Tag
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!...
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...
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...
It’s the winter solstice today, with the longest shadows and the shortest day of the year. And although it’s only December, to me the solstice always means the beginning of the end of winter. Even though the weather is going to stay cold for much, much longer, today is the shortest and darkest that the days are going to get. It’s only getting sunnier from here on out, which means the growing season will be upon us before we know it! As the new year gets closer, we’re getting excited for the season ahead. 2018 will be our first season as an operating farm, which comes with a certain amount...
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...
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...
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! ...
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...
What a difference a few days make! On Monday, our field was basically a big dirt pile. Now, it is mostly the precise raised breads you can see in the picture above. The benefit of raised beds (and the reason we chose to work with them) is that the soil warms sooner and dries faster, enabling earlier planting in the spring and helping keep the drainage as good as possible in our somewhat clay soil. After the initial plowing, this was the next big jobs for our BCS walk-behind tractor. Using the rotary plow attachment, Mike and the BCS were able to accomplish in just three days what would have...
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...