Though many people think of farming and farmers markets as summer activities, plenty of farmers feed their communities through fall and winter thanks to season-extending strategies including high tunnels, row cover, storage crops, and more.

Cameron Terry began farming in a container garden in his backyard in Denver, Colorado, in 2012. Terry says the garden got “so out of hand I decided to make a business out of it.” Six years ago, that business became Garden Variety Harvests, LLC, now based in Roanoke, Virginia, where Terry cultivates about half an acre of diversified vegetables using organic practices and minimal tillage.

Tracy Lafleur, who started Sugar Hill Produce in 2016 in Cedar Grove, North Carolina, grows diversified vegetables yearlong using organic practices. Sugar Hill is known for offering carrots at the market 12 months a year and for employing and educating aspiring farm owners.

Terry reports that although a poorly timed freeze can hamper production at any time, in his neck of the woods, there’s a lot that can be grown outside protected by row cover year-round, including spinach, kale, collards, and Asian greens like mizuna.

“We plant crops like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and carrots heavily through August so we can provide great fresh produce through Thanksgiving,” he says. Terry also makes value-added products to help sustain them through the slow-harvesting months. He pickles surplus crops, for instance — especially okra, spicy dill cucumbers, and radishes, as production allows.

Terry goes on to explain that in his two unheated 35’ x 20’ high tunnels, he gives priority to lettuce, both because it’s the product that sells the best and because it’s less cold-tolerant than other salad greens. “We focus on leafy greens that can be cut multiple times throughout the winter so that we don’t have to plant very much during the cold months,” he says. “Demand for salad and leafy greens skyrockets in the winter because consumers miss what they took for granted all summer. If you can do the hard part of germinating seeds on time, moving row cover over and over, opening vents, and keeping stuff watered, the sales can come very easily.”

At the end of summer, Terry plants high tunnels with lettuce, cabbage, spinach, scallions, broccoli, fennel, napa, and kale. Outside, he starts elephant garlic at the end of summer or the beginning of fall. Other outdoor plantings that yield well into winter include radishes, turnips, spicy greens, and carrots.

A little farther south, Tracy Lafleur of Sugar Hill Produce insists that winter doesn’t start until January. “The field work and harvesting are pretty much the same in summer and fall,” she says, “though we may continue to harvest carrots through mid-February.

“So fall and winter don’t really slow down for us. I think about both warm and cool seasons as horrifyingly busy. In spring and summer, we’re constantly planting. In winter, we stop planting for a couple of months, and although there’s not a lot of weeding, we’re cleaning up our fall crops. We keep the same number of employees in the cool and warm seasons,” she says.

Lafleur’s farm is known for year-round carrots. “Carrots are very versatile, and customers love ‘em. We plant in August, so we start harvesting in October or November, and keep on harvesting a little at a time. We don’t cover them unless it gets down to 20 degrees, so we can store them in the field, so to speak, and optimize our cooler space,” Tracy shares.

“We start harvesting in bulk one or two days a week in December, when the vegetables are as big as they’re going to get. We top them in the field, take them back to the wash station, then let them air dry before bagging in crates. This way we’ve been able to store carrots successfully for three or four months — and we see a nice bump in sales at the end of the season when other farmers have run out.”

In general, Lafleur takes a three-pronged approach to having produce year-round. First, she prepares ahead of time. Fall brassica production, for example, is hard in the Southeast, so her farm starts seeding brassicas in the greenhouse in mid-July. For fall and winter cabbages, she grows only good storage varieties, which, despite taking longer to mature, are far less susceptible to disease and insects that run rampant in the summer. Her cabbages take 90-100 days to mature, and since she aims to have them ready by the end of October, she must start them in July and transplant them in August, although this creates a bottleneck in fall production.

Second, she uses the right tool for the job. “We have a water-wheel transplanter,” explains Lafleur, “so our plugs get watered immediately. Before we got that, we would have to use a hose and water them by hand.”

Finally, she grows summer crops that can be stored and sold throughout the cooler season, such as sweet potatoes. Grown and harvested in the summer and cured for about four weeks, they can be enjoyed all winter. But storage capacity — and timing — is tricky. The potatoes have to have the right amount of cooler space at the right temperature at the right time. Thus Sugar Hill Produce has three walk-in coolers, one dedicated to sweet potatoes, which they initially cure inside at 85°F before turning on the cool bot for cold storage at 55°F.

Both Sugar Hill and Garden Variety benefit, of course, from the relatively mild winters of the Southeast U.S. But their strategic thinking, advance planning, and solid marketing can serve as an example for farms everywhere.

Angel Woodrum, RAFI’s Market Access Coordinator, connects and assists farmers markets and farmers who are looking to expand their market opportunities. Angel moved to NC in 2015 to complete her Master of Divinity with a concentration in Food & Ecology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. Since graduating, Angel has worked on various small-scale vegetable farms and currently co-owns a small market garden with her partner.