Certified!

March 29, 2018 Weekly Updates

It’s been an exciting week for us, even while we’re still waiting for all of the snow to melt! Over the weekend, we made our first sale- several pounds of arugula to the Community Garden Market, a natural foods store in nearby Shepherdstown. And at the end of this week, we’ll be selling lettuce mix to the same store. I also harvested several pounds of baby kale from the hoop house, but elected to keep that for our own use, as well as giving away a few bags to neighbors. It’s been great to have fresh, home-grown greens on hand again! In addition, we are now officially Certified Organic and have...

Onion Snow

March 20, 2018 Weekly Updates

What a difference a day makes! Yesterday we were outside in T-shirts prepping beds in sunny, 60-degree weather. Today, it’s barely getting above freezing and there’s already several inches of snow on the ground, with many more predicted to fall over the next 24 hours. And, I swear, this is what happens every year I’ve been running a farm. You get right up to mid-March when outdoor planting can begin in earnest and, invariably, a snow storm decides to pop into the picture. At this point, I more or less plan on it! We did take a few steps to prepare for the snow. Yesterday, we prepped a bunch of...

Planning your garden

March 12, 2018 Garden techniques, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

This is the first farm that I have set up from scratch, so we’ve had to make decisions about things that on previous farms had already been established. If you are getting ready to set up your own garden in anticipation of the coming growing season, here are two bits of advice from what I’ve learned: First, think carefully about how wide you want your beds to be. I have almost always worked on farms where the beds are 4 feet wide. However, in doing some reading in advance of setting up our farm, I was convinced to try 2.5-foot-wide beds instead and, let me tell you, what an amazing...

Seeing Spring

March 4, 2018 Weekly Updates

It’s been lovely watching spring begin to cautiously peak its head around the corner. With the recent warmer temperatures, our garlic has popped above its layer of straw mulch and the hay field next door has turned from a determined winter brown to a startling green. As more and more hints appear that winter’s end is not too far off, our preparatory work is drawing to an end and the real growing season is more and more upon us. We do, of course, still have a few tasks to complete that fit more into the “farm set up” category. One of the big projects that had been looming over us...

Two Feet in the Dirt

Archive for March 29, 2018