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!

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Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
Summer Transitioning to Fall

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. 🙂 

MARKET GARDENING
Harvesting and Selling as Fast as We Can

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

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.

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.