Farm stands may be synonymous with summer harvests, but the groundwork for those crops is laid months earlier. At three Monadnock region farms — Rosaly’s Garden & Farmstand in Peterborough, Ledge Top Farm in Lyndeborough and Temple-Wilton Community Farm in Wilton — winter brings crop planning, greenhouse growing and food storage that help sustain farm operations year-round.
At Rosaly’s Garden in Peterborough, winter is anything but dormant.
“We focus a lot on planning during the winter months,” said Lara Matthias, the farm’s manager. “Our first day is usually Mother’s Day, but we’re developing ways to have offerings year-round.”
Winter is time for planning and off-season tasks. For example, maintaining soil integrity requires planning crop rotations. “Some crops need rotation every year while others need to rotate every three years,” Matthias said.
Winter at the farm stand also means managing online pre-orders and fertilizer calculations.
“January is rather early for most tasks, but we are experimenting with overwintering,” she added.
The farm has seven greenhouses, three of which house overwintered crops. “Some of what we’re overwintering includes flowers, cilantro, carrots, radishes, and beets. We’ve had some decent success, though the vole problem has been persistent,” Matthias said of the little mammals that gorge themselves on overwintered sprouts.
The farm first piloted overwintering in the fall of 2024.
“We planted some flowers, giving them time to develop solid roots before going dormant in the winter. By doing so, we’ve been able to get them earlier in the season,” Matthias said. With that pilot’s success, the farm has since overwintered roots and vegetables.
While she hopes overwintering yields produce for Mother’s Day weekend, greenhouse-grown tulips were ready by February.
“Bedding plants are always our primary seller at the beginning of the season, but if all goes well, our overwintered vegetables will provide a greater variety for customers to choose from,” Matthias said.
Another key component for planning is seeding and transplanting, which occur in March.
April is spent setting up less resilient produce, including tomatoes, in the greenhouses. Matthias said two plastic tomato tunnels are ready by the opening week, producing a mix of red-slicing tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.
Matthias said microgreen subscriptions are also important. “Microgreens are essentially sprouts. They include produce like radishes and kohlrabi,” she said. As part of the farm’s Community Supported Agriculture program, customers who pay for the subscription receive a quarter bag of sprouts each week throughout the year.
The farm staff of the three-acre Ledge Top Farm in Lyndeborough spends October gleaning and laying the groundwork for the winter.
“We seed our winter-hardy crops in October,” said Drew Whitney, the farm manager. “Overwintering is imperative for an early start to the season.”
Arugula, head lettuce, carrots, radishes and spinach get seeded in the fall and are harvested in January. The vegetables are supplied to locals through their CSA program.
“The farm has two functioning greenhouses for overwintering,” Whitney said. While most overwintered plants are grown in the greenhouses, Whitney noted a row of carrots is planted outside in late fall. He said layers of snow help keep the carrots insulated from the freezing outside. Though they go dormant in freezing temperatures, as the ground thaws, they continue growing and are ready by early spring.
“By planning ahead, we’re able to have produce ready early in the season while our mid-season crops are still young,” he said.
As a biodynamic farm, Temple-Wilton Community Farm in Wilton handles winter differently, although it also has a CSA program.
Farmer Corey Gardner said a German named Trauger Groh founded the farm and, in 1986, he established one of the first CSA farms in the country.
According to North Carolina State University, biodynamic farming was first started by Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s. That type of farming follows a sustainable, holistic approach using only organic, locally-sourced materials for fertilizing and soil conditioning. Biodynamic farms are closed, diversified ecosystems and base activities on lunar cycles.
“We focus on cultivating and selling vegetables between May and October,” Gardner said. “We don’t overwinter, but we do winter food storage.”
Gardner said the farm has parsnips, carrots, radishes, beets and potatoes, among other hardy vegetables stored in boxes. The vegetables are stocked for CSA members in the farm store throughout the winter.
“Unique vegetables we sell in the winter are Belgian endives,” Gardner said. “The endives are planted and then grow all summer and fall. They’re then uprooted and put in storage.”
After two weeks, Gardner replants the endives in a dark root cellar.
“Chlorophyll production makes the endives bitter,” he said. “By growing them in a dark cellar, sunlight can’t reach them, preventing them from creating chlorophyll for photosynthesis.”
He said the end product is a blanched leafy vegetable that makes a great salad. “We harvest the leafy bud on top and feed the nutritious carrot-shaped root to the cows.”
“During the winter, we largely focus on crop planning and rotation. We look through records and reflect on the past year’s failures and successes, then figure out where it is we want to grow crops in the coming year,” he said. “Then we start seeding in early March.”
Temple-Wilton Farm also maintains a year-round dairy operation, supporting its own creamery with milk from 15 to 20 grass-fed cows. He said the farm earns a significant portion of its winter income selling dairy products.
“We sell milk and a variety of cheese and yogurt. Because we emphasize sustainability, the only packaging we use is for the cheese to be sold in stores. Our milk and yogurt is sold in refillable containers,” he said. The cheese is stored in the cheese cave where it will age for two weeks to two years, depending on the variety.
For community farms like Rosaly’s, Ledge Top and Temple-Wilton Community Farm, colder months don’t stop the work — they simply shift the focus from harvest to preparation.