Cole slaw and other greens

September 27, 2018 In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

Fall is definitely in the air around the farm. Last week, we tilled in a huge chunk of the spring beds and put down a winter cover crop of rye and vetch, which the very rainy weather over the last few days has already helped to germinate. The fall spinach in the hoop house is putting on it’s first true leaves and the last bed of outdoor salad mix is beginning to grow in the field. As the weather cools and the days grow shorter, more and more fall crops are appearing on our market table. Last week marked the first harvest from both our broccoli and cabbage plants. Cabbage...

And suddenly it’s fall

September 13, 2018 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

In less than a week, it seems we’ve transitioned from high summer right into autumn. Temperatures over the weekend didn’t climb out of the 60s, a nearly thirty degree difference from last week’s heat. All in all, we’re starting to get that end-of-season feeling on the farm, even though we still have several months of market to go. With cooler weather and no sun in the forecast for at least the next week, we finally removed the shade cloth that helped to keep our hoop house cool over the summer. This was just in time, as the first fall crops started going into the hoop house last week as we...

New crops, new market!

June 15, 2018 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

It’s an exciting week on the farm! To start with, as I sit outside writing this on Tuesday afternoon, the sky is blue and it’s not raining, which at this point is about all we can ask for! Additionally, we’re starting to see a true shift in the harvest from exclusively spring greens to more early summer items and even some true high-summer crops. This week will be the first we have a heavy snap pea harvest. While harvesting snap peas can feel like an endless tasks, the sweet crunch of the peas is a pretty good reward! The cucumber and zucchini plants in the hoop house are really taking...

Losses

May 18, 2018 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

It seems like we’ve skipped right over spring and headed into summer already. With hot, humid weather and severe thunderstorms almost every evening this week, it feels more like July than May. We lucked out earlier in the week, with two successive storms dropping large hail just a few miles away from us, but bypassing us completely. Unfortunately, on Tuesday night, we were on the tail end of an enormous storm system that dumped an inch of rain on the farm in just an hour. On Wednesday evening, we got the same thing again and in between has been days and days of steady rain. As you can imagine, this...

Summertime’s a-coming

May 11, 2018 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

After last week’s heat wave, it’s really starting to feel like summer is coming on the farm. The tiny gnats that drove us crazy last summer are officially back. While the crops in the field seem to have shot up inches in days, the weeds are growing like crazy, too, meaning we’re at the start of what is always one of the biggest tasks throughout summer- weeding. We were lucky enough to buy a used flame weeder from our neighbors who run a small farm down the road and Mike has been figuring out how to use it to make our lives at least a little less weedy! Most exciting,...

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...

Heat wave!

February 24, 2018 Weekly Updates

We got a little flash of summer this week with two record-breaking days of temperatures around 80 degrees. As a result, our focus quickly shifted from keeping the hoop house warm to keeping it cool, a problem I wasn’t anticipating in February! Even with the sides rolled up all of the way and the door and window open, temperatures were still getting up near 90, not ideal for the cool-weather spring crops planted inside. Whereas it took the first round of hoop house beds at least a week to germinate, the beds planted right before this mini heat wave were up in a matter of days! As a result, inside...

Ice & Seeds

February 8, 2018 Weekly Updates

You really start to see the advantages of a hoop house when you have an ice storm one day and are putting seeds in the ground the next. While the trees and ground were still covered in a good amount of ice this morning, inside the hoop house I watched the thermometer gradually rise to 74 degrees while I prepped beds! (And that’s compared to only 29 degrees outside at the same time.) By this afternoon, we’ll have five beds planted with spring mix, arugula, baby kale, spinach, and radishes. To offer additional protection, each bed with also be covered with a layer of heavy duty row cover which will...

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...

Two Feet in the Dirt

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