A dozen eggs bearing the Secret Spring Farm label.

We're excited to announce that the venerable Bay Hay & Feed is now stocking Secret Spring Farm eggs. Our colorful dozens are delivered every Wednesday. Bay Hay has been a staple of the Bainbridge farm community for more than 75 years, and they sell produce from a bevy of other local farms.

While making our first delivery, we encountered a woman shopping for eggs. She'd picked out a dozen before we arrived, but inquired whether we had any of the green or blue Ameraucana eggs. Her eyes lit up when we answered, and she let us know that she'd traveled all the way from Silverdale for the special eggs. As our flock gradually grows and becomes more diverse, we're delighted that we have such a wonderful way of getting our eggs into kitchens and frying pans all over Kitsap County.

A few dozen eggs ready for retail.

A low-reaching branch of the King tree in February.

Maia contributed this paean to apples throughout the year:

January apples

Beautiful brown orbs, speckled white and blue

Ew! I put my thumb in it.

April apples

White petals; gentle carpets like snow on the new green grass

Bzzzz! Watch the bees.

August apples

Green gold red & yellow hanging low on boughs of trees

Crunch! Sweet goodness dribbles down my chin.

September apples

Gold red hanging low for birds to peck, for cider to drink, for pies

Yum! Hot out of the oven apple pie.

October apples

Gold & red cubed into the chopper & pressed into juice

Oh! Remember January apples & press more now, can more, sauce more, hard cider
Yum.

To accompany her poem, I put together the following pictorial:

Umber watches Poetica and Ice roll in their winter enclosure. (This photo and rooster below by Steve Ritchie).

Winter crept over the land ever-so-gingerly, taking tiny bites out of autumn's halo. The strawberries stopped fruiting in mid-November, complaining that the soil was too cool and the sun too scarce. The leaves finished their annual evacuation. Apples ripened and fell, ripened and fell, until at some point in December the last of the apples were collected — even now we have a couple boxes of Winesaps and Roxbury Russets, waiting to be baked.

Rooster at the water bucket.

Snow and ice didn't claim our farm this year. In fact, the hose only froze during a brief early-January cold snap. Rain has been our constant companion, and the farm has enjoyed a steady sogginess that reached an early climax Mid-November with streams of water forming a swift-flowing confluence in our basement. The whole farm became, for a few days, as soggy as the alder bog. We always wear boots, but we wore them especially on those days.

Winter is the storyteller's season. This property, of course, has stories aplenty about the people who lived here — my great-grandparents, my great-uncle, and the caretakers who lived here before us all left relics of their time here. We've been telling each other stories about what marks we want to leave on the land; beyond just punctuating the legacies left to us, creating our own story here — moving from past tense to future tense.

Evenings have found us gathered around the fire planning a market garden. Employing sustainable intensive agriculture — using our own horse and chicken manure as soil amendments — we intend to overflow the farm with produce we've seeded and nurtured to perfection. The Bainbridge Island Farmers' Market is a wonderful venue that supports local farmers, and we're hoping to bring an array of vegetables and fruits as well as eggs from our free-roaming flock.

Pruning the Yellow Gravenstein.

And of course, winter is a prime time to finish all the last year's orphan projects — patching damaged spots in the drywall, pulling ivy, uncovering overgrown corners, raking leaves that escaped notice, and re-using old lumber as raised garden beds.

One of February's big-ticket projects has been pruning the old apple trees. This is our second year pruning these trees, and they continue to be a work in progress. The trees haven't been properly cared-for in a number of decades, and they bring me particularly close to the story of my great-grandparents — the trees' last dedicated caregivers. We stay busy in their footprints.

Although we completed it in midsummer, the story of the woodshed did not seem complete until we were using its stacked contents to keep warm for the winter. That time has arrived, and here's a pictorial of the woodshed. The first step was removal of a locust tree growing right in the way (and shading one of our apple trees). Once we'd cut it into firewood, we could start on the framework. The supporting poles are old telephone poles that were laying around the property (I chainsawed them to length), while the roof and sides are aluminum garage door panels. Instead of a floor, we used 4"x6" lumber for skids.