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!

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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!

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.