Dozens of small things...improving the farm one bit at a time.
Greetings, Farm Friends!
We are getting ready for market after a big week on the farm. Scroll through the photos below to catch some of the details, but rest assured there has been a lot of planting, plant tending, and quite a lot of growth. We’re entering that point of spring where the harvesting, the plant care, the bed prep, and the planting all overlap, and it can certainly be overwhelming. Another round of greens went into the field, along with summer squash, brussels sprouts, and the tunnel tomatoes. Mary will actually be returning home after helping set up market, to catch up on our nursery seeding and make the plan for all the transplants going in in this coming week.
People often ask us in the spring “what’s new things year?” and sometimes it’s major—an actual home to live in, or a switch to minimal tillage, or a complete perimeter fence to keep the deer out. This year it seems like it’s many small things, but they are starting to add up. Scroll down through the photos to see a few of the innovations and improvements we’re adding this season.
We do have a few fun new items at market this week including baby boc choi and full-size boc choi, more spicy mustard greens bunches, some of the first dill and mint, more cilantro, salad turnips, and a few baby head lettuces. Plenty of spinach, baby kale, spicy salad, arugula, and salad mix too. We will also be bringing some of our leftover tomato starts, now available for your garden. If you are planting them outdoors, please plan to have some way to protect them on chilly nights for a while!
MEMBERS: You are now entering week three! This week, please again chose up to 5 items for your bag (and we are crossing our fingers for those to finally arrive this week). You are welcome to include starts for sale as some of your items, if you are setting up your own garden. And if you come to pick up at the farm, definitely take a little walk around—a lot is starting to happen, and things are looking good!
And, finally, a quick note on masks: our core team on the farm is now fully vaccinated, so you will actually see some of our full smiling faces again, especially while we are outdoors at market. We will, however, always have masks at the ready and are more than happy to wear them while helping or visiting with anyone who requests—we recognize some members of our community are higher risk, unable to vaccinate, etc.., and we want to accommodate your needs and keep everyone safe. If you are not yet vaccinated please continue to care for your community by keeping distance and/ or wearing your mask in public.
Noah running the new compost and amendment spreader, dropping neatly onto our permanent 30” beds.
We had a few exciting new pieces of equipment running this week. Like many small farms, we feed our soil with a wide variety of organic inputs—our own composted chicken manure, purchased compost, alfalfa meal, azomite, and specific micronutrients as recommended by our soil tests. Some we add by the tractor bucket-load, some take only a few ounces for a block of seven beds. Also like many small farms, we have up till now done the vast majority of that spreading with shovels, wheelbarrows, the tractor bucket, and for specialty amendments, many trips dispersing with 5-gallon buckets. One of the most exciting developments this week was getting a new compost and soil amendment spreader finally working for our system. We purchased this tool with a small grant from CFAC, trying to find a more sustainable way to disperse many of the things we use to feed our soil. After some rough starts using the tool with our BCS walking tractor, which it was designed for, we collaborated with J&B Welding again, to improve it—it now runs behind our 4-wheel tractor, lifting up at the end of each bed for easy turning. In addition to saving many person-hours and aching muscles, it seems to spread much more evenly. Today Noah and the tractor and tool covered 21 beds, preparing the way for the winter squash and potato blocks (adjacent to each other in a zone we may have to call the carbohydrate block this year).
Freshly weeded beds of onions! We hit a lot of weeding (we call it plant care) this week, and it feels good to be on top of some big areas of the farm. It’s easy to lose onions in the weeds of spring, but so far we are looking good.
Tomatoes are in tunnel one! We called it a date night, planting together till late Tuesday evening, after the crew had put in a full good day already. We’re excited to have these in the soil and growing earlier than the last few years, and hoping for another year of being overwhelmed by tomato harvests.
Meal of the week: sauté some shrimp (or protein of your choice) in hot sesame oil with garlic and chili flakes, then throw in a whole bunch or two of chopped mustard greens or salad turnip tops. Serve over rice or noodles…or, if you have just had a late night tomato planting date, serve with a course of blueberry pancakes because you ready to eat anything you find in the pantry.. It pairs better than you might think.
In this week’s episode of “More Exciting Than It Looks,” we finished installing and programming some automated irrigation valves leading to the drip irrigation; 12+ different zones now go on their own, instead of needing farmers to turn each one on and off.
Farm nest of the week: killdeer, in a gravel edge near the future nursery. Happy to find a nest somewhere that is out of traffic and not anywhere that we need to plant!
Getting a caterpillar tunnel set up for the third wave of flower planting. Bouquet subscription members and bloom card holders, we are on track to start having some bouquets in early June. The tulips pulse is done, but the first calendula are not too far away.
Winter squash ground is ready, planting is on our weekend plan.
Malaya apparently find tomato starts a bit boring, but we hope the rest of you will be excited to get some for your gardens.
We hope to see you at market in the morning, or at the farm sometime this week!
Gratitude and spicy greens,
Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm