Happy official Spring!
The snow finally melted just a week ago. If you’re in our region, you know we had an unseasonably cold winter, with snow on the ground since early December. Because of that, our ranunculus in the unheated high tunnel are significantly delayed, and we had to push back the start of our CSA.
I’m already thinking about how we might prepare differently next winter (though knowing how farming goes, we’ll probably get a warm winter and have to adjust all over again!). That’s part of the beauty of working with the land...constantly adapting, problem-solving, and learning as we go.
Last Thursday, we received our new shed (huge thank you again to everyone's contributions to our fundraiser campaign last fall). She’s small, but exactly what we need for our current scale. We had hoped to work on it over the winter months, but delivery wasn’t possible with all the snow on the ground. Now, I’m anticipating we’ll complete the build-out by early summer. Watching the delivery was incredible—they used a remote-controlled forklift to carefully maneuver it down our steep slope.
Have you heard about the DEC Native Shrub Sale? It opens every year in January and closes around May. We ordered a variety of shrubs to plant behind the shed, along with preparing new beds for future dahlias planting. This area used to be a non-working pool that we filled in, so I’m expecting we’ll need to do some soil amending to bring it back to healthy, productive ground. I am envisioning this portion of the farm to be a great working example for our native garden design consultation.
We're working on finalizing our CSA schedule this week. If you're already a member, look out for an email from me to get a glance of your pick-up, delivery, or shipping dates. If you haven't signed up yet, take a look at our offerings. Our full season and Spring sign -ups will close on April 8th so don't wait. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.
The first flowers we’ll harvest this season will be daffodils, planted in the fall. They’re deer-tolerant and return year after year. After that, our specialty tulips will begin to come in. By Mother’s Day weekend, I’m hoping our tunnel ranunculus will be in full bloom so we can include them in our Mother’s Day specialty bouquets.
In the meantime, next week we’ll be making our first field transplants—snapdragons, stock, and calendula. We also have some exciting weddings coming up, and these blooms will be key focal flowers for our June CSA as we wait for the summer crops to reach their peak.
That's all for now, keep an eye for more seasonal updates here.
