Happy Spring! And welcome to Cedar Down Farm’s 2025 growing season.
Spring has arrived in all of it’s indecisiveness; the snow has melted but days are still cold and the sun seems not ready to be around full time. Things are on the go here at the farm, we are slowly working towards full swing. In the propagation house tables are filling with freshly germinated seedlings and our hoop-houses are full with crops getting going for spring share harvest.
Like it often is, spring weather has been very back and forth. The snow melted in a hurry with some days of super warm weather then retreated back to cold, overcast weather. For spring crops in the hoop-houses (they don’t get any additional heat) this has a major impact on growth rates. It’s one of the challenges of growing inside very early in the season – everything is hard to anticipate! But over the years we have observed that at some point in April things take a turn and crops that have been growing slowly, getting established through the ups and downs of March will jump into vigorous growth, with extra warmth and free from the stresses that crops in the field often face. That time is coming soon! We will get in touch with spring share members in good time to let you know exactly when spring pickups will begin in April.
Otherwise we are working away at the pre-season to-do list. We have been interviewing potential candidates for the one field position that we have available this season (the rest of our crew are all returning – Jess, Ahren and Suraiya along with Jeff and Leslie (that’s me)).For those who are new to the farm, Jeff and I are the owners and have been running the CSA at Cedar Down Farm for 16 years. We grow about 7 acres of organic vegetables for about 250 CSA members and have been joined by fabulous co-farmers over the years. Jess Martin has been working with us for 10 years now, Ahren Hughes is returning for a 5th season and Suraiya Foss-Phillips will be back for a second season this summer. We will introduce you to our newest member of the team once they are hired!
We are working on finalizing the last pieces of the new propagation greenhouse that we built last fall. It will be suited up with an automatic ventilation system (something we have lived without for this long – incredible, exhausting) that Jeff is in the midst of configuring. The seedlings in the greenhouse need a high level of management to keep them healthy and happy until they go into the field. The correct amount of water, temperature regulation and air flow are all super important to little plants growing in the strange environment of plastic plug trays. The ventilation system will be a real bonus both to the accuracy of the temperature and airflow in the house but also to our quality of life – we will be able to leave the farm!
Other greenhouse infrastructure work has also come into our lives because one of our 4 hoop-houses was crushed under snow this winter – see the evidence below. This was a bad thing made a little easier by the help of our friends and neighbours. We were able to put the majority of the crops planned for spring planting in that house into our neighbours hoop-house at Green Being Farm. And Devan, of neighboring Fairfields Farm (delicious asparagus, strawberries and corn!) generously offered us unused pieces of a structure of the same type to replace the one we lost. So we are in much better standing than we would be otherwise after losing 1/4 of our hoop-house space because of these great friends. Still, it has added work to our spring as we will be rushing to put it up before sweet peppers need to go in in May!
In the fields the retreating snow has revealed cover crops that have kept the soil protected over winter and Jeff will be frost-seeding these with clover any day now. This process uses the heaving and settling effect of frost to bring early seeded cover crop seed into the soil. No tillage necessary and the resulting clover crop will be nursed into maturity by the fall-sown rye that is already there. Both will contribute lots of organic matter and fertility back to the soil after two seasons of vegetable cropping. In parts of the farm that will be cropped with veggies this year, there is a beautiful tillage radish cover which provided protection and aeration to the soil over winter and which died back over winter to allow us to plant into it come warm weather with minimal tillage.
In other farm departments, the orchard has been getting lots of love from Stone, our resident orchardist. Skillful pruning over the past couple of seasons and this year has really turned around the apples and pears in the orchard and Stone is busy adding other types of fruit trees, bushes and taking good care generally. It’s really great to see the trees get the attention they need and it may mean fruit available for all of us in the near future!
We will be getting ready to begin harvests again in April and continuing to get seeds into trays for summer shares and hopefully planting in the field in not too long. We have sold out of summer shares for Guelph – if you know someone in Guelph who would like to get on our waiting list please send them our way. We have a few spaces left for our Hanover and on-farm pickup so please send any Grey County locals our way!
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