the Crossroads Companion

Creating a Rainforest in Our Guts The other day I listened to a Radiolab podcast about our guts. And well I just can’t stop thinking about what I learned. In our bodies we contain an average 3 lbs worth of microorganisms- mostly bacterias [...]

For weeks now I’ve been bracing for the cold weather… that hasn’t come. These falls days are absolutely divine. I often tell my crews that the sunny afternoons in the fall are our gift for working through the hot days. They are [...]

Each fall the transition is a little different from the busy summer season into the more mellow fall season. Most years there is a steady transition beginning in October of full time workers who move on to other jobs. For a month of so [...]

Two Part Dispatch: 1) Sorry. Not Sorry. 2) A Big Thank You Sorry. Not Sorry.  On a hike this weekend I ate a simple salad my partner whipped up for lunch. It had chopped fresh parsley, green bell peppers, shaved fennel, toasted walnuts, and [...]

Two Part Dispatch: 1)The Farm to Foodbank Program 2) A Big Thank You The Farm To Foodbank Program Call to Action: Encourage Your Dane County Supervisor to Support this Awesome Program! Covid-19 was the impetus for a really cool program in Dane [...]

Last season we acquired a refrigerated truck trailer that we converted to a walk-in cooler. We call it cooler W, as it sits on the west side on our packshed. (creative, right?) We use it as a warm cooler during tomato time, and have increasingly [...]

The concept of a life sacrificed to sustain and nourish the bodies of my family has always felt deeply spiritual to me.  Whether it’s the vegetables we take from the stem or the meat we eat, our bodies are sustained by something once [...]

Tomorrow night is our annual crew meal at Sardine Restaurant in Madison. We will all get dressed up and the farm will treat the crew to a fancy, locally sourced meal as we celebrate the season together. At the meal, I plan to share a little bit [...]

I know it’s gradual. Just like I know my kids growing up is gradual. Yet sometimes I feel struck by a change that feels sudden. This time of year is the going back to school time, the yellow time of goldenrod and school buses and [...]

This season we have been staffed pretty well and generally able to stay above water – aka not drown in food we can’t harvest. But potatoes, oh potatoes. These have been the major crop that we have struggled to have enough hands to [...]

The kids go back to school Thursday. Every year it seems the summer is spread out before us, and then, zip! it’s back to school already. You might think that the kids going back to school wouldn’t impact Michael and I too much since [...]

A few months back, a professor reached out asking if they could bring their class to our farm for a visit. The class was a group of divinity students from University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. This request confused me somewhat, because I [...]

This weekend we butchered the 39 chickens I raise to nourish our family. It is always a difficult, spiritual experience for me.  I raise these birds from chick to slaughter. I do this because my kids LOVE chicken. They were always requesting it, [...]

Homemade Croutons are Where It’s At Yep. That’s right. I’m going to write a whole newsletter about making croutons. Store bought croutons are one thing. They are crunchy and salty, spicy and hard. This can be yummy. Warm, [...]

The First Sweet Corn!  This morning was the first harvest of sweet corn! Our sweet corn successions are located at the K property this season. So most Tuesday  mornings now for the next 8 weeks, the crew will start over there. Myself or another [...]

Greetings from Minnesota Greetings from family camp! (I’m writing this message on a rainy Friday afternoon, because once I’m actually up at family camp, there is no internet access!). This week the Noltnerwyss kids are with me up in [...]

Playing in the Fields This morning I am forcing myself to do work in the office.  It’s funny, I spend the whole winter doing office work – so many hours! But try and get me to spend more than two hours in the office during the high [...]

A Magical Place To Grow Up Middle school is tough. No matter where you grow up. The pressure to fit into the norm is intense. In Mt. Horeb, the popular kids don’t come from farming families. In general, they come from hetero-normative [...]

An Ice-cream Maker I found myself in a conversation the other day, musing about ways to raise the quality of life at the farm house. Build a back porch? Maintain a cozy fire pit for friends to come enjoy? A swimming pool so kids would want to [...]

Happy Solstice! Today marks a special day – the most day light we will experience all year long. It sneaks up on me every time, and I find it so wild to think about how the days only get shorter from here on out. I wonder if any of you [...]

My youngest daughter Juna wrote me some poems. (Love love that in general.) Many of the poems are like what you’d expect from a 7 year-old writing poems. Except one. I am in love with this poem – the home cook in me finds it [...]

Welcome! Happy season ’22! It was a long, cold, late spring. Sometimes I wondered if the sun, heat, or food would arrive. We kept seeding and planting, trusting in the cycle of things.  Now here we are, and the food is harvested and ready [...]

Last Day Joys! Remember when you were a student and all the excitement you felt on the last day of school? That’s me today! Here I am putting together the last communication of the season – curating the last set of recipes, writing [...]

Moving Through the Inventory A question we get a lot is, “What are you doing this time of year?” Quick answer: we are steadily moving through our inventory of vegetables, trying to sell items with shorter storage lives. In mid [...]

Waiting for Snow Did you know there are still leeks, brussels sprouts, and kale out in fields that can be harvested?! On the one hand, I’m so excited about that fact. Local greens and delicious sprouts still available in December! Amazing! [...]

Hopes for a Fuller Story As a grower and lover of food, I’m all about any holiday that encourages people to sit down and share a meal together in gratitude. I’m super excited to host this year – cooking chickens I raised, and [...]

Risk We are currently in the midst of our renewal drive, asking members of our summer veggie share to sign up for the upcoming 2022 season. It’s not going super well compared to past years. We took a huge risk as a small business and [...]

Buoyancy In a normal season, by late October it starts getting cold. Frosts don’t burn off until mid morning. Most of the crops are out of the ground. Work moves inside to the shed and the office. A coziness settles in.  We are still [...]

Meaning and Connection The other week I sat around a fire with some of my closest friends. One is a teacher. One is a professor. Another a doctor. Another a therapist. I felt awed by their intelligence. Humbled by how articulate they are. The [...]

While we are all still very much in harvest mode at the farm, we find ourselves here at the last week of the summer season. It’s hard not to reflect on season #17. Of all the seasons Mike and I have operated this farm together, I am most [...]