What's growing on?
Hi there! We are staying busy despite the rain, snow, and cold weather. We have our full crew here. Spring was busy with building cabins to live in for the summer, setting up the common space kitchen, planting seeds, watering plants, and emptying buckets of sap in the sugar bush, caring for pigs, chickens, and cows, fixing fences, building things, and tearing down things! Here's a before and after of the old milk house
It's kind of painful to start the season out complaining about the weather... It has been just relentless. Too wet and too cold really sums it up.
Our longest stretches without snow or rain were 5 days in early May and 6 days in mid May! We've had over double the average amount of both snow and rain for this point in the year. But after last seasons drought and seeing its effect on all over the country, we are trying not to be too upset about all this water falling from the sky. We've also been slowly learning that the weather is not a good thing for us to stress out about because it's out of our control. This is easier said than done, but a good practice in acceptance for us with an already stressful job. We've had some early direct seeded crops that didn't germinate and some wash out recently. We lost nearly $500 worth of sweet potato slips as they languished waiting to get into the ground when it was simply too cold and too wet to put them in. And delaying the first delivery for weeks and it's still going to be a light box... Those sorts of things make the weather hard to accept. It seems like unexpected and extremes are the new normal, so we are trying to be prepared for anything... But honestly, some blue skies would be welcome!
This spring has been a challenge, but we know that we will be better off at our new location which is nearer to the twin cities, has better soil, and more land to allow us to fulfill our goal of providing the fertility for our farm from our own farm. There will be some learning curves and change is always potentially difficult, but we are so grateful for CSA and our members who allow us to do what we love! We really can't imagine farming any other way and we look forward to NOT moving again!! We are glad to be getting the deliveries underway, however late or slim. It does not feel like Summertime unless we are pickin' and packin'! We hope to get some farm events going soon, once we figure out the timing of everything. Thanks so much for your patience this Spring. The summer and fall crops are already looking good, so we hope to have a pretty decent harvest once we get through the first few light boxes. Let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
and one of Otto for good measure