BY DANA DUGAN
The Wood River Valley is home to a handful of small farms that provide produce throughout the year––for their owners, at the farmers’ markets, through shops that sell local food, and through subscription. This is new, and not all that easy. Greenhouses help. It was only a few years ago that residents of the Valley were dependent upon shipped-in, non-local produce to make it through the winter and into the next growing season.
The driving force behind the change came about by the work of folks who were determined to help make the Wood River Valley food secure and sustainable. The Sawtooth Botanical Garden gave people a place to grow and a Community-Supported Agriculture program. That led the way to Idaho’s Bounty, which, through commerce, opened the way for more organic farming and encouraged farmers to build more greenhouses.
NourishMe in Ketchum established a shop and kitchen where local food was available on a daily basis, creating relationships with organic farmers in the region; the Wood River Sustainability Center opened in Hailey, supplying more local foods and hosting farm-to-table dinners; and the Local Food Alliance upped the bar by hosting events and joining forces with the Sun Valley Institute for Resilience. The Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance encourages saving and sharing organic seeds, thus maintaining native produce that thrives in the natural climate of south-central Idaho.
All these efforts have paid off for consumers and farmers alike. With demand comes supply. But the trick still remains for those in isolated areas like the Wood River Valley. The weather is harsh for growers––dry, cold and short. There is no grain mill, abattoir or commercial kitchen available for small producers, or cold-storage facilities for things like potatoes, root vegetables and apples.
“Conventional wisdom says growing should slow down in the Valley, but in tourist season the demand for quality produce continues, which is good incentive to continue to grow throughout the winter,” said Amy Marvin, business manager at Kraay’s Market Garden in south Bellevue.
But a hardy group of farmers is making sure that even under those circumstances, food is available.
Kraay’s Market Garden, owned by Sherry and Larry Kraay, in the triangle south of Bellevue is one such farm.
A bit like Idaho’s Bounty when it started more than a decade ago, Kraay’s Market Garden emails a list of available produce and foods to its customers, who then place an order for home delivery once a week.
But getting through the winter without starving is the trick for all northern-climate farmers and home gardeners. By February, our saved-up vegetables, like onions, garlic, squash and potatoes, start running very thin.
“First things first, we have to overwinter crops,” Marvin said. “We put garlic in a long outdoor bed, and mulch it with straw. We plant native winter cover crops such hairy vetch, winter peas and rye. Some are frost hardy, and some will die off and act as a green compost to build nutrients in the soil.”
Plants such as buckwheat and rye act as a kind of green manure. Others, such a legumes, will enrich the soil in the spring when tilled under. Legumes have nitrogen-fixing nodules, while red clover breaks down readily in the soil in the springtime.
Buckwheat is excellent as a cover crop since it feeds the bees, holds the soil in place, suppresses weed growth and, like red clover, breaks down readily after a frost.
Larry Kraay is humble about his successes in the past couple of years, but says he has a ways to go. Just a few years ago his entire 17 acres had been used as a horse eventing and training operation. Today, a large area is given over to long outdoor rows, one of which is filled with garlic mulched with straw to winter over, and three long greenhouses. In the cold house are the cover crops; in the cool, there is a mix of greens, lemongrass, herbs, ginger, beets, radishes and turnips; and in the hot house, where the temperature is kept steady for optimal growing, green beans, tomatoes and cucumbers. Its rich, green, loamy milieu delights senses that have become used to the dead and dry November environment.
The Kraays, who are vegan, are very particular about their soil. Their other business, Dry Nest, is an organic animal bedding concern and in this case one venture provides for the other. By mixing fine pine shavings with horse manure and produce waste, they create nutrient-rich compost for their beds.
Those pine shavings can also help chickens get through the winter in some degree of comfort and warmth.
Jan Jorgensen, who raises chickens on her ranch south of Bellevue, is caulking and repairing her chicken coop to eliminate possible drafts, and laying down pine shavings in the coop.
“Chickens can handle the cold pretty well––down to 10 or 20 degrees––but they don’t like to go out in the snow,” Jorgensen said. “It freezes their feet. I put straw out in their run and old tires for them get up out of the snow.”
Jorgensen also has a heat bulb over the water bowl that comes on when the temperature drops below 35 degrees.
“They’re funny,” she said. “Inside the coop, they huddle on the roost together. They fluff up their feathers, which traps warm air.”
On another farm south of Bellevue, Kathy Noble tends a flock of over 300 chickens, and supplies eggs to stores in the area in distinctive pink boxes.
“In the winter, they eat more corn for energy and heat producing,” Noble said. “The hardest part is keeping the water from freezing. Otherwise, they’re pretty hardy, considering they’re originally a tropical animal.”
Since hens lay less in the winter, an extra hour or so of light can be added by using hen lights on a timer, Noble said.
As with the Kraays and other market farmers, Noble recognizes the supply-and-demand changes during slack, a fact of living in a resort area such as Sun Valley. In November, she starts increasing the lights to boost production through the season.
At the end of the day, farmers, who continue to supply us with local food, rely on old-fashioned know-how and good natural products to get through the winter, and maintain a flow of local food.
