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!

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Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Finishing 2025 Strong

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!

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.