Sunset Highway Farm

Once you understand the science behind canning and the purpose of water bath canning vs pressure canning, the whole process becomes a lot less intimidating!

I have spent the last 5 years learning how to safely can with natural preservatives and without sugar. I put everything I’ve learned together in a simple step by step course so that you can follow along in your kitchen. This course is 50% off for a limited time so start TODAY and work at your own pace (it’s yours for life!)

https://www.homegrownallyear.com/food-preservation-course

50% off sale ENDS THIS SUNDAY 8/18!

Everything you need to know to preserve your garden so you can eat homegrown all year long.

Start TODAY! Work at your own pace, and keep rewatching as much as you need because… It’s yours for life 🎉

www.homegrownallyear.com/food-preservation-course/

START THIS ONLINE CLASS TODAY 🎉
Everything you need to know to preserve:

Module 1: CANNING
Module 2: CURING
Module 3: COLD STORAGE
Module 4: FREEZING
Module 5: DEHYDRATING

By the end of the course, you will be able to preserve meat, vegetables and fruit so you can eat homegrown all year…

COURSE IS 50% OFF FOR A LIMITED TIME!!

www.homegrownallyear.com

Looks amazing! 👏 🎉

‼️FINAL SALE - EVERYTHING MUST GO‼️
This Saturday {May 11th} 9:00am-2:00pm

TONS of plant starts still available & everything is 30% off!

Location:
1011 N Craig Rd
Spokane, WA 99224

We have over 150 plant varieties total (fruits, veggies, culinary & medicinal herbs, cut flowers, potatoes, bean seeds and trees) and our selection is the reflection of years of trial and error to figure out which varieties excel in {all of} these categories here in Spokane:

•Most flavorful
•Longest storage life
•Pest & disease resistant
•Highest yielding
•Handles our weather conditions and season length

The thing that sets us apart most, though, isn’t actually our huge plant selection.. it’s our soil! Every seed has been started in our homemade germination mix that includes our 3 year aged compost (made from our garden & livestock - 100% chemical & pesticide free), worm castings, and biochar.

Because of this, we can guarantee that every single plant is both pest AND pesticide free, giving you the best possible start to your gardening season. And because our germination mix is loaded with microbial life, it’s not just the plant that’s getting a jumpstart, the soil in your garden will as well.

If you’d like to receive a virtual catalog to preview all the varieties we’ll have available, more information about the sale, and a coupon to use at the sale 🎉 please sign up for our email subscription on our homepage at www.sunsethighwayfarm.com and you will automatically receive the email.

We can’t wait to kick off this gardening season with you, see you Saturday!
❤️Amanda & Jake

Calling all Spokane gardeners!

After years of requests, we are finally holding a huge seed start sale this Spring 🎉

Here is what makes us unique from other nurseries in town:

-We have been homesteading & farming for 5 years.. During that time, we have been trialing hundreds of varieties of fruit, vegetables, culinary & medicinal herbs and cut flowers to determine what grows best here in the Pacific Northwest. To make our “favorites” list, each variety has to be the top of its category for flavor, yield, storage life, disease & pest resistance, and weather hardiness.

-We will have narrowed down our list to a selection of 200 of our top favorite varieties to choose from

-We will have a big selection of starts most places don’t carry like celery, gourds, many cut flowers, and medicinal herbs like ashwagandha, astragalus, hibiscus, licorice and more.

-(As you long time followers know) We have been collecting seeds and working on improving our favorite varieties so that they will become even healthier and higher yielding in our Spokane climate. This seed sale will include many starts from our seed collection.

-Unlike the box stores, all of our seeds are started for Spokane’s last frost date. They will not be overgrown & will be less susceptible to transplant shock (the result of seeds being started too early, entering the flower/fruiting stage before being transplanted, or being transplanted too early)

-Our starts come with an info sheet on how to care for and transplant, as well as the right time to transplant for different crops

-We start all seeds in our homemade germination mix that includes our 3 year aged compost, biochar, and worm castings. We are doing everything we can to start your seeds off with the very best nutrient & microbial rich soil possible… and WITHOUT pests, pesticides, diseases and human waste (yep - a good majority of “organic” compost used these days contains the city’s human waste 🤮)

Our primary goal is to see you grow successfully & harvest abundantly!

Mark your calendars & kick off Spring with us April 27th & 29th!

Biochar 101 Class:

Come learn about this incredible soil-building resource that we wouldn’t do without!
-It provides housing for beneficial microbiology
-Drastically increases your CEC {Cation Exchange Capacity}
-Increases soil’s ability to hold water & nutrients
-Drastically reduces smell when used with livestock
-& more..

This is one of our favorite garden amendments!

Class is located on our farm in Spokane, Washington.
Registration for the class closes in 1 week & we have a few spots left.

Link to register located in bio
www.sunsethighwayfarm.com

It’s been so much fun meeting this year’s garden class and launching into planning! Can’t wait to see what the year brings 🌱

I'm taking a class on gardening this year. Here's to growing more of our own food and preserving what we grow!

‼️REGISTRATION CLOSING SOON‼️

🌶️ Saturday class is SOLD OUT
🌼 Spots still available in our Tuesday class

Join us for our 2024 Garden Class Series located on our farm in Spokane, WA

We built a course that is everything we wish we could have learned when starting with regenerative, organic, no-till, chemical free methods. We cover how to grow fruits & vegetables, medicinal herbs, and the basics of cut flowers.

We also include a course book with sample garden plans, years of our garden notes, our favorite seed varieties & sources, our seed starting and planting schedule, and a source list for all our garden related products.

Here is a quick summary of the classes that will start at the end of January and finish in September:

🌱Class 1: (In our heated facility) How to plan a garden with food storage in mind, garden design, seed sourcing etc
🌱Garden Planning Session: Bring your plans and get help and input so you’re ready to get growing!
🌱Class 2: Seed starting schedule & how to seed start 101, growing medicinal herbs & flowers
🌱Class 3: (In the garden) how to build a garden bed (in ground and raised bed) start to finish, amending an established bed before planting, Spring prep, irrigation, and how we make & use bio-char
🌱Class 4: Amendments, trellising, composting & vermicomposting, making and using compost tea, and tricks to getting an abundant harvest
🌱Class 5: Pruning for production, weed/pest/disease control, learning to identify the best time to harvest, curing, food storage & seed collecting
🌱Class 6: Final harvest, processing, preservation & putting the garden to bed for winter

Each class is scheduled a few weeks ahead of when you need the information so that you can learn the information and then have time to go apply it. We are also available all year to class members for questions & problem solving. Your success is our top priority!

See our website for dates, prices, the complete list of details (👇 link can also be found in bio)
www.sunsethighwayfarm.com/classes

2 partial scholarships left for the Tuesday class, send us a dm to be considered. Registration closes Sunday!

Join us for our 2024 Garden Class Series located on our farm in Spokane, WA

We built a course that is everything we wish we could have learned when starting with regenerative, organic, no-till, chemical free methods. We cover how to grow fruits & vegetables, medicinal herbs, and the basics of cut flowers.

We also include a course book with sample garden plans, years of our garden notes, our favorite seed varieties & sources, our seed starting and planting schedule, and a source list for all our garden related products.

Here is a quick summary of the classes that will start at the end of January and finish in September:

🌱Class 1: (In our heated facility) How to plan a garden with food storage in mind, garden design, seed sourcing etc
🌱Garden Planning Session: Bring your plans and get help and input so you’re ready to get growing!
🌱Class 2: Seed starting schedule & how to seed start 101, growing medicinal herbs & flowers
🌱Class 3: (In the garden) how to build a garden bed (in ground and raised bed) start to finish, amending an established bed before planting, Spring prep, irrigation, and how we make & use bio-char
🌱Class 4: Amendments, trellising, composting & vermicomposting, making and using compost tea, and tricks to getting an abundant harvest
🌱Class 5: Pruning for production, weed/pest/disease control, learning to identify the best time to harvest, curing, food storage & seed collecting
🌱Class 6: Final harvest, processing, preservation & putting the garden to bed for winter

Each class is scheduled a few weeks ahead of when you need the information so that you can learn the information and then have time to go apply it. We are also available all year to class members for questions & problem solving. Your success is our top priority!

See our website for dates, prices, the complete list of details (👇 link can also be found in bio)
www.sunsethighwayfarm.com/classes

Spots are limited so don’t wait to grab yours!

Some of my favorite pictures taken around the farm this year:

1. My son proud of finding the tiniest praying mantis yet
2. Foxglove & an incredible sunset
3. The puppy photoshoot.. probably the highlight (photography-wise) of my entire year (see earlier posts for the full catalog of photos)
4. An abundance of monarch butterflies taking refuge in the garden this year
5. My favorite view on summer nights
6. A princess petting her pig
7. Jake balancing atop a ladder building the high tunnel I’ve been dreaming of for years
8. Pigs sleep in a pile with the littlest on top. When they hear us coming they all jump up.. 4 years of raising pigs and I finally caught it on camera!
9. 5 years ago when we moved to our property, building a shop was on our “dream” list, it felt way to far fetched and financially unattainable to ever be a reality. This year, we broke ground and built a shop. All these years, we’ve been dreaming of all the ways it could help us with harvesting, processing, food storage, and general work around the farm. We had no idea that those would be the least of what this space would bring to our lives. What it has become is a place for classes, events, and our local garden and homesteading community to gather and learn together. We will be forever grateful for the lifelong relationships being built because of it!
10. It’s hard to put into words what this picture represents. 2023 was an insane year for us and it felt impossible to put up a year’s worth of food with the number of huge projects, construction, livestock overload, and family needs we had going on. It took a lot of planning, work, early mornings, long days, and late nights but we did it.. We grew and preserved enough meat and produce to feed our {very large} family for the entire year! How does one describe the pride & joy that there is in cooking meals all year long that are almost 100% homegrown?? You have to experience it yourself, there’s nothing quite like it. I get to live a life where my “day job” is both achieving this for my family and helping others achieve it for theirs. Pinch me!

Thank you for all the encouragement & support along the way, it means more than you know ❤️

Jake and I took a trip to Leavenworth. It was our first time away from all of our kids for more than 24 hours in our entire *almost* 6 years of marriage! (Our kids kept referring to the trip as our "honeymoon" 😆)

It was a much needed reprieve and the timing ended up being perfect. The colors of the changing season were breathtaking and the break at the end of the harvest marathon was the perfect way to kick off a season of slowing down (just a little 🤪).

One of the lessons God has been working to teach us this year (we're hard headed so it's probably been years 😬) is to prioritize balance of work and rest. For us, this has meant starting to say no to things where we used to always say yes. And even harder: being willing to hold what we have loosely so that we can let go of the things that are sucking our time and energy for very little return.

What does this mean? Well.. we have majorly downsized our livestock operation this year. We sold our rabbitry, we stopped selling chickens, and we will no longer be breeding pigs or selling pork. Going into 2024, the *only* livestock we will have for sale is our LGD puppies. We're switching from Farm to homestead for the year to prioritize our family life and giving our all to our classes. (We will, however, have more to sell on the garden side of things 😉)

To all of you who keep supporting us from afar.. we are working on online classes just for you! Thank you for the constant requests and encouragement.. this project has been WAY more massive than we anticipated but your excitement for it gives us motivation to keep at it. We had hoped to have it ready this fall. We have something like 40 hours of content to edit and that is still only half of what we needed to film this year. So.. we're prioritizing more time and space to work on it in 2024 and hope to have the first series ready by next winter!

In the meantime, we have lots of spots available in our local classes held here on our farm in Spokane, WA!

*COMING UP THIS THURS & TUES*

We have a "Pre-Garden Class Series" this Thursday, September 28th and Tuesday, October 3rd from 5:30-8pm.

These classes will be held in our market garden & new teaching facility (located on our farm).

Come see our no-till, regenerative methods for gardening- including how we prepare our beds for winter, how to plant garlic, some of our favorite fruit and vegetable varieties of the year, our irrigation set up, trellising, and an overall window into what our 2024 Garden Class Series is like (This is a great way to do a trial run before signing up for the full series).

We would love to have you! Visit our website for registration or send us a DM for the link:

https://sunsethighwayfarm.com/garden/

We are located in Spokane, WA - Hope to see you here 😊

Some of the Dahlias, Zinnias, Cosmos and Aster that are blooming in the flower garden right now.. Goodness they're gorgeous 😍

A spotlight on the puppy's flowers & the florist behind them:

These flowers were all grown in our cut flower garden and designed by

What sets Sue apart from other florists is her dedication to using locally & sustainably grown flowers, which is a lot more difficult for a florist than buying everything from a wholesale supplier. If you're wondering why it's more difficult, here's a few points to consider:

One, us "local" growers are spread out all over the place and a florist dedicated to using us must keep a pretty good running memory of our gardens, what varieties & colors we have, what's in bloom and what we have coming. And then there's the extra hassle she takes on to drive all over in the craziness of the season to pick (which she often does herself) and collect from a large variety of farmers to get everything she needs because usually one farmer doesn't have everything. And finally, there's Fall coordinating when she's planning weddings and we're planning seed orders.

Two, we primarily grow flowers that can't be shipped because they don't last as long (so we're not competing as much with the large scale growers). Flowers like zinnias, dahlias, snapdragons, aster and cosmos. This means designing and arranging with flowers that must be picked and immediately used. It also means using what is in season (kinda like eating seasonally 😉), and that's quite complicated when you're planning weddings far in advance.

And three, in order for there to be local flowers, there have to be farmers who are successfully earning enough to make it worth their while to grow. Sue does a lot for the community (and often for free!) so she shines as a networker who is constantly trying to connect farmers, businesses and customers so that everyone wins.

Sue is a true gem of the flower world & I'm so thankful to count her as a friend too! If you would like to learn more about arranging flowers or how to make dried flower creations, she offers great classes throughout the year. She also hosts flower farm tours in the Spring and is obviously a phenomenal florist. If you don't already, give her a follow 😊

One of the most asked questions about our puppies is, "How are they with little kids?"

Whether it's a family with young kids, grandparents, or a farm/homestead that has lots of visitors, a dog's behavior around kids is VERY important to just about everyone!

Kids are often high energy and chaotic (I mean this in the best way - if you're describing the "energy" of a group of kids, it's not usually organized and calm LOL). If a puppy doesn't have much exposure to them early on, then they will either react to kids by being scared and defensive (cowering, growling, biting) or overly excited (chasing, nipping, jumping, licking). In either scenario, the children respond by getting scared and/or boisterous (often screaming, running, etc) and it only perpetuates the problem.

One of the things we quickly realized when we started raising livestock guardian dogs was that our kids needed to understand how to behave around, correct, and train a puppy and/or dog just as much as we did. They were also spending a lot of time interacting with the puppies, and often without us there to intervene.

We have eleven (yes ELEVEN) kids. We have spent a lot of time training our kids on how to behave around dogs so that each of them can be setting a puppy up for success. This includes not allowing the puppies to jump up on them, not allowing biting, not allowing aggressive behavior with food and not allowing face licking (we let a few puppy kisses slide though 😉) The other key element to success is just spending a huge amount of time loving on the puppies - we want the interactions to be consistently positive so that they learn to love kids (which in turn makes them more prone to protecting them).

By the time our puppies go to their forever families, they are well acquainted with both kids and livestock. And while we can't ever guarantee how a dog is going to do in a new environment and family, we can guarantee that we have done everything possible to set them up for success!

We still have a few pups unreserved if you're interested

P.S. Thanks to our amazing florist, Sue Hines, for this shoot!

Our wonderful local florist, Sue Hines, visited the farm last night to "bedazzle" the puppies with flower clips and collars for a photoshoot at golden hour. We had hoped to do this with our last litter and never got around to it, so I have waited over a year for this to happen and let me tell you.. it was a dream come true! We had the time of our lives putting on the cutest photo shoot there ever was!

Our Livestock Guardian Dogs, Maisy & Teddy, had ELEVEN puppies on June 13th (7 females and 4 males). They are currently living with our flock of chickens while they share the fence with sheep, cows, and llamas. We will continue to work with them over the next 4-6 weeks, exposing them to lots of various livestock, kids, people, dogs, and more.

We believe the 6-12 week age range is a critical stage of development for puppies to learn how to be a dog, and the very best trainers are well trained dogs (aka their parents). Breeders often send the pups to new homes at 6-8 weeks because this is when the puppies start requiring a lot more time and energy to care for, and they also begin costing a lot to feed. Besides that, this is when they're at their peak "cuteness" and families are anxious to snuggle them (which we totally understand!) However, an extra 4-6 weeks with their parents makes a HUGE difference in the training and time requirements of the families they're going to, and for working dogs like LGDs, it's especially important to get them off on the right foot.

Raising and training puppies is something we're very passionate about, and while we don't have a whole lot of space here, we do have a whole page devoted to the subject on our website and we share videos {close to} daily in our stories.

We are making our way through out wait-list but we can say we definitely WILL have puppies still available for reservation at the time of this post being published. For more information on reserving one, please send us a DM or contact us via our wevsite. We are located in Spokane, WA and we do not ship puppies.

We have pure Blonde and Swallow Belly Mangalitsa piglets for sale in Spokane, Washington. They are 8 weeks, weaned, and ready for pickup. We have a few guilts left, a boar, and lots of barrows. We have lots of information about the breed and the meat/lard they produce on our website. Please send us a dm if you're interested!

Calling all garlic lovers... Our Garlic seed sampler boxes are ready!

3lbs total of seed garlic ideal for growing a year's supply for your family.

There is at least one variety of every category of both Hard and Soft necks so you can experience allll the flavors and features that garlic has to offer. We've carefully chosen our garlic varieties based on what grows well in colder zones (we're zone 5), what has the best flavor, and what stores well.

Included in the pack is:
Hardneck:
Porcelains:
2/3 lb German - our most reliable and easiest to grow with the longest storage life, has a great mild flavor for every day cooking
1/3 lb Georgian Fire - spicy hot and our highest yielding, a farm favorite
1/3 lb Music - the most popular of the porcelain varieties
Purple Stripes:
1/3 lb Purple Glazier - Excellent for breads and baking and absolutely beautiful
1/3 lb Persian Star - the best for rubbing on meat and steaks for grilling and is great raw
Rocambole:
1/3 lb Purple Italian - a popular rocambole, this is heavy producer and the bulbs are absolutely beautiful

Softnecks:
Artichoke: Incheleum Red - discovered on tribal land in Colville, this artichoke garlic thrives in cool climates and has been ranked as a top garlic for favorite in multiple garlic test kitchens.
Silverskin: Nootka Rose - another Washington native, it comes from the San Juan Islands and thrives in cooler climates

Boxes include an info sheet and planting guide with all our tips and tricks for growing the best garlic that we don't share on social media. They are ready to be shipped or picked up on Friday, so there's plenty of time to get planting! Pleas send us a dm or contact us through our website to reserve a box.