Farm Update 4/17/13

For the past several weeks, we have been focusing on planting, planting, and more planting.  Now that the weather has finally warmed up, it's time to get those summer crops in the ground.  We did our spring planting several weeks back and are anxiously awaiting for broccoli, cauliflower, fennel, peas, and beans to be ready.  Tomatoes, squash, zucchini, onions, and cucumbers (my favorite) all found homes in the ground over the last two weeks.  

A row of heirloom tomatoes

We plant a lot of our summer crops in the white plastic mulch you see in the photos for several reasons. First, it helps with water conservation and soil compaction.  The sun doesn't beat down directly on the soil and drying and hardening it so quickly, thus conserving water and maintaining a good soil quality. Second, it helps with weed suppression. And third, it helps keep the vegetables off the dirt, resulting in cleaner produce.  

Here are some newly planted rows of squash, onions, and tomatoes.

Just a pretty picture of our hens and hen house:)

Our hens are happy and well.  We have them in a moveable step in post fence that we move around to different plots once they scratch up the area they're in.  Their house was built for us by Seth's father and some of his friends. At dusk, the hens know it's bedtime and hop in the house and roost for the night. We have a little "chicky door" that looks very similar to a doggie door, that we close up at night and open in the morning.  Raccoons, opossums, and cats would love to be able to get in there and run a muck.  Seth actually found an opossum this morning caught in the fence! Thankfully it got stuck and could not make it to any of the hens.  

Here is Seth putting in posts for our deer fence.

 This the deer fence in progress around one of our fields.  Deer love them some fresh veggies so we have to protect our plants so they can't nibble them.  They can do a lot of damage in just one night.

Tulips blooming!

Our tulip bulbs came up makes us very happy.  We're attempting to grow a lot more flowers this year, but without much experience and so it makes us happy to see when something works! I'm personally on a zinnia kick. I think I've planted at least six different varieties of them.  Hopefully, we'll have the same good luck with those also!

Our first flowers of the season. 

In addition to planting, we've been getting ready for the farm to table dinner we're hosting this Sunday with the Southern Food Tour, Ryan Smith from Empire State South and Steven Satterfield from Miller Union.  Barn cleaning, weed eating, mowing have all been daily to-dos.  It's nice to get everything looking good and we're excited for Sunday.

This week is also the first week of the Spring CSA.  Lots of harvesting, weighing, bunching, and bagging going on.  We're glad to be back in action though.  Winter was getting just a little too dull :)