Farm Sol

45 seconds of night song from our toads n friends. Loop for a calming meditation 🫶

This week at Farm Sol: Spring has been cold, dry, windy, and slow this year, but today felt like a shift toward change! The haskap bushes are blooming and so are the wood anemones under the tree canopy which is finally showing a peek of green on all those bare branches. AND THE TOADS. LAST NIGHT THEY BEGAN SINGING! We found a cuddly pair in our new pond surrounded by a long string of beautiful black eggs. The crew has been prepping ground for planting and moving around tarps, irrigation, sandbags, rocks, seedlings, and tulips. The cats are completely exhausted by all this activity. The sheep would love to head out to pasture ASAP, but the grass isn’t quite ready yet. Fingers crossed for a season of continued momentum and an overload of amphibians.🤘

Our market season starts this Saturday at @duluthfarmersmarket and we have worked our booties off to get so many pretty, early blooms to share just in time for Mother’s Day! Whether mom means your mom-mom, your grand-mom, your auntie-mom, your pet-mom, your matronly friend, or you-yourself-the-mom, we have buckets of bouquets and flower membership cards to gift the whoever-moms of your life. Because we love you, all-the-moms! 💕 New this year, our Flower Membership cards include FIVE bouquets, which can be picked up throughout our season, at our Duluth Farmers Market booth any Saturday, May through August. It’s a gift that keeps saying 🤟 for the whole summer! See ya Saturday!

Early spring on the farm. With nights still in the mid-20s, planting is a bit stalled, but we still have plenty to keep us busy this time of year! Muscles are being rebuilt with the install of our new fruit orchard, field prep, and greenhouse tunnel clean-outs. Cold-hardy starts are in the ground and covered with fabric to help keep them a little warmer. Lambing has wrapped up and pond is filling with snow melt and rain. Garlic is the sprouting and the early season peonies are peeking through the ground. And our next round of tulips are beginning to color up, almost ready for harvest. This time of year holds so much anticipation, so much promise. Time wavering slowly on the cusp of explosive change. It’s still grey and cold, but it’s a beautiful time of year!

We can’t wait for spring! Which is why we babied these extra-early tulips along in our greenhouse so we could all enjoy them together… and OMG they are here! 🌷 Spring is an especially tricky time of year in farming. The weather changes quickly (from 7 to 70 degrees in a week, lol) and over the course of a moment it can feel like we are ahead of ourselves yet so behind at the same time. The whiplash sensation is real! Our favorite thing about flowers is the help root us in the present moment. Embrace and celebrate the wild and wonderful onset of spring with us! We have tulips for pick up at @wildstatecider this Monday (4/20, 4-6pm) or Thursday (4/23, 4-6:30pm) at the farm. Pre-order via our website and let’s get amped for the season ahead!

Well, we learned something new this lambing season called the “Madigan Squeeze.” It’s basically like a power-of-a-hug factory reset button for babies that is so cool, we just had to share. One of these lambs was born right before our 7 degree night last week (Andre) and the other was born breech (Ivan). They were cold stressed and/or birth stressed and had low energy and no drive to suckle. They were both somewhat bonded to their moms but just wouldn’t latch to eat. We syringe fed them (because they also wouldn’t suckle a bottle) for several days to keep them going and were losing hope the’d turn around. Then we learned about the Madigan Squeeze. It’s a special rope tie around the front quarters coupled with pretty tight and consistent pressure held for a 20 minute period. It mimics the pressure of the birth canal and sends the lamb into kind of a trance-like nap. After 2-3 sessions (spread out across a day), both lambs (5 and 4 days old) suddenly “woke up” and instinctively began nursing from their moms! Like they were freakin’ reborn! They no longer need supplemental feeding, are gaining weight, and are energetically jumping and prancing with the other lambs in the flock. A pretty stressful way to learn a new shepherding trick, but a success story for these two bubs and an epic tool for the midwifery toolbox. What a squeeze can do. ♥️

CALLING FORWARD THE KNITTING COMMUNITY! Would you help the babies out? Despite doing our best to keep bedding dry and cozy, the cold, wet weather the past few days has been pretty hard on our new lambs. Lambs born in multiples (twins and especially triplets) often have a lower birth weight and are especially prone to hypothermia and cold-stress related illness when the weather turns harsh. We’re looking for help from our knitter community to make lamb jumpers to help keep babies warm during the unpredictable early-April Minnesota weather. Yes, we’re talking cute little sheep sweaters! 🧶🐑💕 HOW YOU CAN HELP: 1) Do an online search for “lamb jumpers pattern”. You’ll see ideas on Ravelry, a Facebook group called ‘Lamb Jumpers “Helping our Farmers”’, and probably a bunch of other results too. Lots of these are based from pup sweaters modified slightly to fit a lil sheep body. Select a pattern that looks doable! As a size reference, our breed is on the smaller size - babies are born with a chest to hip length of about 12”, back of the neck to hip length of about 9-10”, and a belly circumference of about 17”. All designs welcome, but those that are slightly stretchy (like ribbed patterns) can grow with the lamb so they can enjoy its benefits for a while longer. 2) Knit your custom lamb jumper! Scrap yarn is perfect for this project - it doesn’t have to be particularly beautiful or color coordinated, just warm and washable in case it gets soiled. We know it takes time to knit, so we are not hoping for use this season. Instead, we’re trying to get better prepared for the 2027 spring season! 3) Bring your knit to one of our summer/fall Farmers markets, our summer farm stand, or mail it right to the farm. Our address is listed on our website, which is linked in our bio. Please pin a tag with your name and contact info on the jumper so we can send you a proper thank you and of course some pictures of lambs in your sweaters. 4) If you can share this post with your knitter friends who may have time for an extra project, we’d so appreciate it! THANK YOU from our flock and from the hearts of some pretty exhausted farmers mid-lamb season 🫶

Melt, baby, melt 🤞🤞

Lamb season is in full swing here!

It most likely won’t be the last of it, but enough snow has melted to get the chicks out their cozy winter tunnel and back in the mobile coop. This is the earliest we’ve transitioned out to “pasture” (they’re mostly in a tree line) in the spring. We’ll see how it goes with lots of cold nights yet ahead, but they were starting to drive the pregnant ewes nuts and taking exploration liberties around the garden a little too freelance, so here we are. Chickens love change and new stimulation, so it’s been a happy day for the flock!

Pre-skirting the fleeces before the shearer comes on Friday 😅

HELP US EAT EGGS! We need more breakfast participants for the abundance of peak laying season and before our farmers market season picks up! Did you know eggs are a seasonal food? Our hens naturally slow production during the winter months of fewer daylight hours since they are not housed in forced artificial lighting conditions common to most commercial producers. This gives their bodies a chance to rest, molt a new set of feathers, and start the following year out strong and healthy. 💪🐓 As spring day length is quickly increasing, so are the number of eggs our ladies are putting forward, in sync with the season. During the month of April, we’ll have pre-ordered eggs available to pick up at the @wildstatecider taproom in Duluth and at the farm. Check out our CSA page (https://www.farmsol.online/join) for more info and reserve your dozens. 🥚🥚 #duluthmn #eatlocal #duluthloveslocal