Flashes of green

January 23, 2018 Weekly Updates

The frigid temperatures that settled in over the past month have finally broken and after that steady stream of lows in the teens and single digits, anything above freezing feels like the Caribbean! So it’s been T-shirt weather the last few days with highs jumping up into the 60s. With our work so dependent on the weather, we know to take advantage of good weather when we have it, so we’ve spent the last few days working hard on getting the hoop house fully completed. Mike installed the cranks for the roll-up sides yesterday. These will allow us to roll up about 4.5 feet of the plastic covering to vent...

Finished!

January 11, 2018 Weekly Updates

Building the hoop house was one of our biggest projects in getting the farm up and running and has been looming over our heads for months now. While we put up most of the structure this past fall, we opted to leave the plastic covering off for as long as we could so we wouldn’t have to worry about any damage or collapse if we had heavy snows in the early winter. But with February and thus our first planting dates coming closer and closer, it was time to put hoop house construction back on the front burner. Our original plan was the pull the plastic cover over the structure...

Getting the fence up

December 12, 2017 Weekly Updates

It’s beginning to feel a lot like winter with snow over the weekend and temperatures not topping freezing tomorrow. I’m thinking fondly of those unseasonably lovely days just after Thanksgiving with highs in the 60s! With the end of the year just around the corner, we’re at last starting to see an end in sight for all of the work we planned for the fall. We are on the last stage of the deer fence installation- putting the actual fencing in- and like almost everything else we’ve tackled over the last few months, it is more time-consuming than expected. Watching the how-to videos, it looked like a simple process of...

Red Hawk Rise Organics

November 30, 2017 Weekly Updates

Along with plugging away at the work outside, we’ve also been focusing on another essential part of the farm- business formation. Of course, when I dreamed about starting my own farm, I was thinking about growing food, not about tax forms, licensing, and permits, but as any small business owner knows, these are crucial steps to running your own operation. And at last, we’re getting there! This week marked a number of milestones in this area. We have been registered as a limited liability company with the state of West Virginia and are now officially known as Red Hawk Rise Organics, LLC. We have a completed operating agreement (a key...

Progress Report!: November Photo Shoot

November 16, 2017 Monthly Photo Shoots, Weekly Updates

With the cold weather settling in and the days growing shorter and shorter, it isn’t hard to be up with the sun. And as this is the first house we’ve lived in with an east-facing view, we’re learning to appreciate sunrises as much as we already appreciate sunsets! With November somehow already halfway over, now seems like a good time to look back over our photos from the last four months and see how far we’ve come. Enjoy! ...

Rocks

November 2, 2017 Weekly Updates

Even as the weather gets chillier, the work hasn’t slowed down. And each job finished seems to create a new job after it, whether we were expecting it or not. The most intense so far has been all about the rocks. Unless you’re farming in the great plains (and for all I know, even there), your soil is likely to have some stones. However, this is less likely in land that has been farmed for years and years as some other poor sucker has probably already pulled them out by one means or another. After talking to our neighbors who have lived here their entire lives, it seems like our...

Building up

October 7, 2017 Weekly Updates

After a month of thinking about and working on plowing the fields, our focus shifted completely over the last week as we embarked on the major project of setting up our hoop house. Hoop houses are basically unheated greenhouses. The clear plastic that covers the frame allows in light and then helps traps the heat inside, allowing crops to be grown much earlier and later in the season and even over the entire winter. By hoop house standards, it’s a pretty modest structure at 20 feet wide, 48 feet long, and 12 feet high. But by my standards, it seems enormous! I had seen more or less the exact hoop...

Looking like a farm!

September 22, 2017 Weekly Updates

Big apologies for the long delay between posts. It finally feels like we’re running a farm in that we have close to no time to think about or do anything besides working outside, planning what work we’ll be doing outside, problem-solving what we’re doing outside, etc., etc., etc., and the last two weeks seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. In the last week, we’ve gotten 30 cubic yards of compost delivered as well as our BCS walking tractor. While I work on spreading the compost around the fields to get an extra boost of organic matter into the soil before next season, Mike is gradually plowing up...

Working away

September 5, 2017 Weekly Updates

While we watch our little garden of fall greens begin to sprout and grow, our major focus is on getting the farm fields set up for spring. There is no easing into the growing season on a farm. Once late winter hits, the work instantly goes into overdrive, so the goal is to be completely ready to go before then so that no catch-up work needs to be done. Additionally, getting the fields ready for planting now means that we can put in a cover crop over the winter, which will provide the soil protection from compaction caused by rain and snow as well as nutrients to feed the crops...

Bugs and sprouts

August 24, 2017 Weekly Updates

So I lasted about 6 weeks with no garden. As I’ve probably mentioned, I love growing greens- kale, lettuce, arugula, raab- really anything leafy has got a special place in my heart. The kale and cabbage from our garden in Pennsylvania lasted for a of couple weeks after our move, but once those ran out, I knew I’d only last so long before having to grow more of my own. It’s tough to find locally grown greens in the heat of summer and even the ones I did find just weren’t the same as eating what I grew myself, so I guess putting in a garden so quickly isn’t much...

Two Feet in the Dirt

agriculture