I just wrote a long blog about our organic certification, and now I’m going to rely on pictures again to give a farm update.
I’m about to send an email to everyone who pre-ordered seedlings to remind them that pick up is this weekend, and which day/location they picked, so if you are wondering, you won’t have to wonder for long!
Speaking of seedlings – Kevin, Joella and Terry finished the Hardening off tunnel last Wednesday and then we filled it with seedlings. We really are like those cartoons running out over open air, building the bridge in front of themselves this year. Mostly our seedlings are doing really well, we’ve had a few losses, more about that in your order updates, but our inventory looks really good.
Here is the schedule for our retail sales for seedlings:
On-site in Pepperell
May 16th, 22nd and 23rd, 9am-3pm
Holliston Community Farm
May 16th 9am-3pm
May 18th (Tuesday) 1pm-6pm
We had our first CSA last week and our new-to-us box truck got to put in a little work besides moving farm equipment and supplies from Bellingham/Franklin to Pepperell. It was great to see everyone at distribution, and I don’t know about you but I have been scarfing fresh greens all week! More to come this week!
Dave, the farmer who has farmed this land in Pepperell, and still lives here in a cottage on the property, let us clean up and use his boom sprayer that he made himself. We used it to apply predatory nematodes to our onions and brassicas (broccoli/cabbage). They will grow and hopefully eat onion maggots and cabbage root maggots which can cause stunting and major losses in new transplants. I found onion maggot while scouting this evening (not surprised, we are planting after hay which usually means higher rates of onion maggot). I’m hoping our application was well timed and these pests won’t cause too much damage.
We got some of our first flowers in the ground on Saturday and then planted more today. We planted: ammi, snap dragons, dianthus, cosmos, rudbeckia, atriplex, bachelors buttons, calendula, stock, gaillardia, coreopsis and more. If you haven’t signed up for your flower share, we still have a few left!
Does anyone know anything about maples? Are they setting record numbers of seeds this year? Have I just missed this in the past? I feel like I pay attention, and maybe it’s just that I’m a little further north but the colors of the seed pods as they develop are so striking. It’s been like fall foliage for a while.
And, a picture of my plate on Saturday evening. We’ve been doing a lot of pizza and hot dogs lately . . . it’s just that kind of year. But on Saturday I made a quiche with our eggs, asparagus from our neighbor, mushrooms from our neighbor and greens and carrots from the farm (yes, we have overwintered carrots!). It was pretty special. I planted flowers all day with a friend (and by all day I mean we planted flowers from 3:30-5:00 after spending the rest of the day gathering supplies and preparing beds for planting. I like to say that we have to do a lot of work in order to be able to do our work . . . but it was very relaxing.
We are resting up to the best of our ability (said the farmer who was still blogging at 10:00pm) to get ready for the big seedling sale this weekend. We can’t wait to see everyone!
Upswing Farm 