Saturday, May 22, 2010

Tis the season

so let me see, I haven't posted in a while but I'll try to catch everyone up on the farm. It's been very busy. I finally got internet at the house so I should be a little more regular with posting. The weather has been AMAZING. It rains a reasonable amount every 4 or 5 days so I've only had to irrigate occasionally, mostly just to keep the seedlings moist. We've gotten almost everything in the ground. This week was the beginning of the summer crop planting. The tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, cucumbers, and squash all got planted. I'm starting to dream about those cherokee purple tomatoes I grew last year; they were the best tomatoes I have EVER eaten. Everything seems to be growing really well. I even found the baby arugula. We were about to give up on it, but after tasting every tiny plant in the bed I found it really was there, just tiny and indistenguishable from other weeds until it gets bigger. The lettuce is starting to get enormous so I took some to the tailgate market last Saturday. It was a hit! We were the first farm to sell locally grown procude for the season. Today we sold more lettuce and spinach. The spinach was gone within an hour. The boxes are going to start going out the first of June. I've put them off a week to let the shallots and radishes catch up. So the first box should have fresh oregano, green leaf lettuce, bibb lettuce, red leaf lettuce, shallots, radishes, and spinach. Today was also our first volunteer day at the farm. We had a great turnout and got all the sweet potatoe hills weeded. (btw, the day after I planted sweet potatoes they got hit by frost. not to worry, they are hardy plants and are now growing leaves once again.) They were growing more grass than my lawn at home, but now they are pristine again, for now. It's not easy cultivating new ground. My friend Susi said she had a dream about the farm and it was incredibly abundant and beautiful. So far, that seems to be the case. I'll try to get some pictures on here soon.