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We began seeding in the greenhouse last week, spending two full days, 49 man hours, delicately dropping about 100,000 seeds into 50,000 cells in 225 trays. I believe it's our biggest seeding week of the season. We'll be seeding weekly through September and every day those seeds and seedlings in the greenhouse and hoop house (where they harden off before going outside) will require adequate water and temperature regulation. Crops and varieties spend anywhere from 3 to 12 weeks in the greenhouse and hoop house before being planted outside.

And it begins! Farmers Gabby and Connor embark on seeding 25,000 onions, 2/cell, into 288-celled trays.

Oddly enough, outdoor field preparation actually commenced prematurely in February, for the first time in 15 seasons.

Each season there's a very brief window of opportunity to get into the fields with the tractor to open the soil with the chisel plow and follow with a couple of passes of raised-bed making. This year that window opened a few weeks ago in February and may now stay shut until later in March. We're in good shape. I was able to prep beds for basically all of the early April planting space needed. The beds aren't finalized, but they're formed well enough that when there is a large enough gap in precipitation events they will dry out fairly quickly and allow us to get the next round of work accomplished.

Farmers Gabby and Adeline loosening the soil in one of the caterpillar tunnels.

Under cover, we're busy preparing four tunnels for early spring crops of spinach, chard, kale, arugula, bok choy, radishes, turnips, and lettuce mix.

This is all done manually. Actually, that's not quite true this year. We did have Farmer Dana's sheep go in there and mow down any crop residue or weed growth, which did save us time and resources mowing. We'll be forking, hoeing, and raking and removing any crop competition over the next few weeks before we plant in late March.

March 7, 2023
Harvests to Begin in Mid-May
by Farmer Derek

These hakurei turnips won the race to be the first germinated and visible crop of the 2023 season - congratulations!

Let's start by listing crops we seeded over the past two weeks that we can look forward to eating in 2-4 months: onions, scallions, head lettuce, romaine, radicchio, lettuce mix, escarole, chard, beets, spinach, arugula, kale, bok choy, radishes, turnips, cabbage, kohlrabi, snow peas, carrots, celery, fennel, cilantro, dill, and parsley.

The harvest season runs for 28 weeks this year and should commence the week of May 15th. Depending on early spring weather and how the tunnel crops perform, there's a slight chance it could be earlier.

The first couple of harvests should be: green garlic, lettuce mix, head lettuce, kale, bok choy, chard, radishes, turnips, herbs, and hopefully some of our trial spring crops of arugula and spinach.

Shares and pick up schedule: Full and Medium Shares pick up weekly; Half Shares every other week. Half Shares will be assigned Week A or B. Returning Half Shares will be assigned the same week as prior seasons.

You can log in to the website to view your share selection, pick up day, and balance. Share balance is due by May 1, 2023.

Warm fuzzy feeling over future harvests.

March 7, 2023
CSA is Almost 90% Full
by Farmer Derek

Garlic, the first outdoor crop to begin converting the suns energy into nourishing substances! You can just about see the three rows on each bed poking through the straw and snow.

CSA shares are almost sold out. Thank you for your support!

If you haven't signed up yet, please try to do so soon! We really shouldn't go over our CSA membership goal because that is what we base our crop plan on.

Follow this link to sign up.