Ed Lowe Photography
Spring has come to Full Bloom Farm
Well that was fast! April has come with some surprisingly clear and very warm weather and the recent rains are a welcome soak for the gardens. The island is beaming deep verdant green and is perfumed with sweet spring blooms, musky loam, and salty mist. The last two months we’ve been busy seeding, planting out starts, clearing new beds, and getting ready for the season ahead. We have a bumper crop of succulent kale raab, the first of the cauliflower and radishes are packed into the stand fridge, big asparagus spears are emerging now, and May will yield fresh butter lettuces, more radishes, arugula, spinach, and mizuna followed by early beets, peas, carrots, and other long-awaited Spring delicacies. Another bountiful time of year at Full Bloom Farm!
The Farm Stand Has a New Look + More Space!
Late last year we opened the farm stand back up at the barn and filled up our small “grab & go” merchandiser refrigerator. For the last few months we’ve been expanding the offerings on the Grab & Go stand for those that prefer to shop there. We’ve just started redesigning the farm stand to accommodate better in-person shopping and more space. This included adding a large three door fridge and opening up the entire porch area for the stand. It affords a clear view of the flower garden and lower orchard as well as the ability to watch us prepping produce at the wash station. The online stand will continue to be available for those who enjoy the added convenience or just want to order in advance to ensure product availability. We’re not done with the updates, so keep an eye out and stop in to check the progress and new products that are being added all the time.
Mother’s Day Bouquets, Bonbons, and Eggs!
We are offering spring bouquets for Mother’s Day from the farm as well as chocolate truffles from Forté Chocolates and sea salt honey caramels from San Juan Island Sea Salt.
Forté Chocolates is a woman-owned and world-renowned chocolate brand based out of Mt. Vernon. They are considered one of the top 10 chocolate brands in the nation and their master chocolatier, Karen Neugebauer is the highest awarded chocolatier in America. We’ve put together a truffle box that features 5 unique truffle flavors including Pecan Turtle, Lemon & Pepper White Chocolate, Cherry Almond, Raspberry Fig, and Peanut Butter. These are very special truffles and they are absolutely delicious. We have a very limited number of these 5 piece boxes available so reserve now!
If caramel is more your thing, then you can choose from three different types of very tasty sea salt honey caramels from San Juan Island Sea Salt. While many caramels are made with corn syrup, San Juan Island Sea Salt makes theirs with local honey! They are perfectly balanced salty-sweet-buttery and they use their mineral rich sea salt. Each caramel is artfully crafted by hand by this family-run business! All ingredients are organic and they come in Honey, Cappuccino, or Chocolate flavors. (Photos of caramel above provided by San Juan Island Sea Salt)
We’ll also be offering a special Mother’s Day full dozen eggs in a pretty purple carton wrapped with a ribbon and a chive blossom.
The spring bouquets will come wrapped in white paper and candies come in their box with a ribbon. Both can feature a note card with a handwritten message of your choosing.
Order chocolates or caramel now for pick up at the stand anytime between this Saturday and the day of Mother’s day and pre-order bouquets and eggs for pick up or delivery on Mother’s Day. We’re offering a special early delivery time on Mother’s Day between 10:00am-12:00pm.
Flowers Galore!
Peony Subscriptions
This year we are offering a weekly peony subscription again starting in late-May. The subscription consists of a bouquets featuring 6 peonies and lasts for 6 weeks. If you are interested, don’t delay in reserving your subscription now as we have a very limited number and they sell out very quickly. Reserve here!
Seasonal Bouquets
Beyond peony subscriptions we’ll be making mixed bouquets again this year until late October. The first bouquets of the season will feature spring blooms like tulips, peonies, Lady’s Mantle, sweet peas, lilac, foxglove, rhododendrons, and ferns. Then we’ll move into summer arrangements with penstemon, dahlias, scabiosa, gomphrena, salpiglossis, honeysuckle, catmint, zinnias, lavatera, cosmos, hydrangea, bee balm, bachelor buttons, sunflowers, and salvias. Autumnal-inspired bouquets will follow with statice, black-eyed Susans, echinacea, goldenrod, marigolds, yarrow, strawflowers, dahlias, celosia, and amaranth come next. We are finishing out the season with gorgeous dried flower, seed pod, and foliage bouquets and wreaths that will last through the winter months. Bouquets can be ordered in advance online or purchased at the stand daily. Like our produce, our flowers are grown in no-till beds without pesticides or herbicides.
Dahlia tubers for sale!
We have 5 varieties of dahlias available for planting now! Look for them on the stand and online. Sorry we don’t know their names! :)
New & returning on the stand!
Here’s a list of new and returning items at our stand, including the latest Northwest Good Food Award winners! Each year the Good Food Foundation has a blind tasting of craft food producers who meet strict environmental and social responsibility standards before choosing the top 200 in the US.
Dairy
Cascadia Creamery, a Good Food Award winner! We are stocking three of their award-winning cheeses! These are very special, raw and “beyond” organic cheeses that are aged in lava tube caves in Trout Lake, WA. Every single one of their cheeses is truly delicious. Read more about each type below.
Glacier Blue - An approachable blue with a luxurious texture and deliciously rich flavor. Considered the "The Gateway Blue” for those of you that weren’t a blue lover before. Natural rind, aged 75 days.
Cloud Cap - A dynamic cheese with grassy notes that reflect the mountain pasture where the cows graze. A milky, firm, yet creamy and citrusy interior that transitions to a mushroomy outer layer capped in a natural rind reminiscent of a soft cloud. Aged bloomy rind - aged 60 to 75 days.
Sleeping Beauty - Smooth, sweet and buttery with a supple sharpness and herbal notes. Natural rind, aged 75 to 100 days.
Cherry Valley Dairy Gray Salt Cultured Butter is back on the stand and is now $5.50! This was a customer favorite. If you haven’t tried this yet, we highly recommend indulging in a 4oz tub. Their butters have won Best Butter at American Cheese Society awards and it’s clear why. They’re very creamy, rich, and have delicious cultured buttery flavor.
Meat and Fish
Osprey Hill Farm Pastured Chickens
We have a limited number of really delicious pastured broilers from Osprey Hill Farm. We were lucky enough to get some of these last fall and they flew out of here (pun intended). If you have never tried a pastured chicken, these are truly so flavorful and juicy it’ll be hard to go back to the chickens we’re used to picking up at the grocery store.
Coro Salami
We are offering Coro Salami’s new sliced packs that feature two flavors in one. These are great options for a picnic, hike, or the beach. Coro Salami just won a Good Food Award! We also have two new flavors in whole salamis, Lemongrass and Chorizo. The chorizo is a limited edition so will only be around for another month or so. We also have their whole salamis in eight flavors!
Skagit River Ranch Sausages
We have Skagit River Ranch breakfast sausage and bratwurst! Both types of sausage are delicious - lean without being dry, juicy without being too fatty and full of savory flavor. Try them with the sauerkraut from Oly Kraut
Lummi Island Wild Smoked Sockeye & Tinned Albacore Tuna
Lummi Island Wild Smoked Sockeye Salmon and Canned Tuna is back on the stand!
Fermented Foods & Beverages
OlyKraut Sauerkraut and Pickles
OlyKraut, also a Good Food Award winner, offers organic cultured sauerkraut, pickles and sipping brines. They are based in Olympia, WA and have some great fermented products. We currently have their sour pickles and sauerkrauts on the stand. These are currently only available on the grab & go stand!
Iggy’s Honeybrew Kombucha
We really like Iggy’s Kombucha and find it much lighter and less acidic than most kombuchas on the market. We have two delicious, fresh and thirst-quenching flavors of kombucha on the stand right now, Hibiscus Sage and Oolong Jun.
Carbs & Friends
Cinnamon-Raisin and Salt Bagelry Bagels have been added to our bagel and bialy selections for pre-order. We also put out extra bagels on the stand as well, but best to preorder if you have a favorite variety. In addition to the bagels, we also have Lox and Italians cream cheese spreads from The Bagelry as well. We are lucky enough to have the Bagelry in Bellingham which uses a gimbaled oven that boils and bakes the bagels in the traditional way.
Girl Meets Dirt Preservers and Shrubs
Check out the Girl Meets Dirt Rhubarb and Lavender Preserves. We really enjoyed this preserve with croissants from Iron Rooster Bakery in Fairhaven and thought it was delicious on a cheese plate. Seems to fit both sweet and savory pairings very well. Tart, sweet, floral, delicious and local! Made on Orcas Island from local rhubarb and lavender. Yum! Also from Girl Meets Dirt is the Italian Plum Shrub. This bottle makes 25 drinks and is a refreshing alternative to soda. We drink a lot of shrub at Full Bloom as it is a delicious thirst quencher mixed with ice cold sparkling water during a break in weeding or harvesting.
For the home
Agave Washcloths
We’re excited to offer hand-woven ayate washcloths made from 100% agave and grown, harvested and woven in central Mexico by the indigenous Otomi women. The ancestral technique for making these is passed from one generation to another. Women are taught the skills when they are children and encouraged to become leaders in their community to carry on the tradition. This natural fiber washcloth is our favorite for gentle exfoliation in the bath and it can also be used in the kitchen. When wetted the natural fibers soften, expand, and then the weave tightens back to improve its strength and flexibility.
The cloths are mold and mildew resistant, fast-drying, and can be washed with other laundry. They last many years, and because they are biodegradable, can be composted when you’re ready for a new one! We love them!
Happy Healthy Chickens Means Delicious Eggs
It makes sense that putting laying hens out to pasture would be good for them. There are bugs and wild forage, they can scratch and dust and gobble pebbles for their crops. But there are other considerations. Predators like raccoons, hawks, eagles, and coyotes abound so we developed a chicken tractor with a moveable enclosure to keep the hens secure day and night. Supplemental feed is critical for their nutrition because chickens cannot glean adequate food only from the pasture. The hens require a healthy amount of organic feed that includes various grains, legumes, and minerals which we mix into a mash and ferment. The fermentation process aids in their digestion and adds even more elements the birds require. That (and some good conversation) produces happy hens, delicious eggs and bright yolks!
We are running low on egg cartons! Please continue to bring your spares to us and we will reuse them! Just leave them on the stand in the “egg carton recycle” box. Thank you!
Moving Toward More Sustainable Packaging
With plastic permeating our environment we are reducing the use of plastic bags at the stand as much as possible. We have been packaging durable produce without plastic for online orders and using recycled paper only when necessary, but there are some items that won’t stay fresh and crunchy without the use of plastic bags. We’re looking into inventive solutions and are trying them out on the stand. We are starting to put items on the stand in large clear plastic containers. If you have your own bags, please bring them to the stand when shopping. If you forget, we have some for you on the stand. :)
We’d love to hear from you
If you have ideas for better packaging or just other products you’d like us to stock or grow, let us know by simply sending an email to hello@fullbloomfarm. We are open to suggestions and value your feedback.
Follow us on Instagram to stay up-to-date!
While we try to pack as much as we can into each blog post, things change around here so quickly that a once-a-month post just isn’t enough to keep up on all the happenings. We try to post regular updates to our Instagram account, so please follow us there if you’re interested in getting real-time updates on new products, events, and more! Thanks for following along. https://www.instagram.com/fullbloomfarm