Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has greens – lettuce, spinach, salad and braising greens, parsnips, sun chokes, potatoes, cilantro, and asparagus. Field Notes. Whew! We had 80+ degrees one day and under freezing a couple nights later. It was a bit shocking. Some pepper and tomato plants got nipped inside the green house, and Ken will replace them. we are watching the fruit – last year we lost several apples and most …
Spring on the farm is… BUSY. Ken left after mid day meal to go do field work in preparation for planting over the next couple days. He had no idea when he would be in for supper. I have been doing spring cleaning and wrapping up weaving, and then I realized he might be in any time so I made three salads for suppers. First is a radish salad. I scrub, slice and salt the …
Tonight there are frost warnings. Once asparagus grows above soil level it is vulnerable to frost. And once frozen, it is inedible. So, today Ken picked everything above soil level, and we have some short pieces. They are weighed out the same as the usual bunches of spears. Advantage of shorties? MORE TIPS!
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has greens – lettuce, spinach, salad and braising greens, cilantro, parsnips, sun chokes, onions and potato onions, potatoes, and asparagus. Field Notes. The big news this week is the first picking of asparagus! Now Ken will be out every other day picking. We will be watching the weather; asparagus does not take a frost. If it freezes it becomes inedible. If you get short spears they were …
Ken encourages broody hens. Broody hens want to sit on eggs and hatch out chicks. In our experience chicks with good mothers have a head start – someone to care for them, teach them chicken skills, and protect them. Once a hen continues to sit in a nest box over night, Ken starts to watch for a couple days. Then he moves her to a quiet, undisturbed area, places some eggs under her, and she …
Each year we get piglets. Pigs are an important member of the team here. They are four legged rototillers. We rotate them from project to project. Some years the y clear new garden space, renovate areas, clear fence lines, etc. They love to dig! And they eat culls from the garden – lower cabbage leaves, broccoli plants, etc. When they arrive they are small, and Oscar takes on the job of nanny. This year we …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has greens – lettuce, spinach, sorrel, arugula, and potatoes, onions, garlic, parsnips, sun chokes. Field Notes. Ken is planting and transplanting and cultivating. Saturday night he transplanted onions while he listened to Garrison Keillor on his radio ear phones. Sunday night he cultivated to Wisconsin public radio’s Simply Folk show. And today he is preparing for the arrival of piglets. Pigs are useful four legged tillers. …
Ken is one of the most consistent cultivators I ever met. He gets out once the soil has dried after a rain and breaks the crust and kills any weeds in the cotton stage He has several “weapons of mass destruction” as he calls them! He moves down the row faster than I can walk. It looks great. Sunday he listened to Wisconsin public radio’s Simply Folk show and thinned carrots and cultivated all the …
The flowers are all ahead of schedule! Most years the hepatica and daffodils are usually the first weekend in May for our spring opener. This year they bloomed about Mid April The cherries and plums are blooming. We have a hardy bush cherry variety called Nanking. We have a couple types of plums. The cow slips also known as marsh marigolds are also staring to bloom And the trillium are right on …
Although Ken is always planting – he has to plant greens for the winter salad mixes every week – there is a transition to planting crops that will be transplanted outside and crops that are what we call “full season crops.” These include bulb onions – Walla Wallas, red onions, storage onions and leeks, and cucumbers, melons, squash, peppers, tomatoes and eggplant. These crops are usually planted and transplanted once each season. Ken starts all …
