Hello, January! The Latest News from Farm & Larder and Bella Luna Farms

Happy New Year! As 2020 gets underway, we would first like to convey our heartfelt thanks: We have been delivering our weekly boxes filled with fresh, seasonal fare and housemade provisions for six years now! We couldn’t do it without you and truly appreciate your enthusiastic feedback and support. To our new 2020 subscribers, welcome! We cannot wait to share the best of the farm with you in the year ahead.

As we wind down from the busy holiday season, now is a time of planning here at the farm. It has been an especially exciting time for us in that regard as in December we held the first of many workshops in our new Classes on the Farm series here at the farm. Our inaugural class was so joyful: Our guests spent a delightful time crafting a holiday wreath, centerpiece, or sometimes even both, and then we all enjoyed a cozy lunch of hand-crafted soup and toasted ham and four-cheese sandwiches.

Our next class is coming later this week, Galettes Galore on January 11th! In this workshop, we will master the art of crafting the perfect galette dough and then transforming it into both savory and dessert galettes. We will share the fruits of our labor together over a light meal, and each student will leave with a galette of their own creation. We hope you’ll consider joining us either on Saturday, or at another upcoming class!

In other event news, the fourth installment of our Scampagnata dining series is also coming up. Join us on February 9th as chef Shane Ryan of Upper Left Catering takes us on a seasonal culinary journey featuring the best the Northwest has to offer. Proceeds from winter lunch benefit Slow Food Seattle; tickets are on sale now!

Elsewhere around the farm, we have finished putting the gardens to bed until spring; though we are still pulling up the last few carrots and parsnips from the soil. The weather has been mild enough that we have even spotted a few confused blooming roses, and one last pear growing on an orchard tree! Though the goats are a bit less energetic this time of year (it’s not uncommon to find them taking a midday snooze in the barns), our hens are quite busy. We are finding quite a few smaller pullet eggs as the younger hens get the hang of laying; fun fact: younger hens are much more likely to produce double yolks! In the pullet eggs we’ve collected so far, we’ve already found two of these doubled-up delights!

Our gardening company, Parterre, is busy each day in our clients’ gardens as well, with wintertime tasks such as pruning, mulching and planning new designs for spring. The snowdrops and narcissus that we planted in the fall are beginning to peek their heads out of the soil, and the hellebore and witch hazel are also beginning to bloom, adding cheer to the otherwise grey winter palette.

We hope your New Year is off to a terrific start—here’s to good growing and great eating in 2020!