Pickled radishes & more rain

June 1, 2018 Canning, In the Kitchen, Market newsletters, Other recipes, Weekly Updates

The rain keeps on falling and at this point I’m mainly just amazed each week that we have anything to harvest. Apart from the in-the-moment damage from heavy rain and flooding, we’re starting to see the more delayed effects, with the onset of rotting in some crops and of diseases like powdery mildew that thrive in hot, humid conditions like these. At times like this, it’s nice to be able to fall back on simple comforts like eating good food. This past week, I’ve made a few tasty recipes, including a quite authentic-tasting pad thai that also called for these amazing pickled radishes as a garnish. While the pad thai...

Pest Season

May 25, 2018 Market newsletters, Pests, Tips & Tools, Weekly Updates

This week definitely entails a lot of re-grouping for us. We had beds to rebuild and tons of peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes to finally get in the ground. Mike spent hours on Monday reburying all of the plastic mulch on the tomato beds. The dirt that was holding it down had been washed away in last week’s torrential rain and it was no fun at all to have to re-do an already challenging task that we thought we had completed for the year. Even as we feel like we’re still playing catch-up, the natural world continues to roll along and pest season on the farm has officially begun. Flea beetles...

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,...

Changing seasons

April 27, 2018 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

As May approaches, big changes are happening on the farm. Outside, we finally broke ground on our last section of beds! We had decided to hold off on building these last five beds until the spring as we were already cramped for time last fall and figured we might as well leave the area protected by grass over winter. Mike plowed up the area last week and it’s definitely with a sigh of relief that we know we’ve completed the enormous task of breaking ground and building beds… at least for this year! Inside the hoop house, it’s hard to believe that the transition to summer is already happening. After...

Oh, the weather

April 20, 2018 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

What a weather roller coaster this spring has been! Over the past month, we’ve had a foot of snow, 55 mph winds, temperatures of 19 and 89 degrees in the same week, and, most recently, two inches of rain in just 12 hours. Weather is always one of the most challenging variables in farming and it makes it even more so when the weather is so extreme and unpredictable. The great thing about plants is that they are for the most part pretty adaptable and just keep on growing! For us, the biggest recent change is getting back into the swing of market season. After months of seemingly endless work,...

First market newsletter!

April 13, 2018 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

Wow, it’s hard to believe after over a year of working to find and set up our farm that our first farmers market is finally here! It’s been a crazy winter, with both extreme cold and unusually warm weather and this fluctuation has continued into April. In fact, there is snow falling right now! Over the weekend, temperatures plummeted to 19 degrees overnight, vastly colder than it had gotten in weeks. We had seen the cold temperatures forecast, so got out on Saturday to make sure all of the outside beds were fully covered in thick row cover. Inside the hoop house, even with the plants covered not just by...

April 2018 Photo Shoot

April 8, 2018 Monthly Photo Shoots, Weekly Updates

March into April is always a transformative time on a farm in this area. As you’ll see in these photos, we went from a bare hoop house to an explosion of green and even had time to squeeze in a significant snow storm! Be on the lookout later this week for our first market newsletter in advance of our first day at the Burke farmers market this Saturday, April 14 from 8am-12pm!...

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...

Two Feet in the Dirt

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