apples in cold storage and maybe freeze some for pies and crisps this winter. We’ve already done some preserving on beans and corn and will stash away some squash this winter as well. We also have some cabbages to contend with which will go to sauerkraut.

Our meat chickens are looking really good. I shouldn’t even say this out loud but we haven’t lost a single bird. One issue is that they are eating me out of food. We order a static amount and have it brought in on a pallet by a truck. I’ve been going through it a little too fast. So I will either need to slow them down or find them more food! Because of some travel I am trying to push them a little bit to finish them early so we can butcher before we leave.

We’ve had a little more pig drama! The other day the boys were feeding the pigs some scraps and one of them wasn’t getting up to eat… this is always a bad sign for pigs! I came in to take a look and the pig seemed OK but he was moving slow and looked uncomfortable. I spoke with our vet (who is excellent) and with my description of symptoms he was quickly able to get me on the right path for treating the pig to get him better. Of course treating a 300 lb pig isn’t always easy. But we got the job done and pig was immediately better and on the road to recovery. Pigs go into the butcher in 2 weeks. Just need to keep them healthy and happy till then!

As for goats, we were able to sell one of our does and her buckling recently. It was a tremendous blessing as this goat was the first screaming goat we’ve ever had and I was at my wits end. If the goat ever saw you anywhere it would just scream. We think she was just hungry and not satisfied with our pasture space or the amount of feed she was receiving. She’s going to another farm with pasture space that will suit her well! We’ve still got a couple other goats listed on Craigslist. Ingrid is still milking most days and we are enjoying the dairy as much as we can!

Espen along with his bee mentor Dean processed the honey off of his 3 hives. The harvest was down a bit from last year. Dean thought this was due to some of the rains we dealt with this summer washing away some of the pollen from the flowers. Espen is still really happy with his harvest and will again be selling a good amount of honey.

Speaking of Espen he spent a couple of weeks building a little house on our property. It is a 10×10 structure that he did 98% of the work on himself. He also managed to build it with all materials found on our property which is crazy. I did buy him a box of screws toward the end as he had run out. He’s been enjoying sleeping out in his house and likes being able to manage the space on his own without his brother’s influence. 🙂 

Nearly finished!

The rustic house finished!

MARKET GARDENING
Harvesting and Selling as Fast as We Can

The farmstand.

Our garden season is still going strong. With a late start to the season we are really hoping for a nice extended fall where we can make up some of the sales losses from the spring. Either way we are still hanging pretty strong with our goals and things are looking good. We’ve had good rains and decent weather all season. In between the rains our irrigation is working excellent.

Right now we are deep into tomato season and still harvesting bushels of cucumbers each day. Zucchini has slowed down but we are still selling our garlic and sold some potatoes from our garden this year as well. Kale is of course amazing and we are working hard to keep salad greens in stock. We got behind again in August and are still playing catch up on the greens.

On the list for this fall will be general clean up around the farm, adding compost to beds and tarping them. We have to finish the end walls on one tunnel and we need to re-cover another one, I am tempted to wait until spring to recover the tunnel. Why put the plastic through a winter season if we can avoid it? But then I know how busy spring is too! We need to get to work on our green house space in the new tunnel. This means bringing in some dirt to level the floor and laying landscape fabric, there is also a stump in there I need to grind out! There are a couple of other odd jobs as well. Most of this work will hopefully happen in late October and early November. Time will tell how the weather treats us!

CLOSING
Busy Times with Family and Friends

Espen and his cousin played each other!

Elias in a race. He lead his JV team.

These last few weeks of summer have been jam packed. All the kids are running cross country (minus Anikka), Elias with the high school and Bergen and Espen with a local private school. So that means frequent practices and getting to the meets. Espen is also doing a fall Lacrosse league which has been fun. We started our homeschooling year last week and started at our co-op this week. We are kept busy in between with time with friends, getting together with other homeschool families to educate together and time with family.

Ingrid’s family came over for some camping over the labor day weekend. With many young kids the safe option seemed to be a backyard campout at our place. It turned out excellent and was lots of fun.

The band playing on a beautiful night.

Swimming in the creek with cousins.

Labor day evening we were blessed with a beautiful evening of outdoor music hosted by my brother and sister in law at their farm. A band called The Riverside played and were excellent. It was one of the highlights of my summer.

I am reminded as I reminisce on these beautiful times with our family and friends just how blessed we are to have our community of people. We know people in many different ways but all of them feel like a blessing. The connections between humans feels so important and enrich our lives everyday.

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 8/14/2025

Hello from the homestead! A lot has happened since I last sent out an update. We’ve been blessed to sneak in some mid summer vacations and have continued to see the garden and the farmstand thrive. Lots of beautiful time with friends and our family as well. Being deep in the midst of harvest season the homestead just needs daily maintenance. No big projects, just day to day maintenance and handling issues as they arise. Check out the rest of the post for more details.

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Busy Summer on the Homestead

Burning a brush pile.

What an awesome summer on the homestead! As I alluded to in the intro it hasn’t been an overly productive summer on the homestead. In the past we have had projects that just NEEDED to be done and so we made the time for them in the summer. This summer the projects on our list are a little less urgent. We of course think about those projects frequently but they just aren’t a top priority and we’ve had fun leaning into more activities with the kids as well. Hopefully this fall we will find some time to make a little progress. In that vein I will just throw out that finding someone local who builds sheds and small buildings onsite would be really helpful. 🙂 

The biggest and baddest piece of homestead news is that we had a pig die. He was one of our big ones and was just lying dead in the pasture this morning when I went out to feed. It is incredibly frustrating, financially taxing and heart wrenching all at the same time. I feel bad for the pig and of course we know very little about why or how he died but it is natural to believe we maybe could have done something. We are now short 1 pig to sell this fall and 2 of our customers won’t get pork. Thankfully, I haven’t sold anything yet as I always wait until late in the game just to be sure they will all make it to the butcher. After speaking with the vet he believes it was a heart attack, as pigs get big the heat and humidity can be hard on them physically. They have good water and mud but we will work to keep them cool over the next few weeks. The diagnosis was reassuring as I was nervous about some spreadable illness that my other pigs might get. Of course logistically we then had to dispose of a 275 lb animal. There is a guy that will pick them up but there is a cost to that, so we went ahead and buried the pig. Here is hoping we can get the other 4 pigs to the finish line.

Meat chickens are doing really well. They are now in their chicken tractor and we are moving that every couple of days. We are working to keep them fed and watered and I am trying to “rush” them as we would like to butcher before we leave for a vacation in October. Of course our vacation landed right on the ideal butcher week. They are growing nicely and staying alive which is great!

Goats are doing great and Ingrid has starting separate the goats from their babies to increase the milk we are getting. We are only doing that periodically as it is a lot of milk! We are getting the goats out several times per week to graze and free range, which they love. We are close to being ready to castrate our little bucklings and we still do have some goats for sale as well. Ingrid is ready to sell but we haven’t had time to create the ad on craigslist. Soon!

Despite the bad news from the pig pen the other 4 pigs seem to be doing well. We have them in their final pasture and there is lots of forage for them to work through. We are eyeballing early September to take them into the butcher. They were looking quite large so we did cut back their feed just a little bit.

We’ve done a little burning of brush and have a few more piles to go. Burning a pile is always a good feeling as it seems to clean things up nicely and quickly. If I had my way I would love to chip brush but big chippers are expensive and then we would have another machine to maintain. I’ve considered renting one as well which would work but is costly.

MARKET GARDENING
Playing Catch Up, Lots of Harvesting!

Beautiful tomatoes!

Cherries have done great!

We continue to keep our nose to the grindstone as we work through the brunt of the harvest season. Tomatoes are definitely in full swing now and we are selling a couple hundred pounds per week. With that said I was surprised to see that we are quite behind where we were last year as far as tomato sales. That doesn’t have anything to do with our customers but more to do with my tomato supply. We are selling out of everything I put out everyday. I know our supply is down and I blame the fact that in the past we’ve grown additional rows of determinate tomatoes. I have just one row of determinates this year in our tunnel and that row has a mix of plants because we lost some seedlings in the spring. The plants look great and there are tons of tomatoes but just not that massive volume we usually get. It could also be that we are just behind, I know that we are behind where we were last year because tomatoes ripened later this year than last year. The trick is if our customers will still have a taste for tomatoes in September!

We have also hit a bit of a snag with our greens. We were doing very well but must have missed a couple of plantings and had a couple of beds with poor germination. So our salad mix has been a bit low as well. We are working hard now to play catch up. And I don’t think the impact has been too great for our customers, which is good!

We are in full swing planting fall crops now too and planning for our high tunnels that will take us into October and November. In positive news we have had great carrot harvests this year, our germination chamber on the cool setting (it is an old double door fridge) is helping us get great lettuce germination (we have it set at like 68 degrees), Ingrid has grown great broccoli and has been selling it and freezing it for our own use.

The farmstand itself is still running just a little behind last year on earning. Because of the cool spring we opened up about 2 weeks later than last year and we just haven’t been able to catch up. My hope is that we can have a strong October to make up for the late start. We will see! Always learning!

CLOSING
Travel Success!

Our family in front of the lodge.

The big family in front of the lodge.

Horseback riding was fun!

It was a cool place with helmets optional! Espen read on the website that they had a river we could cross and the guides agreed to do it. I assumed it would be pretty shallow. Nope! It nearly came to my knees while I was on the horse! So fun!

WHAT A BLESSING! Our trips went really well and our farm sitters and farmstand workers did amazing. We enjoyed a wonderful trip to Gull Lake with our family for my parents 50th Anniversary. Lots of swimming and playing for the cousins and a little good relaxing for the parents, though we did plenty of playing as well. We are already booked to do it again next year.

After Gull Lake we were home for 1.5 days and did a little catch up on the homestead and at the farm before leaving again for Bayfield with Ingrid’s parents and some friends. We camped on a friends land, swam in the Lake Superior, shopped, hiked and had a great time together.

Elias posing in Bayfield.

Ingrid and Anikka swimming in Lake Superior

We picked 22 lbs of blueberries

Hiking near Washburn! Cool spot!

Hiking at Copper Falls.

The three kids and their tents on “The Land”

There were of course challenges along the way! Anikka is 2, big challenge! HA. And the farm was almost recognizable after 5 days away. I don’t know how that happens! The weeds went bonkers while we were gone! There was also a huge windstorm that knocked some big branches down. It was worth the effort and worth the work playing catch up as well.

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 7/24/2025

It is the time of year where the garden is SOOO busy that it is hard to even track what is happening day to day. We are harvesting everyday and putting food out in the farmstand as fast as it will grow. As we role through July we are coming up on our more difficult months to grow things like salad. So far so good this year, we’ve had rain at good times and the truth is it feels like we are just finally getting a handle on how to make it all work in the summer! Check out the rest of the post for a full update.

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Busy Summer on the Homestead

Family photo of the gang from this summer!

Mid July is just a wild time of the year for us. It signals the halfway point of summer, which is a little sad, but is also just busy, busy with all that we have going on. On the homestead we’ve been keeping up feeding out the ducks, chickens, goats and pigs.

Pigs are getting bigger everyday. They will be leaving the homestead earlier this year than in past years because they were born earlier in the season. So we expect to keep them around into early September and then haul them to the butcher. They’ve been loving all the kitchen scraps we haul to them!

Goats are doing OK. We’ve had some issues with off tasting milk that Ingrid is trying to work through. It is either what they are eating or it could be a little case of mastitis. She treated them with a holistic option and we are hoping to get that cleared up soon. Soon we will do the castrating bands on all our little bucklings and we still have a couple of goats we hope to sell as well.

We had our yearly flock of meat chickens delivered last week. We are doing Freedom Rangers again this year and have about 30. The Freedom Rangers are red vs. white, they take a bit longer to grow out but also give more dark meat and a better final product in our opinion. They will hang in the brooder for about 3 weeks before we move them out to our chicken tractor. Right now the chicken tractor is full of our next batch of egg layers, so we will hopefully be able to move them into the big coop around the same time the meat birds are ready to move out. The meat chickens will be on the homestead for about 12 weeks. Of course this year our butcher date is right around a big fall trip we have planned, so we will have to either do it just before or just after. Ideally we’d like to do it before so our farm sitters don’t have to mess with them but we will see how big they get, I’ll be feeding them heavy hoping to hurry them along!

We celebrated Espen’s birthday last week! It was a fun and busy day which is just perfect for Espen. Lots of good friend time and activities. He likes to stay busy. 🙂 He got some fun lacrosse stuff for his birthday and has been enjoying his first season playing that sport.

MARKET GARDENING
Harvesting Everything! Garden Tour

Tomatoes were late, but are coming now!

We’ve had great carrots!

I took a little time and did a quick walking tour of the garden the other day. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0YK6kHGUf0

It is the time of year where we are harvesting everything. When everyday is a harvest day it can be tough to squeeze in some of the other daily tasks like weeding, seeding, planting, trellising. So it just takes a lot of intentionality to get those extra tasks done. With the tomatoes as they ripen they do slow down in growth, so there is a little less trellising that needs to be done. Frankly, we also just let the tomatoes go a little wild as the summer wears on. It is a catch 22 because of course you want more tomatoes but if you let them go to wild too soon you end up with smaller fruit, and often fruit that isn’t quite as nice. It is also painful to harvest!

The schedule these days is that we do large harvests, with our hired help on Monday and Thursday. These are the days we really stock up and do big harvests of salad greens, turnips, kale, carrots, radishes, etc. These crops that need to be washed and bagged take a lot of work and set up, so it just makes sense to bundle it together. There are weeks where we get busy and then we may need to harvest a little more salad mix in between harvest days but the hope is to avoid that. Then everyday we are harvesting tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant. I would say everyday harvests are most important with zucchini and cherry tomatoes which just don’t wait. Everything else could probably be every other day but during peak season we are just going every day.

We are now just starting to get our fall crops started. This will be cabbages, broccoli, and eventually we will fill the tunnel with salad crops to try and stretch out our season. Ingrid is also starting onion seeds with hopes of planting some winter onions that we will harvest next spring.

CLOSING
Travel

We are looking forward to some good travel in the next couple of weeks. Travel is something that can be tough as a homesteader! Thankfully we have some great friends that can farm-sit for us. They are experienced at feeding all the animals and even milking the goats.

The farmstand is a bit of a more challenging story. It is tough to leave your business, especially during peak season! We could of course close up for a few days and there might be a time where do that, but this time of year we would not only lose money but lots of valuable food as well that wouldn’t be harvested or sold. We are going to be leaving the business in the hands of our friends who help us each week and I am certain everything will go great! We are of course a phone call away and ready to help them out. We will try to get away and breathe a little bit and get refreshed for the rest of the season!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 7/10/2025

Lots of photos in this weeks newsletter because there has been a lot going on! The crew finished our high tunnel a couple of weeks ago, we have been chipping away at cleaning things up and doing some dirt work to finish stuff up. The garden is flourishing! We have started picking tomatoes and cucumbers. We had an amazing 4th of July holiday with lots of good family time and fun. And WE HAD A BEAR. Read on for more details!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Selling Goats, Pigs Growing Fast, Lost a Duck

Bear! Read on for the link to the video.

We moved along our oldest doe and the first goat we ever purchased in 2020 recently. She was a fantastic goat, the herd matriarch, sometimes a little crabby, but a great momma with fantastic milk production. She was however ready to be retired. As of now we have 3 does and their kids. We are planning to keep 2 of those does and one of the little babies (our only girl). The rest we will move along to greener pastures. We’ve found it best to manage our goat numbers pretty aggressively. Herds can grow quickly and it can be overwhelming.

I was looking at the pigs this morning and man they are growing fast! I need to jump in there with them one of these days and get a measurement on them to help me estimate their current weight. I do have one pig that is looking small, my hope is always to have consistent sizes but somehow there is always a little one! Hopefully he keeps up for the next couple of months and gets to a decent size. I am now feeding them 6 pounds of feed per day per pig. That is where they max out. Prior to this amount I was feeding the same lbs of feed per pig as months old they are… if that makes sense. So 3 months old, 3 lbs of feed. The pigs are also getting spoiled with food from the coop! I gave them 5 or 6 garbage bags full yesterday and it is basically gone today. A wide mixture of veggies and fruits, this week we had sweet corn which they love. We pick up this food from our coop after they pick through it and decide it isn’t good enough to sell. We also get trimmings from their kitchen there.

We lost a duck the other day. I am guessing it was to a fox. The busyness of summer can lead to forgotten chores and that was the case when we lost the duck. The boys forgot to put the chickens and ducks away and we woke up to a dead duck. Sadly whatever killed it didn’t eat any of it and it was too far gone for us to salvage, disappointing all around and a good reminder to our boys to get the birds closed up at night. Loss is just part of the deal with homesteading and animals. It is always disappointing.

As Espen was coming home from rabbit hunting in the garden a couple of nights ago he spotted a bear standing at the end of our driveway. The bear spotted him too and took off running the opposite direction towards our neighbors place. He came in out of breath to announce the news to us and of course we all went looking to see if we could spot it. No luck! I did see the bear on our security camera though! Sadly it was blocked by a tree. Here is the thing about bears, I am not afraid of the bears, I believe they are more likely to be afraid of me! What I don’t like is how destructive a bear could be on our property, looking for food in our animal food storage, tearing apart our bee hives or breaking our fruit trees. As cool as they are to see I hope this one keeps on moving and doesn’t come back! Here is the sketchy video of the bear: https://photos.app.goo.gl/xzE4zjHDrRaZrNre7

As for other homestead happenings. I had a good chunk of time to work on splitting wood the other day. Something that doesn’t often happen in the summer months. Our wood shed is feeling really full already. As is always the case, we should have built it bigger! I am unsure if I will build another one in the future or what the plan will be, for now we will just fill this one up! Projects on the list include: some major mowing and clean up with the brush mower around the place, a few bonfires, moving some compost piles, etc.

MARKET GARDENING
Tunnel is Up! Farmstand Stats for June

Plastic going on the tunnel.

Tunnel complete!

The tunnel is complete! It took the guys 4 full days to get it built, I couldn’t be more thankful to have them build it! They did a great job and I didn’t have to do it! Because of the grading we had to do, we still have a little site work left to complete. The greenhouse space needs some good dirt work and leveling before we can put down some weed fabric for the floor. One complicating factor is a large stump inside the greenhouse space. The stump WAS below grade but when we had to start digging to make the tunnel level it suddenly is in the way. I am unsure if it will go back below grade as we do dirt work or if I will need to get a stump grinder in there. The greenhouse space is currently a low priority project, but we will chip away at it as we have time. With the work being done in the area the garden beds were a bit neglected in the tunnel portion, we are working now to get those back in the mix and looking good.

The garden is growing well and I think we are on track to keep ourselves well stocked with greens through the summer. We’ve been able to get a few periodic rains as well which has been nice. Summer crops are trickling in, I wish they were coming faster but there are some things that run on their own schedule!

I thought I would provide a little farmstand update here as well. June was an interesting month for us in the stand. We some very wet days and some really hot days and I think both of these deterred people from coming to the stand. Overall, that made June a little bit of a down month compared to last year. It definitely wasn’t a significant difference.

Here are some sales stats for June:

• Top 5 sellers were: Chicken Eggs, Salad Mix, Radish Bunch, Super Salad, Spinach

  • Chicken Eggs: 134 Dozen

  • Salad Mix: 142 bags

  • Radish Bunch: 132 bunches

  • Super Salad: 78 bags

  • Spinach: 96 bags

• We had 419 individual sales at the stand

Some reminders on how we run our business. Ingrid is the main farmer, I assist where needed, help with projects and manage the tomatoes. I also do all the marketing. Ingrid is working typically 4 hours in the morning each day. Our main harvest days are Monday and Thursday and on those days we have 2 helpers come in to help wash and bag veggies and help with other tasks on the farm. The kids help, we don’t force them but we do pay the boys. They work 3-4 hours per week.

The farmstand is self serve. Customers pick out their items and then self checkout at our Square kiosk. It works excellent 98% of the time. 🙂 Once in awhile we will have a customer who struggles with it and lately we’ve had issues with it processing things too slowly! 85% of our sales are by card and the rest are cash. Our customers are very honest and we don’t have a problem with theft.

We sell our veggies as well as some products from local friends and creators. Other things we sell are honey, soaps, candles, jam, nut butter, chicken meat, and coffee. This year we also bought syrup in bulk and bottled it for the stand. That seems to be working well!

Our biggest sellers every year are tomatoes, salad mix and chicken eggs. We used to sell our own eggs but the demand is too great these days and we can’t legally have enough chickens to keep up! We also weren’t making much money on the eggs. These days we buy from a local Amish cooperative and that works excellent.

CLOSING
Family Update

Elias and I out fishing. He caught the only fish!

I fished with a friend and we had great luck.

The look of a girl being allowed to stay up too late! HAHA.

Playing in the rain!

So much awe at the fireworks!

Elias paddling out to read on the raft.

Ani flying high at the beach!

We were so blessed with an awesome few weeks of family time. Espen also snuck in a trip to the BWCA with a local Christian camp and had a great time. We’ve been able to get out for some fishing, had some great fireworks and family time on the 4th of July. Spent plenty of time floating and swimming and boating at the lake and overall just loving all summer can throw at us. I just shared a bunch of photos with you from the fun!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 6/13/2025

The big news for this update is that our high tunnel is being built! A crew of 3 workers started work on Monday and Tuesday and have made great progress, more updates below. Beyond that excitement we have been working hard at enjoying summer! Lots of fun outdoors and many adventures. The weather has been hot, dry, cold and wet, we are taking it in stride and loving the variety we get to see here in Wisconsin. Enjoy this weeks update from the homestead!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Keeping Up On The Homestead

The boys with some of our first pigs!

With the farmstand business running in full force we are working hard to keep up on the homestead. We’ve tackled a few projects here and there but most of those are just related to maintence and keeping things operational. Here is a quick look at what a typical day looks like on our homestead.

For most of our animals they are only really needing attention early and late in the day. Extra work happens periodically as well but most of our systems are built to allow us flexibility in the day to day work. For our daily animal chores each of the kids have an assigned group of animals (except Anikka!), and Ingrid and I work as well. Espen is currently on chickens, Elias is on ducks, Bergen and Ingrid are on goats and I take care of the pigs.

For Espen that just means a ration of chicken feed in their feeder in the morning, double checking their waterer (it is a 50 gallon barrel so only needs filled periodically), and collecting eggs. We also close them up at night, they all find their way inside around sunset.

Elias takes care of his duck flock, similar to chickens they get feed in the morning and Elias collects eggs as well. Ducks are more water intensive so Elias is every few days filling up water tubs for them in their outdoor pen. In the evenings the ducks are “herded” into their shelter and locked in for the night.

Bergen assists Ingrid with milking (some mornings) and helps with feeding. Our goats get a ration of food in the evenings and Bergen does that feeding. We need to keep the goat waterer clean and fill it periodically as well. Mucking out the barn is one of the worst chores and something we do a few times per year.

The pigs are pretty easy. I take them a bucket of feed each morning and check their waterer as well. They are watered from a 220 gallon IBC tote so it is pretty hands off most of the time. We do rotate the pigs and did that in the last few weeks. We’ve built our pig system to make that relatively easy. The hardest part is the pigs of course who are pretty unpredictable! For this first move the pigs were insistent upon going back into their prior section of the paddock. They kept getting shocked and then charging through the fence. UGH! So we had to put back up the physical fence to remind them not to run through the fence. Later in the day they figured it out. They will be in this paddock for about a month and then rotate again.

Weekly chores involve taking out the bags of compost we get from the grocery store and feeding it to the animals. Moving our own garden excess to the animals. Hauling feed out to the barn and then filling the feed barrels for the animals and other tasks as needed. With a busy, young family we have really worked to keep our day to day hands on work to a minimum and it is working well!

Elias caught a trout!

Ingrid out on the river.

Otherwise we have been working hard to enjoy summer! Bergen did summer camp last week and had a blast and Espen just left this morning for the boundary waters with a group. Ingrid and I and the boys kayaked the Kinnickinnic River and had a blast. We’ve spent many days at the lake swimming and fishing and have been blessed to share a friends pool with friends several times. Anikka is loving summer too, from traipsing around the farm to jumping on the trampoline with the sprinkler, it is a great life for a 2 year old. We’ve had good family time too with a family reunion as well as a birthday celebration for my mother.

MARKET GARDENING
Tunnel is Going Up!

The new tunnel is on its way!

The crew came this week to start building our new high tunnel. I can’t tell you how many times I have thanked God for them! Seeing the detailed process involved with building this tunnel and the skill these guys have to do the work is amazing.

We have had some surprises along the way. I didn’t expect to have to do any dirt work or grading for the new tunnel but the guys had a laser level and found that we were pretty out of level on the north side of the tunnel. I knew the tunnel would sit on a slope the long way, but the east to west grade difference was going to cause some problems. So I got out our skid steer and got to work. It ended up being quite a bit of digging to get us squared up and level. At first I was really concerned about how we were going to make it all work when adding the dirt back in but I think all is going to be OK!

The guys worked hard for two days and made great progress, with the rain yesterday and today they are off but they should be able to get close to finishing the structure with one more day of work. Then they will need a really calm day to pull plastic and I am unsure how long that might take. So we will see.

Otherwise the garden business continues to chug along. We have had some slow weeks and are still trying to catch up after our late start to the year but I think we will be just fine financially and hopefully make up some ground in the next few months. The slow days and weeks seem to correlate with the weather. Even though our farmstand is inside with just a few steps from the parking area to the farmstand, rainy days, hot days, cold days, etc seem to deter people from coming. I definitely get it! We are working hard to keep sharing what we do and knowing that God will provide as we need!

In the garden I think we are getting closer to seeing some cucumbers and zucchini. The tomatoes are coming along too but so far nothing has started to color up. The hot days we had last weekend really pushed the summer crops forward. It was amazing to see their growth over just a few hot days. Spinach bolted during those hot days but the lettuces seem to be doing OK. We are hopeful that we will have carrots very soon as well. It is always an adventure riding out the wild swings in weather!

CLOSING
Father’s Day

My kids at Church on Father’s Day!

I was blessed with a wonderful Father’s Day this year. It started with an opportunity to preach at our church. This is something I do 1 or 2 times per year and this time around it was downtown and outdoors. That was something new! I preached on the passages around the Prodigal Son and specifically focused on the father’s role in that story. After church I enjoyed a little downtime before making the long drive to drop Bergen off at camp. We were able to stop at a fun wood fired pizza spot on the way home. Yum! It is such a blessing to be a father, there are pressures and challenges along the way but I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 6/13/2025

Baby goats have arrived! All 4 of our does kidded last week. Baby goats are about as cute as baby things get and we are enjoying this season with them! Weather on the homestead has been a bit of a challenge, very similar to last June we have had a ton of rain with another inch and a half falling last night. It is nice to have a break from watering but of course it means the weeds are awful and we need to watch some of our summer crops as the sunless wet weather is a challenge for them. Hoping for some sun soon! Enjoy this weeks update from the homestead!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Baby Goats, Muddy Pigs, Bees and Fishing

Ingrid with pure white twin #1

Bergen with pure white twin #2

Goat babies always bring joy to us at the farm! They are bouncy and loveable in their early stages and just fun to watch. We ended up with 6 babies. Our two older mothers gave birth to twins and our two young mothers gave birth to singles. The bummer is that we ended up with 5 boys and only 1 girl! We intend to keep the lone baby girl, and two of the mothers. The rest we hope to sell to good homes. Ingrid started milking a couple of days ago. Man that milk is good! So creamy and delicious. All the mamas took well to their babies and all is going well. We had the vet come out and do the disbudding for us. That is the removal of their horns, he gives them a little sedative and it goes pretty quick. We also had one baby with a turned in eye lid. Eventually he would have gone blind in that eye, so the vet ran a couple of stitches in the eye lids and assured us that all would be good!

The pigs are growing nicely! All are looking very similar in size which is great. They are ready to be moved to their next pen, as they have properly torn up the first pen they were in. With all the rain they have lots of mud as well. Moving them should be a pretty easy process and I am sure they will enjoy exploring and finding new stuff to munch on.

As part of a restoration project on the property we had a large hillside cleared of brush this past weekend. The operator did a fantastic job! This hillside was grown in with large ash trees that died. I did the removal of the trees but that left the stumps behind. Over the past two summer brush and nasty weeds have taken over. We have a small grant to restore this section of land into pollinator habitat. Now that we have a blank slate we will seed oats as a cover crop. The oats will help hold the soil in place and hopefully out compete some of the weeds. We will then mow the oats and when they die back we will seed in some good seed in October. Hopefully next spring we get a good flush of grasses and pollinator habitat. It is quite a process!

Cleared hillside ready for seeds!

Homestead garden to the left.

Espen has been working with his bees over the past few weeks. The bees seem happy in their new hives. He added honey supers so they have some room to keep growing and start storing honey. We are already thinking and planning ahead to give our bees a good chance of surviving this winter.

Adding honey boxes to his bee boxes.

We’ve had some good time to enjoy summer over the past couple of weeks. Lots of friend time and cousin time for the kids and some good adventures too. We camped for a couple of days with a bunch of families at our local campground. The kids biked, fished, hiked and slept in their tents. It was a ton of fun! We’ve fished a few other times as well with friends and family and have plans to get on the water more this summer. Elias did a 5 day hike on the Superior Hiking Trail last week and had lots of stories to tell. He joined a group of 11 other boys and 3 leaders from a local church on the trip. Bergen will soon head to camp for a week and then Espen will head off on a Boundary Waters Trip with a local bible camp. I love the adventurous spirit of my kids!

MARKET GARDENING
Lots of Rain! Found a Tunnel Builder

The garden is flush with green!

I am feeling very blessed to have found a builder for our high tunnel. This newsletter actually played a part in the process! A local grower and friend (thank you Dan!) read that we were looking for a builder and reached out with a contact. The builder had space to fit us in and we should have our tunnel completed sometime in July. WOW! It was nice to have that building process taken from my plate with all the other stuff we have going on. It is going to be an excellent added resource for us on the farm.

The rain keeps coming and so do the weeds. So far I THINK we are keeping up but each day we find patches that need weed whipped or pulled. We had something very similar last June and our tomatoes got a little sickly as a result. The moist, sunless weather is just not good for them. Hopefully some days of sunshine are ahead of us, and I am working hard to keep them well ventilated and pruned.

We ordered a new tote of seed starting mix and hope that will make a difference for us on some of the germination struggles we have been having. Time will tell! In the meantime we continue to work to flush out the issue and make some other adjustments, like just planting extra seed to account for the poor germination.

We have some projects to complete that I hope to get to soon. Mainly getting the end walls finished on the tunnel we moved. I have the doors in place and just need to get some plastic up to cover the rest of the end wall. Not having that plastic up likely has affected the growth of some of the plants in the tunnel. Our summer loving crops love the heat!

Otherwise, things seem to be growing well. We have an abundance of greens right now which is good. We are selling a lot, but likely have room to sell more. Just need to decide if that means getting more people to the stand or finding some outside accounts like restaurants. The challenge with committing to a restaurant is then you need to produce! And we need to prove that we can keep this momentum going through the rest of the summer!

CLOSING
Toddler Fun

Hiking at the Falls

Cool rock gifted to us by the neighbors!

With three big kids (15, 13, 11) and now a 2 year old it has been fun to see the differences and similarities 😁. There really are a lot of similarities between toddlers and adolescent teens. We are blessed to mostly see the best of our different aged kids. Anikka is a doll and really sweet but of course she does have her 2 year old moments. Mostly we are just enjoying her sweet disposition, sense of humor and cute mannerisms. She is at the phase now where even her naughty behaviors are sometimes cute, so it has been good for the kids to see how to handle that as an older sibling and someday, a parent.

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 5/28/2025

We are officially on goat baby watch on the homestead. We have 3 goats we know are pregnant and 1 that we are a little less confident in. 🙂 Always a fun season waiting for babies. The weather has been pretty typical for spring, as in super unpredictable and varied. The garden is looking good, though summer crops are ready for it to warm up a bit. All our fruit trees had a great season of blooming and we have lots of little apples and pears developing. It is a busy season for us with some trips and adventures as well as the homestead, summer sports and our farm business. We feel so blessed to be living this life!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Goat Baby Season, Orchard Bloom

Beautiful Trees!

Based on the timing of when our goats were bred we should be seeing babies on the ground any day. None of the does are showing immanent signs but we will keep an eye on them. Goats most commonly give birth to 2 kids. When the kids are born we will let the babies have the early milk and then start milking them. We are pretty comfortable with 2-3 goats so we will likely be selling goats this summer as well. Goat milk is AMAZING and one of my favorite things. It is best enjoyed fresh as it starts to have a more goaty flavor a few days in.

The orchard had a great bloom cycle. Interestingly my 2 heaviest producers last year are talking a year off this year. No flowers and no fruit! That tells me that I need to be thinning my fruit more aggressively. A tree that produces too much fruit has a habit of switching to every other year. We would prefer to have fruit every year so we need to thin the fruit so it isn’t such a drain on resources for the tree. My timing wasn’t great but I did a spraying of kaolin clay for the trees. Due to windy and wet weather I was a little late in my spraying, but I was happy to make it happen eventually. We mix the clay powder with water and spray the trees, visually this makes the trees white. The nasty bugs don’t like the way the clay feels on their body and it deters them. This is an organic method of pest management. I consider myself still in the trial phase of learning if it will work long term!

Elsewhere on the homestead the pigs are doing great! They are almost ready to be moved to a new paddock area as they have worked paddock 1 pretty aggressively. My frustration with them right now is that they insist on creating their toilet in the hub where we feed and water them. I would really prefer they do that out in their paddocks. But haven’t found a good way to make this happen yet! Our homestead garden has been on the back burner this year. The weeds down there are thick so we will have some work to do. Ingrid has some potatoes coming up and we did buy 9 replacement apple trees that we planted. These were to replace trees that were destroyed by a deer last fall and to fill in some other gaps. Ingrid and her mom made rhubarb jam this last weekend. It turned out great and is one of our favorite things. They made enough to share with Ingrid’s brothers family as well.

Ingrid working on rhubarb jam.

MARKET GARDENING
Tunnel Has Arrived, Germination Struggles

The farmstand has been doing really well early this year. We have an abundance of product and our customers have been keeping us busy. Such a blessing! We are now in the part of the season where we just need to keep it going. Where we need to keep constantly looking forward to make sure we are planting the next round of vegetables. Irrigation is key to our success and I have everything now set up on timers so that we don’t have to worry about it so much. This should make a big difference for us in continued success.

Our new high tunnel arrived in a million pieces on Saturday. We have little piles all over the farm with hoops and ground posts and everything else. I am now on a mission to find a crew to build it for me. I have been in contact with the Amish and they are my best hope at this point. As you can imagine communication with them is difficult. 🙂 There are other options out there but they are few and far between. We will keep you posted!

We have had our fair share of germination struggles this year. Mostly it seems in our seed starts. Some stuff is doing really good and other items not so much. Then of course you go looking for who is to blame. Is it us? Is it the soil? Is it the seed? Is it the conditions? We are currently tracking that down. It has been most frustrating so far with our microgreens. We will get it figured out, but in the moment it is a challenge. Germination is so important to what we do, and poor germination leads to wasted time and lost profits.

Otherwise in the garden we are plugging along. My high tunnel tomatoes are starting to take off while the outdoor tomatoes are struggling. Just too cool at night for them to be happy. Other summer crops have also had a slow start, cucumbers, zucchini and eggplant. We need our overnight lows to hang more in the 50s and less in the 30s and 40s for them to be happy. All the spring stuff is very happy and thriving!

CLOSING
Wedding Fun!

All dressed up for a friends wedding!

We were blessed to share a special day with friends recently as they were married. What a gift! It was fun for our kids to see the traditional ceremony and all of the fun that makes weddings a joyful occasion. We ate good food and cake and the kids got to take a turn at some swing dancing, we enjoyed time with friends and seeing our friends on one of the happiest days of their life. The partnership of marriage is such a special part of our time on earth and something I feel so blessed to be a part of with Ingrid.

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 5/14/2025

Ummm… did you read that subject line??? What!?! Yes, it is true. We were VERY short term cow owners. We were more like cow flippers, as opposed to cow owners. 🙂 The decision was a pretty easy one, we LEARNED A LOT. I explain more below. Beyond all that excitement we were thrown into midsummer weather conditions in a hurry and are now hustling to figure out how to irrigate all our baby plants, it’s been a challenge but we are figuring it out. Summer is coming and we have some plans we are excited about. Thanks for following along on our journey!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
We Sold Our Cows, Pigs are Doing Well!

Bye cows!

So when we last spoke, we were the proud new owners of Peaches and Cream, a jersey cow and her steer calf. At the time I wrote that newsletter we were settling in to the routine of milking and figuring everything out. We had some concerns… but were still committed to giving it a go. If you read that newsletter you may have sensed some hesitation. 🙂 Here’s the deal… the cows were just too big for our little farm. We’ve always had a long term plan for bringing a family cow to the farm, it involved creating more pasture, enlarging our barn and creating a system to make it work. When we brought the cow home we believed we could make it work until we got all those steps completed. Nope… that didn’t pan out. The first time I saw that cow poop and pee in our little barn I knew we were in a bit of trouble! HAHA! We also have very little grazing ground at the moment for a cow, and really the only good grazing ground we have isn’t fenced.

We did have the vet come by and he gave us a clean bill of health. He was unconcerned with the mastitis that we thought was an issue… though he did say our hay wasn’t great and that we needed to be feeding her more. I will say the milk was delicious! And I miss it. But the size of the animal and the realization that the environment we could provide for her wasn’t that great made the decision pretty easy.

Now for the good part of the story. We were pretty deeply financially invested into this project. And once we found out the cow was healthy we were anxious to get her sold pretty quick. In a true answer to our prayers, God came through and found us a wonderful family for the cows. 2 hours after posting the cows for sale they were spoken for and 4 hours after posting them they were on their way to their new farm. In that same window of time a woman committed to buying the milking machine. WHAT!?! Maybe God agreed that the time wasn’t right for cows! And here is the kicker, the other big stress last week was my skid steer being down, guess the profession of the new cow owner… yep… he was a diesel mechanic. He had his own small business helping farmers fix their tractors and equipment. He gave me 5 minutes of time and helped me diagnose the problem and give me a plan to get it fixed. What a gift!

As for the cows they are in a wonderful place! The farm they went to has 80 acres, they cut their own hay, they have other cows and the new owner grew on a dairy and showed cows as a kid. A nice happy ending for us, for the cows and for their new family.

In other news the pigs are all settled in and looking good. We have one that acts a little funny at times, I am hoping he snaps out of it. We have been doing some mud baths for them to help them cool off and they have been dealing with some sunburn, it is the downside to all white pigs! Some suggest sunscreen… hmmm… no thanks. But we are trying to give them mud to bathe in and protect themselves.

Ingrid and the kids took on an overdue project of disassembling the wheelchair ramp on our deck. It was here when we moved in and while it has been handy it is also ugly! They’ve done a nice job with it and we are happy with how it all looks. To be honest our whole deck needs a bit of an overhaul. New deck boards would make a big difference but I am hesitant because I have some bigger plans and don’t want to do a bunch of work and pay a bunch of money only to have to redo it later. We will see!

The boys are loving the demolition!

MARKET GARDENING
Open for Business, Irrigation, Tunnel Progress

We got the plastic on the new tunnel, still need to move the end walls!

We officially opened the farmstand for the season last week on Friday. So far it has gone really well. We are easily keeping up with demand and are staying busy, which is good! We’ve been selling all our early season favorites, salad, arugula, turnips, radishes, microgreens, etc. I maybe mentioned it here??? We got a new tool called a Quick Cut Greens Harvester, WHOA is that an amazing tool. We are still getting the hang of it, but soon we will put out some videos of it in action. It makes harvesting greens WAY easier than before. These little efficiencies make a HUGE difference.

I had to delay the delivery of our new tunnel because my skid steer was broken and I needed to have it to unload the trailer. So hopefully that will arrive soon, now that the skid steer is working again. I still have to move the end walls on the previous tunnel, that was also a skid steer project so it was on hold. Hopefully I will get it done in the next few days.

The big work this week has been irrigation as we were thrust into summer in a hurry. Temps in the upper 80s with super dry conditions were really hard on our baby plants. We’ve been doing a lot of manual watering as I order supplies and get things set up. I think we are doing OK! I will get it all figured out just in time for a rainy stretch! The biggest challenge has just been expanding everything as we continue to expand the garden. Automating irrigation has been an eye opening game changer for us, as it takes a lot of the thinking and guess work out of keeping plants healthy.

We will now get into a good rhythm of harvesting Monday and Thursday mornings. Having our hired help around on those two days and then continually seeding, weeding and doing maintence through the summer. Over time we have created systems that make it all doable, but there is always a tough stretch early in the year as we refigure it all out!

Open for business!

Ingrid washing greens.

CLOSING
Summer Projects

Just leaving this photo up for another week! 🙂 

As we hustle through the early garden season and get everything up and running we don’t have a lot of extra time. But we know a little time will present itself this summer and it is good to plan ahead for that time. The big project of course is getting the new high tunnel built. Maybe that will take all summer! I don’t really know. I do know that it is a priority because our business depends on it. The other project that is high on my list is a new structure on our property. It will be 10×20 and hold a sauna, outdoor shower area, and compost toilet space. Why??? It is partially for us and then also potentially for guests to our property. We’ve tossed around the idea of putting in some tent pads, or tiny houses, or domes, or wall tents? Some place where people could come and stay and experience the farm and the gardens and get away from the stresses in their world. Right now we are just taking things one step at a time. In typical Barlow fashion we will take things slow and conservative to make sure it all feels right.

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 5/1/2025

Let’s not skip around the big news of the week. Yes we bought a cow! We weren’t really ready and are now fighting the overwhelm of trying to figure it all out but we’ve always dreamt of a cow and with a friend moving and needing to sell her cow it felt like the right time to try it. We are giving ourselves all the grace of trying this out and making a good honest decision on if a cow is right or wrong for our family. Time will tell! We of course have other things on our plate as well like opening our farmstand this week, bringing our pigs home, building a couple new high tunnels and running a busy family. More updates below!

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
PIGS, COWS, CALVES OH MY!

Pigs making themselves at home!

Pigs have settled in nicely to the farm this year. They are bigger than we are used to, which is just fine with us, as it means a shorter time on our farm! I am thinking pigs will head to the butcher in early September this year vs. late October. We typically like pigs with some color but this years pigs are all white, beggars can’t be choosers and there just aren’t a lot of places to get piglets so we are good with what we get. The challenge with the white pigs is sunburn, yes really! Our pasture has good shade so here is hoping they do OK. With pigs typically weighing 30 lbs or so when they come to our farm we are able to pick them up and move them so we have some flexibility on if we start them in the barn or in their permanent pasture. With them being about 100 lbs this year, that isn’t really an option. So we backed the trailer right up to their permanent pasture and moved them in.

The cow moving was a bit of a rodeo, literally! The first issue was that we blew a tire on the trailer on our way to pick up the cow. Ugh! I knew it was a little low when we left but when we stopped to fill, it 40 minutes down the road in the town where we would pick up the cow, it was completely destroyed and there was no filling it. So then you need to decide if you are willing to load a 1200 lb cow and her 600 lb calf into a trailer with 3 tires or go all the way back to town and get it fixed. I did also check in with the two small town auto repair places available and neither had the tire we needed (it was a very rare tire size, of course). So we headed back to town. I called our friend who was loaning us the trailer and get this…. his father in law not only had the rare tire at his shop, he also had ALL the equipment needed to swap the tire onto the new rim. In 15 minutes he had us back on the road. WOW!

We got to the farm and began the process of loading the cow. The cow is docile and friendly but she didn’t want to make the step into the trailer. We tried to fashion a ramp but it was slippery and dangerous. So I figured out how to raise the tongue of the trailer thereby lowering the back of the trailer. It was still incredibly difficult to get the cow on the trailer. We effectively rolled the cow into the trailer and then she stood up and all was good! The calf was a wild creature and took some serious rodeo work to get a halter on and pull into the trailer. Thankfully unloading was much easier!

The calf in front and the cow behind.

The cows seem to be settling into life on our farm. The cow has mastitis that we are currently figuring out how to treat. Ugh. We’ve been drinking some of the milk and it is great. Because of the mastitis we are milking twice per day. It is ALOT. We are milking with a machine and learning that process. The machine milking is actually really doable though there is some nuance to it. The challenge comes in washing the milk machine! We are working hard to find a system that works for us. The plan now is to have a vet come visit us and help us with the mastitis and give some other suggestions for us on how best to care for the cow. The pigs have also been enjoying the extra milk. If we have to treat the mastitis with antibiotics we will need to take a break from drinking the milk, but the pigs will be fine to drink it.

Ingrid milking.

The cows on pasture.

So that is the cow story! We will see what the rest of the story holds. We will work to build a process that works for us and see how that goes. And honestly if the cow doesn’t work out like we hope, we are fine to move her to another family!

Ingrid and the kids celebrated Earth Day with a clean up of our ditch. I am AMAZED at how much garbage collects. I appreciated their hard work getting things cleaned up and making a small difference for our world.

Garbage clean up… and lots of TICKS.

MARKET GARDENING
High Tunnel Moving and Opening the Stand

End walls are still standing but the hoops have been moved.

We made good progress on our high tunnel projects. If you remember step one is moving our existing tunnel to the west to make room for our new tunnel. With a couple good days of work we got the hoops moved. The process went pretty smooth. The biggest challenge was just getting the tunnel in the correct position so when we install the new tunnel everything is square and lines up. Lots of Pythagorean theorems to figure it out!

Next step is getting plastic and end walls on the moved tunnel to completely clear out the space where the new tunnel will go. It is looking like we will have the new tunnel in the next couple of weeks. We will make a plan for that installation when it arrives. We have enough on our plate right now!

We are in a weird spot with our farmstand right now. We have greens in our high tunnel that are getting too big, but our outdoor greens are still a couple weeks behind. We alerted our customers that we will be opening tomorrow (Friday) but we may not be able to stay open with our regular hours. Because we are down a tunnel we also have tomatoes planted in the same rows as the greens. Which means we are short a few rows in each bed. So all that to say we just don’t have enough greens yet, which is frustrating but out of our hands!

Besides being a little behind everything is looking pretty good in the garden. Indoor tomatoes are doing well and cucumbers and zucchini will soon be in the ground as well. The first 2 months is all about greens. We will supplement with radishes, turnips and soon some carrots as well. We are excited to start feeding all our lovely friends and neighbors!

CLOSING
Easter.

Love this little family!

We had an amazing Easter. We stayed close to home this year and got to celebrate with our church family, our own family at the church I grew up in and had an amazing brunch with our family. In a constant changing world and with the ups and downs of life there is one constant in our life and that is the Gospel and our loving God. Easter is such a blessed time to celebrate our risen Savior, but the truth to peace and contentment in life lies in not just celebrating on Easter but reaffirming our relationship with Jesus every single day. Putting our trust and faith in Him is such a powerful gift and I believe gives us a little taste of our eternity in Heaven here on earth. I hope you had a good Easter!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 4/17/2025

The rollercoaster of spring conditions continues! We’ve had some really beautiful days, some downright awful days and a lot in between. Spring crops in the garden are definitely behind. I surmise it is our cool nights. We need temps to warm just a little to let our soil warm to really get the plants moving. Most of our time recently has been consumed with garden work, shuttling kids around and getting outdoors when we can.

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Waiting for Pigs, Fun with Friends, Turkey Hunt

The boys on the HUNT!

Spring does feel like a time of rebirth and fresh energy. We’ve been a busy hive of activity at the Barlow house. It has been fun stopping in at some local baseball games on nice days and attending the kids track meets and lacrosse practices. While our homestead is a busy place with lots of projects we certainly also want to make sure we leave time for the kids to enjoy their childhood experiences as well.

We are waiting on pigs. They were set to come a couple of weeks ago but with the temperature swings the farmer opted to keep them awhile longer. Any day now we are expecting to get the call to go pick them up and bring them home. We will have 5 pigs again this year. We will share more when they make the trip to our farm for the summer.

One of the things we love about our property is getting to share it with others who don’t have access to land or the outdoors. Espen had some of his friends over a couple of weeks ago for a Saturday full of adventures. They cut trees, built a fire, worked on shelters, shot bb guns and sling shots and just did all the fun stuff middle school boys love. All the boys went home a little dirtier with some good fresh air in their lungs.

This last weekend we were invited to participate in the Youth Mentored Turkey Hunt in Wisconsin by a friend from church. It is a weekend set aside before the season starts to take kids out hunting. I love hunting but have never really turkey hunted so it was a fun experience for me as well! Elias and Espen were both able to hunt and after a 3:30 am wake up call we were in the woods surrounded by gobbles! It was pretty fun. Espen and I had a quiet morning with our turkey hunting friend. We had a hen join us for a while but no toms. As we were heading in for lunch we got news that Elias had shot one! He and his guide had quite the story to share about the mornings hunt and their success. After a little lunch and a break our group spent the rest of the afternoon walking and looking for birds before setting up for a final sit near the roost at sunset. Espen and the other boy hunting with us weren’t able to connect with a turkey but what a fun day outdoors trying to make it happen. The turkey breasts are huge and delicious. We’ve already had a couple of meals with them.

Elias with his turkey! So exciting for him.

As for other homestead projects we’ve been picking away at things like pruning the raspberries, blackberries and grapes. And making plans for the busy summer season. The biggest project as of now will be working on our new high tunnel but I am sure we will make time for some other good projects as well.

MARKET GARDENING
Things are GROWING!

Long, lanky tomatoes ready to go in the ground.

While the temperatures have stayed a little cooler than we would like we are still seeing some good growth in the garden. We probably have 12-15 beds planted at this point with all our staple spring crops. Things like turnips, radishes, mesclun mix, salad mix, head lettuce and bok choy. The first outdoor beds are starting to come up while our high tunnel beds are all sprouted and looking good. With having to move the tunnels this year we are a little strapped on space so we had to leave room for the tomatoes in our spring crops.

Speaking of tomatoes, we need to get them in the ground this week. They are growing like wild and flopping all over the place. This is about the same time we planted them last year. There is definitely some risk with planting this early. We have row cover for everything and will employee some other tactics if necessary to keep them happy over these next few weeks. We will plant the tomatoes nice and deep leaving just the tops exposed. This gives them a really nice start. We will also keep them mostly covered with either shade cloth or fleece row cover as the harden off and get used to the natural sunlight. We’ve had them outside getting a little taste of sun today as well.

We’ve made a few purchases for the farm recently. We ordered a new tool called a Quick Cut Greens Harvester. Feel free to google it if you want. Once it is here we will post some videos of it in action. It is something we’ve considered for a long time. It will make harvesting greens much quicker. Previously we’ve always just used a knife and harvested everything by hand. We also have some new tools for irrigation on the way. One of the challenges in mid summer is keeping our soil and plants cool for optimal growth when it is hot. Hopefully, these investments will make a difference for us this year!

The big high tunnel move is underway. I have started disassembling the current high tunnel, the plastic is off and we are ready to disassemble it. Next step is to lift the hoops off the ground posts and get the ground posts pulled up so that we can get them reinstalled in the new location. No news yet on when our new high tunnel will make it to the farm. We built this years garden plan, with no intention of using the new tunnel this season. But we do need to get the old tunnel set up as plants will need it in just a couple of weeks.

It is a busy time of year but it feels like we are doing OK. Weather is a big factor of course!

CLOSING
Juggling.

Lately we’ve felt like those people in the circus with the spinning plates. Just trying to keep all the plates spinning has been a challenge. Things like homeschooling, raising a toddler, running a farm, managing our garden business, youth sports, church activities, etc. It is busy but oddly everything feels right. We look at all those items and work to figure out priorities and then make it work from there. Our homeschooling recently required a new look at accountability. With Ingrid needing to be gone sometimes in the morning for the garden the kids needed a little more structure to stay on track. So we built a new system, that gives them a tight timeline for each of their tasks and a schedule for the day. A couple of weeks into the process and things seem to be going really well. It is a reminder that sometimes things just need a re-look. Sometimes we get stuck in our own momentum, we feel like we can’t stop and reassess, even if we are going in the wrong direction. Even if you lose a little momentum, often times a fresh look at something will give you a clearer and more successful path for the future.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 4/3/2025

Don’t look now but we are supposedly a month away from opening our farmstand. Looking out at the garden I am skeptical. 🙂 We are for the most part on schedule with our plantings but we’ve had some loss due to the weather and we will just have to see how things far for us in the early part of the year. It is all weather dependent of course! Otherwise we are honestly working hard to soak up the last month of a quieter season before things really ramp up in May. We’ve got some projects planned for the warmer months this year so we’ve been thinking and planning on those as well.

To follow us elsewhere on the internet here are a few links!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Pruning Finished, One More Sap Cook, Saying Goodbye

A nice boil going as we finish sap.

Bergen giving Ani a ride!

With a few nice days I was able to finish up our pruning for the year. It is a big project that only get’s bigger each year as the trees grow! I pruned a little heavier this year than in the past so we will see how the trees respond. A little trial and error! The challenge of course is am a pretty uneducated trialer! 🙂 

We did a final sap collection and cook of the year last week. Some of the trees were still really pumping out sap but most of them had shut down for the year, and frankly we were ready to be done. That brings a good lesson, so often we are drawn to milking things to the last drop or getting the most out of every little thing. It just doesn’t always have to be that way. Sometimes it is OK to just shut it down and say enough is enough. On to the next thing! We cooked for a full day plus a little bit the next morning and ended up with another 3 gallons of syrup. That gives us a total of 6 gallons for the year, which we are pretty happy with! We purchased in a few gallons from some local syrup producers that will supplement our supply. Most of that syrup we are actually planning to bottle and sell at our farmstand. That should be fun and interesting!

Other than those items things have been pretty quiet on the homestead. It is far to wet to be doing any equipment work. We’ve had a couple of shots of really wet snow and some heavy rain, good news as we needed the moisture! It is looking like pigs will be coming earlier than usual this year. We may even pick them up this weekend. We will need to closely monitor the temps as pigs don’t do great with large temperature changes. We may start them in the barn for a couple of weeks before transitioning them outside. We will just have to see!

Last week we traveled off the homestead back to my families homeland of South Dakota. My Grandma passed away at the age of 89. She has been with us in Hudson for the past couple of years, but her lifelong home was in South Dakota. It was such a blessing to see family as we celebrated a great woman and laid her body to rest next to my Grandpa’s who passed away a couple years ago. My grandma is likely the one who influenced my love of farming the most. As a farm girl herself she worked hard to get us up to the old family farm whenever we visited. Those visits planted the seed for me at a young age of what it means to grow food, work with your hands, and feed the people you love. We feel so blessed to live this life now and have grandma to thank for introducing us to farming and teaching us about good work ethic along the way!

My brother and I on the family farm in South Dakota with our Great Grandpa.

MARKET GARDENING
Crop Loss, Planting Continues!

Lots of green!

Well… the temperatures haven’t done us any favors and we’ve lost some of the early crops we planted. We lost a whole bed of spinach. And we have a few other beds that are looking rough. We are working fill in the gaps with fresh seeds and filling in new plants. We are thinking all will be OK, but we need the weather to level off a little bit! While we were traveling last week we had to call a friend to open up our tunnel as it was going to be in the 70s, then just a couple days later it was snowing again with lows in the 20s. All in all it should be OK!

All our plants started indoors are looking good. We’ve got a ton of tomatoes growing really well under lights. Many of them are ready to graduate to a taller shelf as they work to outgrow their space. That is good news! The germination chamber is now full again with tomatoes that we will plant outdoors later in the year.

If the weather cooperates we should be planting greens and other veggies outside soon. For now we are filling up the tunnels as best we can. We need to pretty quickly get the outdoor crops going as the tunnel space needs to transition to tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini at a certain point. It is all a fine balancing act!

We’ve continue to push forward on getting our new high tunnel ordered. We sent the check this week and should have a timeline for delivery soon. In the meantime we are working hard to make a plan to move the current tunnel to it’s new location. As soon as the weather dries out we should be able to get to work on that project. It should be pretty straightforward but will take a few days work to get it done.

CLOSING
Pacifiers.

Our youngest daughter turned 2 recently. In our house that means we say goodbye to the pacifier. Some of you understand what this means. 🙂 Overall, the process went amazingly well. She had a couple rough nights of sleep but has since acclimated and is actually sleeping better without the pacifier. The magic of the pacifier of course is that it is such an effective tool for quieting a baby. That pacifier goes in and suddenly all is quiet and baby is happy! But all things must come to an end and now it is time to learn to self soothe without the pacifier! She has done great.

This transition got me thinking about the “pacifiers” many of us adults use. Maybe a few things come to mind for you… for me what came to mind are things like fast food or eating out, alcohol, television, or of course the most obvious our phones. When you relate our phone usage in this country to a baby and a pacifier you start to see a lot of similarities. What are the things that you are dependent on or use to pacify yourself?

I’ve been on a journey with my phone over the past couple of months. I hit a breaking point and basically went cold turkey on social media. LET ME TELL YOU, it was a gift. I promise you that you can break the habit and life on the other side is better. Just like with the baby sometimes we have to learn to self soothe. A couple of tough days or weeks and then we are on the other side wondering what we were thinking! Give it a try. Let me know what you learn.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 3/20/2025

What an interesting stretch of weather we’ve had so far this spring! It has been as warm as 75 degrees, we’ve had thunderstorms and snow storms, lots of wind, and some chilly, damp days too. As a weather lover, it has been a fun and diverse stretch of weather. We are doing mostly indoor work still. It is muddy, making it difficult to get outdoors and do too much. The problem with this early season of course is that with every move you make when it is wet and muddy you just make a huge mess. Lessons have been learned in the past, so now we wait.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
First Finished Syrup of the Season, Tree Pruning

Espen adding sap to our cooker.

We’ve been tackling some classic spring projects on the homestead. The first big project we completed was cooking our first batch of sap into syrup. I thought we had about 100 gallons of sap to start with but that was clearly off because we ended up with over 3 gallons of syrup. At a ratio of 40 to 1 that puts us at more like 120 gallons of sap to start with. We cooked over two days, consistently stoking the fire and adding sap to our pans. With 4 pans available we’ve got two that work well as kind pre-heating pans and then two that are more directly engaged with the fire that get a good boil going. The first day we started the fire around 9 am and eventually topped off the pans and let the fire go out about 7 pm that night. We started the fire the next day around 7:30 am and finished things up late in the afternoon. It sure seemed like it took a long time! Labor of love! We finished up the syrup with another hour or so of cooking on our gas two burner camp stove on the deck and then got it bottled up. We celebrated that evening with chicken and waffles with fresh, warm maple syrup. Delicious!

We are currently having a really good stretch of weather for collecting sap and are refilling the tote. The first cook was brought about by some serious warm temperatures, we were concerned the sap was going to go bad if we didn’t cook it so we went for it. I for one was ready to be done at the point but the rest of the family disagreed so here we are! We’ve been getting full buckets this week and should have several more days of collecting before we do a FINAL cook for the end of the season.

Me adding sap to our storage tank.

With the nice weather I have been picking away at the big job of pruning our fruit trees. I am trying to take advantage of our nicer days to get out and work on it. I have the trees pruned where I can reach with 2 stints of work but will need to get the ladder to finish up. I am approaching pruning with a new vigor this year after having just too many apples the last couple of years. Two many apples means stressed trees, breaking branches and diseased fruit. My hope is with a more severe pruning this year I can limit some of the fruit and find a nice balance. That is my plan anyway. Pruning is a really interesting task and one that can very easily overwhelm people. When you realize how resilient the trees are it makes the whole process a little easier with less pressure.

MARKET GARDENING
Seeds in the Ground, Tomatoes Started

The first planted beds of the season in our high tunnel.

We have started planting out into our high tunnel and starting many seeds indoors. The high tunnel currently has rows of salad mix, super salad (mesclun), and carrots. Soon we will transplant out spinach, bok choy and head lettuce as well. We are working to keep the soil moist and we should soon see those seeds start popping up outside. It will be an interesting year as we are using the same tunnel for our early crops as we will use for our tomatoes. We are planning to leave a little space down the middle of each bed to slot in the tomatoes when they are ready. For a time they will all need to share the same beds!

Indoor plantings have been really solid so far as well. The germination chamber worked amazing to get our tomatoes started. I am not sure how many we have planted but we have a really good start with them. They spent 3-4 days in the germ chamber before they started to sprout and we got them under lights. We’ve got two big racks with lights sharing space in my office right now, all the little baby plants are looking really good.

CLOSING
Walking…

I have been walking lately. It has become a lovely part of my morning routine. I don’t walk far (1 to 2 miles) but I have been making an effort to get out and do it no matter what. I have seen through raising children and through my own life the benefits of routine. Of predictable things to look forward to each day. Over the years I have often thought about walking, for the exercise and the fresh air. I am enjoying both those elements but also enjoy seeing my neighbors out with their dogs, feeling the sun on my face and having some individualized time for thinking or listening to an audio book or podcast. I hope to continue, though I do know a busier season is dead ahead as the garden season ramps up. I know I enjoy it and look forward to it and so maybe that is a good season that I should continue!

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 3/6/2025

In my last update we were celebrating a fresh coating of snow so we could do some of our favorite winter, outdoor hobbies, like skiing, sledding, etc. Well that snow didn’t last long and it certainly felt like spring had sprung. Until last night! A fresh dumping of 10 inches of heavy, wet snow greeted us this morning. 🙂 March snow is certainly expected here so this is no big shocker! And to look on the bright side a little extra moisture in the ground will be helpful. Looking at the extended forecast this snow should melt off quick as we march towards spring!

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Tapping is Done, Lots of Outdoor Fun!

Some fun while tapping!

Here is our typical set up!

On the homestead we’ve picked up a few projects, had some fun and also continued to take advantage of the restful season. With some great looking sap running weather in the forecast we tapped our maples on February 22. That certainly is early but the weather looked really good. Well…. nothing really happened right away. I would say it was just in the past few days that sap actually started to run. We still haven’t gotten out the bulk tank yet. We’ve had some buckets fill but we are distributing it among other buckets and storing a few buckets in the garage. We will likely need to get the big tank up and running end of this week to collect.

We didn’t have many good days for outdoor winter fun this year. We either had not enough snow or too much cold! The stars aligned for us last weekend and the kids had some friends over for some sledding. It was beautiful and sunny and they had a blast. On a similar note Ingrid and I snuck out for a date night at our local ski hill. It was such a gorgeous night! 50 degrees, no wind, sunshine and actually decent snow on the hill. We skied until our legs gave out and had a great night. That same week we took advantage of our last homeschool ski day of the year and got out with the whole family. Some friends watched out youngest so we could all hit the hill together. Super fun!

This week with the fresh snow we were back in snow removal mode. Unfortunately, the last time it snowed I busted a part of my plow. It should be easy to fix but I don’t have the part ordered yet. So we fired up the skid steer and cleared enough snow to make it work. 🙂 Espen also used out snow blower on some of the smaller areas, which was super helpful. The snow is crazy wet and heavy! It was a good workout. As I woke up and saw the volume of snow that had fallen, I was a bit nervous about our high tunnels! Thankfully all was good, but I did use a big snow rake to remove snow and take the pressure off our metal hoops. Its been a few years since I had to do that!

MARKET GARDENING
Seeding has Started! New High Tunnel Coming!

We officially signed the paperwork for our high tunnel grant this past week. The folks at our local USDA office have been so gracious and kind to help us through the process. We went to their office and got everything signed and ready to go. We are still working to finalize the last steps but it seems like all is going well.

Our plan for the installation of this tunnel has been ever evolving! There are a number of moving parts, but in the end we don’t have any control over the weather. At this point here is the plan. It is devised to take a little pressure off of us early this spring. As soon as we are able we will take down the current tunnel we call the West Tunnel. This tunnel is currently sitting where we plan to put the new tunnel. We will take down the West Tunnel and get it reinstalled in it’s new location. This will give us 16 covered beds for this season, just like we had last season. For planning purposes we know what we will have and we just go with it. If we have time and the weather cooperates we will work to get the new tunnel installed as well. But we aren’t planning to have crops that need to be covered in that space this year. So it gives us the whole season to pick away at it and work on the tunnel. This tunnel will require a little more attention to detail and it will be nice to not be in a rush. Ideally, we will plant our late summer crops in this tunnel with a fresh cover on it and have it take us into the fall and winter.

Ingrid started planting seeds this week! At this point she is only planting onions as they take a bit longer. We have the seed starting shelves moved into my office and will slowly start to fill them up as we go through this next month. We are ready to plant into the ground in the tunnels as well but the soil is still plenty cold! And it would be pretty fruitless at this point. So we will keep checking and pray for sun and warmth and plant when the ground is ready. You just can’t rush some of this stuff!

CLOSING
Set Backs Happen

Set backs happen! It sure felt like an early spring was on the way but a fresh snow storm has set us back. And even when this snow melts it may not be the last of the snow for this year! If you are one of my kids, and let’s be honest me too, you are excited about the snow! Because snow is fun! We could worry and fret about being pushed back or we could celebrate the snow! In life I am trying more and more to celebrate the “snow.” We don’t have control over SO much in our life, why worry when things don’t go our way. Or why worry in advance about things not going our way in the future. In my life, I am working more and more to give these scenarios to God. It is what we are called to do and when I make a concerted effort to do it, life is better.

INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 2/20/2025

We finally got some snow! It is honestly still pretty pathetic but we got enough for the cross country ski trails to groom and so we’ve had some fun skiing the past couple of weeks. Elias (15) after waiting for snow all winter, broke his arm snowboarding on a frozen grassy hill and had his cast put on the day before it snowed. Talk about bad timing! He’s still been able to get out and CC ski with us a little bit. We are a little more active these days on social media. Here are some links in case you care to follow along.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarlowRootsHomestead

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barlowrootsmarket/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barlowroots/

Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Too Cold for Outdoor Work, Indoor Projects!

Soaking up those new sink vibes.

Fun day to ski!

The kitchen sink is in! It is amazing how you age different things become exciting. I can’t count how many times Ingrid has commented on how much she likes the new sink. HAHA! The project went mostly smooth, though one extra trip to Menards was necessary for supplies. The sink is deeper and more heavy duty, we like it a lot. I was sore for 2 days afterwards after being hunched over and laying on my back in all sorts of odd positions. Good bless the plumbers of the world.

We had a great trip skiing last week. We went out to Balsam Branches Ski Area, which is north of us a little bit, and has more snow. It was about 15 degrees, which was a warm up compared to where we were! We all skied classic, with Ingrid toting the baby on her back, she is a more stable skier, otherwise I would gladly take her! It was a beautiful afternoon in the woods and good to get some exercise too! The baby conked out in the backpack and got a good nap while we skied. You can see a little video of the adventure HERE.

Our temperatures here this week have been cold. Like barely above 0 F. However a big warm up is coming this weekend. I was telling Ingrid how amazing it is that the human body can acclimate to temperatures that cold. You know its bad when 5-10 degrees starts to feel OK. 30s and 40s are going to feel like summer! I am thinking on Saturday we will get our maple trees tapped. We have 20 or so trees that we tap. It might take a bit for the sap to start running but last year we missed the early run because we thought it was going to get cold again and it never did. So this year we are just going to put them in. The sap runs when temperatures are below 32 at night and above 32 during the day.

The process is pretty simple. We use a drill and drill a shallow hole into the bark of the tree. We then insert a tap using a rubber mallet, on the end of that tap we use a piece of tubbing that leads into a bucket. On the larger trees we often run multiple taps. We collect the sap from the buckets into a large IBC tote. We usually try to save the sap and then do one big cook over a long weekend. We cook the syrup over a wood fire. I will have more updates as we go through the process!

Last year we were cooking in late Feb.

The sap fire is a good place to read a book!

MARKET GARDENING
Grant Approved! Seed Stall Transformation

The thumbnail for our new YouTube video. :)

GOOD NEWS! We were approved on our grant application for a new high tunnel. I will admit I was definitely working on alternate plans, but we are feeling really blessed. Now of course the work begins. We need to finish up all the paperwork. Then the USDA will forward us a portion of the grant and we will get our tunnel ordered. We are praying for a nice warm spring so we can get our previous tunnel taken down and the new tunnel put up in its place. We will then put up the previous tunnel in a new location. There are a lot of logistics that need to go right for us, and with spring being so unpredictable weather wise we just don’t know how things will end up! So we will hope for the best!

We knocked out another big project this weekend in getting our seed starting room ready for the season. Last fall we purchased an old laboratory refrigerator that we are planning to use as a germination chamber for our seed trays. It will create the perfect conditions for seed germination. If we need it warm in there we will have a little crock pot with water in it and if we need it cooler we will just turn on the fridge. There is of course more nuance to controlling all those variables but that is the basics. It took a little work to get the layout how we want it in the new space but overall we are really happy with how it turned out. It will take a little fine tuning for us to get the new system dialed in but ultimately we are hoping for more consistent germination which will lead to more full beds, more finished crops and more sales! We put together a YouTube video of the transformation you can view it HERE.

FAMILY
Mourning the Past, Looking Forward to the Future

I am back with another post about family. 🙂 As our eldest son has turned 15, I have turned reflective, maybe a little too reflective. 🙂 The thoughts of the years that are behind us are heavy on my mind. Those fun years when all our kids were young and all they wanted is to be with mom and dad and you know, all the rest. Don’t get me wrong we have the best kids. And they still want to be with mom and dad, most of the time. But it is hard not to think of the past and be just a little sad about those years gone by.

Those memories are still so fresh, it feels like I could wake up tomorrow and be right back in it. But time marches on, and you can’t get those years back. I am SO thankful that Ingrid and I chose this lifestyle with me working at home and her home with the kids teaching them. We have taken advantage of every moment and had breakfast, lunch and dinner together as a family nearly everyday. I have ZERO regrets with how we have lived, which brings me comfort.

To get through some of this stuff I try to focus on all we have to look forward to in the future. The fun and adventures yet to be had. We have many conversations with the kids about making the most of this time in their lives. What a beautiful, carefree life they have, no need to rush into the next phase. Enjoy being kids! We also talk about maintaining peace and joy in our house, the hormones are running and there are days where this is a challenge. Sometimes we need to take a deep breath and find some gratitude for all that we have.

For me now I am focusing on gratitude. It is hard to be sad when you are focusing on gratitude. Gratitude for all I have, for all the support I have, for a beautiful wife and 4 beautiful kids. With our youngest who will be 2 in just 2 days I get to do it all over again. WHOA! We are so supremely blessed and looking forward to a very bright future.

CLOSING
Spring is Coming!

Spring is coming! It has been cold here but we’ve got a forecast that is looking very spring like. No matter how dark, snowy or cold the winter has been, spring has always come. The snow will melt, the cold will recede and the trees and flowers will start to bud. It will soon be time to put seeds in the ground! Our winter hibernation from heavy work is about to be behind us as we step into another year running our homestead and market garden. I am working on getting our pigs ordered, the goats are pregnant (hopefully) and I have already placed an order for our meat chickens. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us this year, but before we can start…. we await spring, coming sooner than we thought!