Greentree Naturals Newsletter Winter 2025

Happy New Year! We hope you are warm and healthy, wherever you are. We are returning to work after a much-appreciated holiday break and planning for another year of growing nutritious healthy food for our local community, on-farm workshops, trialing new varieties of heirloom seeds and more!

I know that I have been pretty negligent in keeping up with newsletters and updates for our website and I apologize for that.  "Update website and write newsletter" has been on my to-do list for months. I appreciate your interest in what we do and your loyalty over the years. It's hard to believe that we started farming here on this land almost 38 years ago. This has been an incredible journey. We are grateful that we get to do this together and share our passion for living simply, growing good food and mentoring the next generation of small acreage farmers and gardeners! Thom and I are well-matched partners and one hell-of-a husband & wife team for all that we accomplish here on the farm together.

We call this "retirement" farming, which doesn't mean we have stopped working. We have certainly shifted gears into a slow and steady pace. We continue growing an acre garden and selling at our Farm Stand one day a week during the peak of the harvest season. We are only open for 2 ½ hours and that is as much as either of us want to be dealing with the public. We are grateful for our faithful customers who are here every week and show up rain or shine to buy their weekly veggies!

We have walkie-talkies that we use when the Farm Stand is open (cell phones don't work here!). When I run out of something that a customer really wants, like sweet corn, I will call on the radio "calling farmer Thom…" and he brings the just harvested, sweetest corn they've ever tasted or whatever is easy to harvest like cabbage, cucumbers or kale. We love hearing from customers that our vegetables are the best they've ever had. Farm fresh is always full of flavor and wherever you are, if you can support a local small acreage farmer or market grower, do it! Know your farmer, know your food!

I recently completed a two-year project with Oregon State University as a small farm consultant.  I had the opportunity to work with some amazing University Extension Educators in Oregon who impact small farms in their communities. I believe that my involvement in this program has had a positive impact that encourages greater participation from farmers. I look forward to the next educational adventure!

We had a film crew here on the farm to document my mentorship arrangement with Oregon Tilth and the Transition to Organic Partnership Program. I have been mentoring two local farmers who are transitioning to organic certification. We were featured with several other farms highlighting 3-minute clips of each location. They filmed for 3 hours to get a finished product! Here is a link to the 3-minute film clip they came up with:  NW TOPP: Mentoring the Future of Organic from Northern Idaho

I continue to teach occasional online workshops for the University of Idaho and have a couple of winter projects lined up. The 7-week organic gardening workshop series was sold out last summer and we already have folks signing up for 2025. Teaching others how to grow an organic garden is a gratifying experience and I will continue for as long as I can. One of my goals is to empower the next generation of farmers and gardeners to be good land stewards. I am hopeful that teaching others to grow organically encourages practicing conservation and stewardship. I believe we can all make a difference one garden at a time!

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."
– Jane Goodall

So many people are relocating to North Idaho right now; the growth and increase in population is a bit overwhelming. Our once quiet, quant little town of Sandpoint is booming. When we moved here, there was one stop light, one grocery store, and a lot more peaceful. Many people moving here want to become "homesteaders" with the idea that they will grow all their food and live off the land. I have conducted numerous land consultations, assisting individuals in identifying goals for a more sustainable lifestyle, while gently providing the reality check that growing food is far more complex than simply planting seeds in the ground.

The Organic Farming Research Foundation interviewed me last spring and wrote a story about our on- farm research projects over the years. I feel most grateful for the opportunity to share our stories with you! Here is a link: A Commitment to Community and the Land

We will be conducting some seed trials this summer for Snake River Seed Cooperative which should prove to be an interesting endeavor. We will be growing seeds that originated in the high mountain villages in Syria, Turkey, and Afghanistan to assess the variability of growth habits, flavor, and production. The seed was collected for the USDA in 1941 and 1945 led by an American botanist.

We have scheduled a Field Day here on the farm on August 10, 2025 that will be paired with a Seed School on August 11 & 12 at the UI Sandpoint Organic Agriculture Center. We are, partnering with Casey O'Leary (the founder of Snake River Seeds) and she will be leading this event. I'm excited to have this opportunity to share our experience with seed saving and learn at the same time! Casey is a wealth of information and enthusiastic about seed saving!  I will post details on Facebook when we get closer to the date of the event. Event and class size will be limited, so if you are interested, it is good to plan ahead and save the date on your calendar and let me know!