Planting Begins!

Welcome!

We feel extremely lucky as we head into our 8th season at Cedar Down Farm to have such a supportive community of CSA members, many of whom have been with us since we began the CSA.  And we’re always happy to add new members to this community and introduce you to the farm and to the great food we produce here.  We are also grateful for our amazing team working with us this year.  Stone Stewart, Jess Martin and Heather Siegried are the hard working folks joining Jeff and I (Leslie) to grow your food this year and we’re off to a great start.

Morale was high this week as Stone, Jess, Heather and Jeff hopped onto our brand new water-wheel transplanter and planted the first seedlings using this exciting new piece of equipment.  The transplanter makes a divet into the soil and fills it with water so that we can push the seedlings easily into a little mud puddle, starting their life snug in the ground with lots of moisture.  And I was thrilled to begin seeding on our new (well, antique but new to us!) electric tractor.  This is a vintage Allis Chalmers G – a garden tractor that resembles more of a dune buggy than a tractor – an extremely simple machine which has been converted to run off 4 batteries.  We mounted our 3-row seeder onto the belly of the Allis G so I can look down and see the seeder working right underneath where I sit and stop if there is a clog or a problem. I can go super slowly and see really well so I can do the seeding solo now where it used to be a two person job.

The garden grows!

We seeded and planted spinach, lettuce, onions, chard, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, beets, kohlrabi and much more over the course of 3 days last week and we’ll be back at it again this week.  Greenhouse tomatoes are going in, cucumbers will be planted in our low tunnel and then the weeding begins! Because our harvests last from June into November (and beyond), we are planting and caring for crops all summer long.  This week was just the beginning.

The cold spring weather delayed our start by a week or so but with some warm weather on the way hopefully we’ll still be starting CSA pickups on the second week of June. Also, we’re excited to be hosting a corn roast and barbecue (and possibly concert) on the farm in early August and we’d love to see you all here.  Mark your calendars! We will keep you posted!