Productivity

We’ve been busy around here. Planting, weeding, harvesting, marketing, watering, more planting. It has been go-go-go for the last couple of weeks. Plunging forward with our heads to the ground.

Our new intern Mark arrived this last week and now, we’ve got our full crew in swing for the season. Wow! What a difference it makes having one more pair of hands around here. We were done harvesting by 1:30 pm and done washing by 5:00 yesterday. That’s a turn for the better. On harvest days, we’ll sometimes be harvesting into the evening and washing and packing until dark. This was a nice change. Josh and I actually got to take showers and eat dinner at a reasonable hour! Yeah for efficiency!

We’ve planted all of our onions and leeks at the new leased ground – a whopping 10 beds, or to put it in perspective, more than a mile of onions and leeks — 6,000 feet. We are going to be up to our ears in onions and leeks this year. Besides some minor crop failures and pest problems this spring (we’re out of the honeymoon phase), things are proceeding well. We’ve got some major planting hurdles to get over in the next few weeks — lots of summer crop planting, potatoes (still haven’t gotten those in), and carrots, carrots, carrots. We’ve had a bit of a hard time getting carrots off the ground this year, but we’ll have them eventually. We just won’t have them probably until July.

The hens have been very happy on nice, new pasture. The eggs are unbelievable in color because of it. They are also very productive. We are up to our ears in eggs bringing on average 60 dozen to every market!

The Saturday Ashland market has begun. Come see us! It starts today.

We harvested the first of the scarlet red turnips yesterday. They are one of our favorites and have turned out very nice this spring.

Also, here’s Josh and Mark harvesting radishes in the hot mid-afternoon sun.

Farm Update

We’ve been happy about the rain. We need it!

All is progressing on the farm amidst all the May chaos. We’ve still got a few huge planting projects in front of us as soon as the new two acres are ready. Breaking up perennial pasture grasses to plant annual vegetables is not an easy task! But luckily, this new soil is really workable and the grasses are breaking down fast. And then we go on a planting frenzy! We are planting leeks, onions and the third succession of broccoli this Friday. Potatoes go in next week. And then we move into planting summer crops galore. We’ll put in our first round of tomatoes in the hoophouse as well as start seeding beans, basil and summer squash as soon as the danger of frost is gone. We’ve been adding multiple markets to the farm including new restaurants and wholesale accounts. You can now find our produce at Tark’s Market in Talent as well as the Ashland Food Cooperative. The Saturday Ashland market starts May 16th, so we look forward to adding that market as well.

The hens are laying like crazy. We are up to 8 dozen a day now. The girls get moved to primo fresh grass on Thursday morning once our organic inspection is completed this afternoon. They will have three beautiful, lush green acres to run around on. We’ll be adding meat chickens to that rotation in June as well. Let us know if you are interested in meat chickens as we’ll be taking orders soon. I’ll put up pictures of the new pasture and hens in the next couple of days.

The farm has been feeling abundant as more crops mature. Here are a few pictures from yesterday’s market.

The CSA begins in two weeks (the first drop is the week of May 18th), so if you haven’t sent in your memberships yet, you still have time to reap the benefits of the full CSA season’s 24-week harvest. As an aside, we are thinking about adding a winter CSA to our farm program this year. Stay tuned for information on that, but we will most likely be doing a December – February CSA for anyone hankering for winter produce.

Market Tomorrow!

I think we are figuring this farming thing out. We’re amazed at how much we have accomplished already and it is only April. We’re also surprised by how much more produce we have this time of year than we did last season. Guess it means we are improving and learning.

Come see us at the market tomorrow! It might be raining, but we’ve got a lot of produce to share. Here’s our share in the spring harvest:

Radishes, Kale, Baby bok choy, Broccoli raab, Pea shoots, Salad Mix (Lots this time!), Spinach, Braising Mix, Joi Choi, Mustard Greens – 4 TYPES! – Pink Petiole, Green Wave, Ruby Streaks & Golden Frill, Arugula, Sorrel, and of course, eggs!

More fun pictures soon, particularly of the new field Josh has been breaking into. Onions and leeks to be planted on Friday. Finally!