If you sat beside a table of farmers talking about the weather you'd hear the one question they had in common: When will we get a break from this cool, wet and windy Spring? A few days ago on the morning edition of NPR, National Public Radio, they talked about home gardeners not being able to plant because it's been too wet, that even conventional row cop farmers have not been able to plant their corn where normally corn would be in the ground by May 1st.
Same is true for us as well. We've kept up on our end as far as keeping on schedule in the greenhouse seeding hundreds of vegetable and herb plants, hardening them off outside preparing them to be planted in the ground and then the waiting game began. Yes, there were days between rain but the temperatures remained so cool and cloudy that the soil didn't have a chance to dry up and then again fell the rain. As we found the breaks in the weather we all dashed out into the fields like kids running out of school for recess to play.
It is at this point that we see that we have no choice but to post pone our first CSA pick up. Please mark your calendars for Thursday, June 16th to be your first pick up of the season. We are just as eager as all of you awaiting local, organically grown, fresh produce and fruit! Please send us an email if you have any questions.
Our day-old egg layer chickens that arrived to us in February are growing very well. They are now 15 weeks old and will soon begin to lay their first eggs. The egg laying cycle begins when they are about 18 weeks old. Their first eggs, called pullets, are small at first and then begin to size up as the chicken matures. This season you'll notice that we've added a few different varieties. Below to the left is a Black Star followed by an Isa Brown pictured under them is a lovely Barred Rock. Although they are so different from each other they all lay wonderful brown eggs. These chickens live close to our grass-roof pick up location on the farm so everyone will be able to enjoy visiting them.
New this season..............
Our fruit division is expanding! Gooseberries and currents were planted this week, a few hundred raspberry bushes were planted last week and a total of 200 apple trees, 13 varieties, were planted the second week of May. There are also many many blueberry bushes that are waiting for the soil to dry up so that we could plant them along side our already existing bushes that were planted last season.
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| We prepped the fields in April by spreading compost on the Apple beds. |
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| After the compost is tilled in we dug the wholes for the trees. |
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Joe, who is in charge of our fruit division, planted and watered the first apple tree. 199 more to go! |
Also new this season.....
Next week I'll talk about our multi breed pigs and......
our hoop house tomatoes!
Please remember to mark your calendars for June 16th as your first Vegetable pick up! Next week we'll let everyone know the date for the first fruit pick up. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to send us an email, we'd love to hear from you!
Your farmers,
Tania and Chris Cubberly
