YUM. YUM. Mandy is originally from Columbia Falls, Montana, where she was raised on her family’s small cattle ranch. “I came here to visit family in the Spokane area and ended up falling in love with Coeur d’Alene!” she says. During the week, she works as a dental assistant, but once home, she spends her late afternoons and weekends tending to the various tasks that need to be done in the garden. Due to the Coeur d’Alene climate, there is a limited gardening season, yet it is a year-round job, beginning in January. Michael and Mandy start the year off by setting goals and deadlines for the year and plan their daily work calendar for the growing season. From there, they acquire the ingredients needed for the seedling mixture, which they mix and fill trays, seed them and wait for them to come up. Once sprouted, they transfer them to larger pots, followed by transplanting them outside. Once the plants are outside, the days consist of properly caring for them until they produce. Harvesting is done with great care so as not to negate any of the couple’s hard work..
According to Michael, an average day in early spring consists of turning the lights on the seedlings, watering them, inspecting for any problems like aphids, adjusting the plants the right distance from the lights, followed by building the beds at the main garden. Now until October, it’s a full eight hours a day of work for him, with Mandy coming out every afternoon after work and on the weekends. So what can you find growing at Plante Family Farm? Offerings change throughout the season. In spring, it’s primarily kale, mustard greens, lettuce, spinach and arugula. Once it becomes too hot for those to prosper, the time has come for the main summer vegetables to thrive, such as tomatoes, cukes, peppers, zucchini and beans. Once late summer arrives, Michael plants all the spring vegetables again for their winter harvesting. “Since we are primarily a CSA farm, we grow an average of 30 different vegetables, and some fruits, at any given time,” Michael says. “Our weekly baskets usually consist of kale, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, arugula—our trademark green—and hot-weather items such as peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes in the peak of summer.”
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NORTHWEST Sizzle