Little Wing Farm

It's been a while, once again, since I've posted anything. However, this past hiatus, in an attempt to keep furthering my agricultural skills, I've been helping out over at Little Wing Farm. For almost a year now, I've been going once a week to do whatever is needed over at this sweet, two-acre farm in Pt. Reyes Station, nestled at the base of Black Mountain.

Little Wing Farm

Since its inception in 2016, the farm has been largely a one-woman show, run by Molly Myerson, but this past year she's been expanding, and it has since evolved into a three-women show (my weekly appearances making it four). I wanted to get some more hands-on experience farming at this scale, support local sustainable agriculture, and spend a year getting a sense of all the different moving parts that go into the annual farm cycle.

It's been wonderful and challenging. As any farmer will tell you, growing food is back breaking, knee joint-crushing work, so it's a little surprising how everyone who does it seems unwilling to stop. But even after hours of bending and crouching, it just feels good to grow food and put in the labor. Every time.

Here's a sampling of what I've been up to over there for the past four seasons.

Spring:

Lots and lots of planting.

Amaranth flowers

Lettuce

Time to go in the ground!

Spacing for flowers

Prepping food for the farm stand, where it's sold down the road on the honor system.

The farm stand

Harvesting the beautiful rainbow chard, fava beans, and lettuce

Pinching off tomato flowers, so they don't fruit too early.

Protecting Dalias from just about everything that loves to eat them.

Making keyhole beds for the flowers

Harvesting edible flowers (Pansies and Calendula) for salad mix

Planting winter squash and beans in the new field

Poking the seeds into the ground, one by one

Summer:

Lunches at the lake

Harvesting the garlic scapes

Harvesting beans and summer squash

The Dragon Tongues

Watching the farm come into full summertime glory!

This is the same Amaranth that I planted in the spring (see above)

 Curing onions in the field

Making bouquets of Coreopsis

 

 

Packing the Padrones

Savoring summer's bounty

 

Picking beans and dodging deer invasions

Ripping up what was left of the watermelons after the raccoons ate them all. All of them.

 Prepping the onions

Rounding up the endless tomatoes

Planting onions

Celosia flowers in full bloom

Fall:

Still working hard to save the Dalias!

Saving seeds

Squash season

Harvesting and prepping the beets!

  

Planting garlic

Winter:

Rainbow season

All the winter greens

  

Cutest cabbages you ever did see

 

 

That winter morning light...

I found this gal hiding in a row.

Beauties

Looking back at all these pictures, it's amazing to see the seasonal ebbs and flows of the various plants, the hills turning from green to brown to green again, the slow and steady progress really adding up. Molly and her crew have thrown so much hard work and love at this growing farm. I'm so glad I've been watching it take shape and helping out along the way!