Things can definitely change dramatically on the farm in a short period of time. A few weeks ago we were looking out the window and sighing at all the rain coming down, wondering when we would ever plant. Now, just two short weeks later, we’ve got most of our spring crops in the ground, an orchard almost planted and 2 acres of grain sown!
What an amazing two weeks it has been! We happily welcomed the arrival of Bennet Deakin about 2 weeks ago. He’s the (awesome) third member of our farming team the season and we quickly got down to planting our spring crops – broccoli, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, onions, bok choy, fava beans and more! Bennet also prepped the ground and sowed 2 acres of spring grain – trials that he is heading up in preparation for a grain CSA we hope to start in the near future.
After all that – we had a massive tree planting day this past weekend and got about 135 fruit trees planted in what is now, our orchard! We planted apples, pears, plums, cherries and Asian pears as well as some raspberries, blueberries and other small berries. The orchard will be managed by our great friend Ali English and hopefully will allow us to offer some fruit to the CSA in the near future!
Most of the spring crops are either transplanted and looking great or direct-seeded and beginning to come up! A field walk this weekend saw the tiny spinach and lettuce mix seedlings emerging along with carrot, beets and peas. The broccoli and cabbage as well as chard, lettuce, bok choy and kohlrabi transplants are looking good and we’ve got almost a quarter acre of tiny onion seedlings swaying in the wind!
Jeff has been tinkering with our Farmall cultivating tractor which we purchased at the end of last summer and we hope to start in-row cultivating (weeding that is!) all these crops this week, if it dries up. We’re rigging up some trenching equipment on the Farmall as well so that we can plant our potatoes and we’ll plant about 450 feet of early tomatoes in our 90 foot greenhouse this week as well.
All in all a very satisfying couple of weeks with more to come!
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- Bennet hauling seedlings to the field for planting
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- Jeff adjusting the Farmall settings for marking rows
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- Jeff laying seedlings to plant
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- Planting cabbage
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- Jeff and Bennet planting
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- Planting spring kohlrabi
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- Tomato seedlings to be planted in the big greenhouse – early tomatoes!
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- Beautiful kohlrabi!
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- Broccoli seedlings
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- Cabbage seedling
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- Brassica (cabbage family) seedlings under protective row cover
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- Onions newly planted in the field
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- Garlic coming up beside a rye cover crop
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- Garlic and rye
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- Lettuce mix coming up!
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- Spinach coming up!
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- Bennet plowing ground for spring grain trials
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- Plowing the grain ground
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- Sowing grain
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- Bennet discing in his grain trials
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- Bennet and Jeff planting trees
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- Planting trees
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- Orchard
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- The orchard emerges!
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- Ali and Erin hauling compost to the trees
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