It’s about as busy as it can get around here. The ground finally dried out enough to get into most areas of the farm and we’ve been planting like crazy. You’ll notice we are depending a lot on our friends at other local farms these past few weeks. The heavy prolonged rains definitely put us quite a bit behind schedule. One of the reasons it takes us so long to get into our fields is the preponderance of heavy clay soils on our farm. (Walking out into the field after a good rain will gain you about 5 pounds of sticky mud caked to your boots.) Even once we get the tractor in to mow down and incorporate the cover crop, the residue then needs up to two weeks to break down (adding all those wonderful nutrients to the soil) before we plant into it. As a result, our spring planting is more than a month later than a typical year — some years we get planting windows as early as February.
In the ground so far we have fennel, three kinds of cabbage, cauliflower, romanesco, broccoli, lettuces, arugula, mustard greens, radishes, escarole, mei quin choi, summer squash (zucchini and patty pans), and cilantro, and with some warmer drier weather they’ll grow fast. The strawberry plants look great and are starting to fruit, so we should have berries starting in the next few weeks.
As we move into high gear here at the farm, we are delighted to welcome Ashley Doherty as our new CSA Administrator. She has been training with me for a couple weeks and I’m confident she is going to do a fabulous job! Ashley will be helping with the newsletter and will take over the e-mails and management of the CSA deliveries.
We also welcome new field hand Andres who has joined our seasoned crew Aquileo, Antonio, Faustino, Esperanza, Paulina, and Mackensie. We’re looking forward to another great year of farming!
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
