A father's perspective: Getting Closer

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

As might be guessed, a lot has been going on this past month. For the most part things have been going well. The first round of seeding has been completed and as of the past week, the second round of seeding has commenced. Winter squash, summer squash, cucumbers, melons, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers (hot and sweet), and basil have all been seeded with great germination and are on the cusp of being planted. The second wave of eggplant/peppers/tomatoes and other varieties have also been seeded, have germinated and are starting to grow. For a brief time the green house emptied out as numerous plants were moved to the outside tables in preparation for being planted. And flowing from this, planting has been going on. Yesterdays rain (5/16) will slow fieldwork up for a couple of days, but everything is on pace for the start of market season. And though fieldwork was slowed, the rain was beneficial. Even though the farm has a well and David is able to irrigate the fields, there is a difference in the appearance of the plants when contrasting how they are when it rains and how they are when irrigated. It is hard to describe other than to say that when the plants are rained on they seem ‘perky’. They seem to stand more upright. They seem, in a very subjective sense, to be more alive. It’s one of those things that you need to see to fully appreciate.

The exact starting date for markets has yet to be determined, but as of now the target is the first week of June. We continue to take things one day at a time as we move forward. Further!

One other thing to note. Last year at this time deer were wreaking havoc. The first two plantings of Swiss chard and beets were decimated. Actually there was only supposed to be one planting of each, but once they were eaten a second planting was done and this one was also promptly eaten. They finally left a third planting alone.(Point of information- When seeding David will seed more than he intends to plant. One reason for doing this is to take into account that there might be some germination problems. Extra seeding can make up for this. The other reason is that by having extra plants you can replant if some of the plants don't survive being planted. In this case having extra plants allowed David to keep planting. However, despite this, we did not have beets or Swiss chard at the first markets, as should have been the case.) To date the deer have not been problematic. This was the case during the first three years of the farm with last spring being the exception. Fingers are crossed that this continues.

Looking forward to seeing new and returning CSA members the first week of June! Looking forward to seeing friends at the farm and in Philly. It is bounty time; Farm On!!

A sea of tomato plants. They await planting on the tables outside the greenhouse.

A bed of garlic! Last year's garlic was afflicted with white blight. This caused the garlic to not develop to its full size. It still tasted amazingly delicious, but the bulbs and cloves did not grow to the appropriate size.