New Life at the Farm

After 21 days of carefully tending the incubator full of chicken eggs, here are the four that decided to enter the world. Their names are Izzy--yellow, Cricket--tiny one, Silver Pullet--the inquisitive silver one, and Cider--brown coloring on the face. They are the result of various pairings of different breeds of hens and roosters, so it will be interesting to see what they look like as they grow.

Fall Arrives and Winter Squash Harvest Begins

Frost is predicted tonight so we are harvesting winter squash very quickly--among them Long Island cheese, Black Futsu, Butternuts, Acorns, Red Kuri and La Estrella. Here is Elizabeth with another load to take up.

New crops and methods--Sunn Hemp

Each year there a new methods that are tried to improve the soil, reduce weed populations, compaction and make the farm work as ergonomic as possible. Here is an experimental cover crop planting of Sunn hemp--grown for its ability to fix nitrogen as a summer crop, a rare quality in a summer cover. No, there isn't any non-agricultural effect from it in case you were wondering. :-)

Tucking in for the Winter

Here is Elizabeth rolling the cover crop seeds to tuck in the fields for the winter--they deserve a rest after yielding so abundantly.

The colors of summer harvest: we never tire of looking at all the beatiful shapes and colors of the food that we have the opportunity to tend and harvest.

So Many Melons!

It's Melon Time! Here is Eric with a variety of watermelons: Orangeglo, Cream of Saskatchewan, Sangria, Charleston Gray, and Sugar Baby. Red, Orange, Pink, Yellow, and Cream-colored watermelons and lots of different flavors and textures. Eric is in his glory!

Mid Summer Harvesting

It's onion harvesting time, and cucumbers and zucchini and beans and beets and melons and tomatoes and eggplants and well...we can safely say it is an abundant time of harvesting.
Here are Tim and Eric curing Red Tropeo onions in the 2nd greenhouse

May in motion

It's May and we are moving right along. This is a picture of the cover crops that do so well during the winter to keep the soil covered and enrich it at the same time. The rye provides tons of organic matter, and the crimson clover, with the conspicuous red flower, pull nitrogen from the air and stores it on root nodules to be released later for the spring and summer vegetable crops. Essentially free fertilizer. We are looking forward to the start of the harvest on June 5.

Scott

Winter Oasis

What can be better than the greenhouse as winter turns into spring...

The seeds are coming, the seeds are coming

The seeds have arrived, and Elizabeth has been glorying in the seed organizing moments. There is so much potential waiting to break forth from a box of seeds about the size of a shoe box--literally five acres worth! Although flower arranging has a loyal following, we think that seed packet arranging has potential.

Seeds and Planning before Planting

The quality of the light is changing and the cover crops are greening--spring is on its way. Meanwhile the farmer has his hands in the soil in the lush greenhouse environment...right?
Well, not exactly, who knew that farming entailed many many hours with a Microsoft spreadsheet? Let's see...if we have 150 families coming for vegetables, and we want four pounds of tomatoes for each full share and two pounds for each half share in late July, then we need to start how many flats of 72 cell in the greenhouse on what date and how many 100 foot beds do we dedicate to tomatoes.? So as the sun rises earlier and sets later we find our farmer surrounded by seed catalogs, notes, spreadsheets and coffee :-)

Getting Ready for the Season

February: anticipation builds for the start of the growing season. Winter, when it arrives is a welcome change of gears--time for repairs, maintenance, and planning for next. However, it doesn't take long for long until the farmer is chomping at the bit, eager to work the soil.

Scott