Here’s what I will be covering:

Our 2nd Annual Winter Faire!!! + one extra Saturday!
Gratitude and more gratitude
Farm Perspective pondering
Events +The Orcas Farm Tour
OCPA
Farm Housing Gift
Joel’s hip replacement
Farm Helper Magic
Maggie’s accident recovery
Thanksgiving

I try to be more timely with our monthly blog post, but these past many weeks have been incredibly full. Aptly, our underlying theme for this month is gratitude. It’s hard to list the beauty of the interconnectedness and all the gifts this community has bestowed upon us.

We will be open for our Winter Faire Market December 1-3rd and the following Saturday for shopping Saturday December 9th from 11am-3pm!

Since it’s right on the horizon for NEXT WEEKEND, I’ll start with our Winter Faire Pop-Up Market:

We are hosting our second annual Warm Valley Winter Faire December 1st-3rd from 11am - 3pm Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We are sharing the weekend festivities with Warm Valley Orchard across the road, and Lum Farm up Crow Valley.

All of us will have local handcrafted beautiful holiday gifts available. We hope you make the full circuit and visit all three farms. Warm Valley Farm and Warm Valley Orchard share the dates and hours. Lum Farm is Saturday, December 2nd, from 11am-5pm only, for their Wooly Pop-Up. Oh, and their Christmas trees have arrived! The Solstice Mercantile is also happening next weekend as well as several other fun events.

We will have our first-ever Raffle with three baskets of stellar gifts and goodies, tickets will be on sale during the Winter Faire Market for 3 for $5. If you can’t attend, but would like to purchase tickets, please email us! The winners will be chosen on Saturday, December 9th at 3pm. You could win a Mangalitsa/Berkshire holiday pork roast, a super soft scarf, delicious skincare from the Bubblery, A tarot reading, a beautiful locally made holiday wreath, gift boxes, and more! All raffle proceeds will go towards several Warm Valley Farm needs: Farm interns, Farm refrigeration, and Event space upgrades.

We are offering:

Wreath-Making Pop-Up - we provide help and inspiration + materials to create your own wreath or swag with farm-fresh greenery and charming ornaments.
Green gifts - forced Paperwhites and Hyacinth. Succulent, Cyclamen, Dusty Miller and Oregano planter gardens.
The Summerhouse soft winter scarves and yummy clothing. Jewelry from Audrey Daniels and me PLUS The Bubblery artisan skin care.
Tarot and crystals with Gillian from Do Your Shadow Work
Baked ginger goodies from Susie Frank, + warm chai
A roving visit from The Green Man
Music by Arthur Boyelf
Gifts and storied goods in Barn Swallow Vintage
Local Art and more

Okay, rolling all the way back to October 29th ~ We met with a group of local event coordinators for a tour of the farm and event areas! We are working hard towards hosting weddings and events in 2024.

We had a fantastic time being on the Orcas Farm Tour! Thank you so much for visiting us and supporting local island agriculture, as well as small local businesses. We loved having The Farm to Ferry Food Truck, Boat House Cider, The Bubblery, Do Your Shadow Work, Arthur Boyelf’s beautiful music, and AnSister here for the event. Supporting the community and other islander’s businesses is part of what we love to do. It was such a pleasure to have had them with us.

There was a lot of new interest in OCPA during the farm tour, and we have some new participants lined up for the upcoming 2024 season. Our OCPA (Orcas Community Participatory Agriculture) team was astounding this year. We had many new faces this season that are now dear friends. We grew delectable veggies, shared wonderful meals, and grew deeper community roots together.

All 5 participating OCPA farm sites have room for new members. If you are interested in checking this program out, you can find more info here: https://www.orcascommunityag.org. Build community and friendships, grow beautiful veggies, and be part of the food sovereignty solution.

Next, we had an amazing surprise offer from a super generous and gracious private donor. They are helping us with a year's housing arrangement for farm help. It was a brilliant and generous surprise gift, and we are beyond grateful. It has and will be put to good use!

Then we met with some amazing people who are helping us to look at our farm business from a different perspective. We are contemplating how the farm can be of more service to the community. It was an amazing conversation to start, and we look forward to more, especially now that things are settling down (cross your fingers here).

We’ve had some things happen that could be perceived as bad luck, but really it’s been almost miraculous unfolding. During this time, I also had a health scare that was resolved… for the moment.

Maggie, our beautiful shepherd got hit by a car on November 8th in a terrible accident. Today, she and I are sitting in front of the wood stove. She is healing up so well, and we are so lucky to have her with us. Many, many prayers went up on her behalf. I am so grateful to Milly Vetterlein and Jeanne Spreen for all their care, monitoring, and generosity, as well as my dear friend Misty Stone for her insights, and the incredible staff at each of the 4 veterinarian offices we visited. No skin grafts were needed after all. Maggie has one possible surgery this Tuesday, and will continue to have her cone on, but is stronger, happier, waggier, and healing more and more each day. If you want to read the saga, I will include what I wrote in our local rant and rave page on Facebook:

“Rave: November 9th
A rave to the folks who stopped and helped my dog after she got hit by a car yesterday near our farm on Orcas. Joel and I were returning on the ferry from his post-op hip appointment when we got the news that she’d been struck and was in bad shape. Rave to the perfect strangers and beloved community members, which are the same in this instance. Rave to the sheriff’s deputy, who flashed his lights to get her to the local vet, and to Michele and Sherri, who took the time to be with her and get her that help she so desperately needed. Rave to Dr. D for getting her stabilized so that she could be transported to the pet emergency center in Mount Vernon. Rave to Washington State Ferry staff, at the main office, on the boat, and ashore on Orcas. Everyone coordinated so that I was able to re-board the boat immediately with priority as well as Michele, who had Maggie in the back of her car and got her to the ER as fast as possible. Rave to the ferry Captain who came to visit Maggie along the way, and all the loving support Maggie and I have received.
I have no idea who hit her, I imagine it was a traumatic experience for them as well. She is very damaged, but holding on, and I am ever hopeful that I’ll have my beautiful girl home with me again. It was a series of events that led her to the road, and a complete accident, and no one’s fault.
I am so grateful to call Orcas our home. I’m so grateful for the friendships and for the community that we live in, and for the stewardship of Warm Valley Farm. I just wanted to say thank you publicly.

I truly appreciate the support and care of our community. We are so lucky to live amongst you all on Orcas.”

— Annie McIntyre

Warm Valley Farm pork butt roast with a mustard, rosemary, garlic crust,

Thanksgiving was super sweet this year. We have SO much to be thankful for. Thursday morning, we spoke with my mom, my step-mom Nancy, my brother Tom, and Joel’s step-mom Janie. I prepared one of our Pork Roasts with a mustard, rosemary, garlic crust, and some homemade cranberry sauce to add to the table. We were invited to our dear friends Peter and Noris’ house and had our first non-emergency outing in WAY too long. It was such a pleasure to share in the bounty that all the guests provided. The conversations were fantastic, and the spirit was gentle and lovely. Thank you!

So, you can see, we’ve been super busy and full of gratitude. Thank you for being part of our farm friend family. We hope to see you at The Winter Faire! May your holidays be merry and bright