Welcome to the 2021 Growing Season!

Chisel plowing right on schedule, thanks to a dry first half of March (with the exception of some snowmelt). Chisel plowing opens and aerates the soil, lightly mixes cover crop residue, and enables it to dry out and warm up faster.

Happy spring everybody! This is a wondrous and auspicious time of year as dormancy and hibernation ends and energies are sent bursting forth for this too brief 8-month photosynthesizing segment of our tour around the sun. We've been galvanized by the lengthening daylight, the return of the green sheen, and the positive prospects of new beginnings and the blank canvas that is the farm every spring. Growing mostly annual crops, we get to start over and begin anew each March. It's been a very busy month on the farm preparing for the 2021 growing season.

Seeding in the greenhouse began almost five weeks ago and will continue weekly through September. Preparing fields to accept those seedlings begins as soon as the ground is sufficiently dry and workable, typically mid-to-late March. We had been blessed by a dry first half of the month so we're mostly proceeding right on schedule with ground work. The first crops of the year went into the outdoor soil this week. About 1500 bed feet of carrots were sown and 1000 feet of snow peas were transplanted. Next week begins the true mad rush of spring planting: 5000 feet of beds will be transplanted with kale, kohlrabi, cabbage, turnips, radishes, bok choy, chard, beets, lettuce, romaine, lettuce mix, escarole, endive, and radicchio. The following week 2000 feet of onions (about 20,000 plants) will go in, along with carrot family crops like fennel, parsley, cilantro, and dill.

Besides growing outdoors, we also have 4 tunnels that we'll be growing crops in during the spring and summer. Space in two of those had to be readied for transplants next week. That meant mowing and removing leftover crops from Late Fall CSA, forking/aerating, hoeing, and raking.

One of our antique outbuildings should be overhauled and salvaged this year so much time has been spent moving, organizing, removing, recycling, discarding, cleaning our major barn structures. The building slated to be fixed dates back to 1850 possibly and currently suffers from a subsiding foundation.

With the harvest season a month and a half away and workshift opportunities right around the corner, you will begin to hear from us more frequently. We hope you had a nice and restful winter and were able to enjoy all that snow. See you soon!