It’s been a while since our last blog post. Chalk it up to a very busy push to get lots and lots of plants in the ground ahead of the start of market season!
Our first CSA shares go out next Friday, and our first Farmers Market (the Ligonier Country Market) opens the day after that. Here’s a few updates/reflections on spring of 2024.
A Close Call with a Thunderstorm
Last night, we were woken up by our phones blaring an emergency warning – a tornado warning. Now, tornadoes are rare in our neck of the woods, and even when they do happen, they are very brief and usually not very powerful.
Nevertheless, we sleep on the second floor of a log cabin surrounded by large trees, and taking your chances with a tornado is never a good idea.
As we were hunkering down to the basement to wait out the storm, we heard a particularly loud and close crack of lightning. Fortunately, that seemed to be the worst of the storm that was otherwise just a lot of lightning and rain, no tornadoes.
This morning, however, we woke up to find the source of that huge thunder clap. Our very largest black cherry tree had a strip of bark seemingly exploded off of the tree from top to bottom, and scattered in the grass. The tree itself is still standing and the wood does not appear to be cracked, but we’ll definitely have to monitor its health moving forward.
All is well otherwise here at the farm, but it’s certainly a reminder of the power and force of mother nature!
Reflections on the Spring Planting Season
As we wind down on the long days of seed starting, transplanting, and direct seeding in the field, we’re collecting our thoughts before the rush of harvest/market season.
The amount of work that goes into beginning all of the life that produces food from the garden shouldn’t be underestimated. The soil blocking and transplanting takes time, but prepping the garden beds, setting up irrigation, and erecting trellises for tall-growing crops is altogether a ton of labor.
The other amazing aspect of spring (and really farming in general) is how it reconnects and deepens your relationship with mother nature. The exponential growth of spring just can’t be overstated.
Between March and May, we witnessed the rate of growth of our plants increase each week. At this point, all of our crops are probably growing double or triple the rate that they were just a month ago.
Before my farming career began, I always marked spring by those usual signs – tulips and daffodils popping up, then the grass starts to green, then buds on the trees, etc. All of this always seemed linear to me, meaning that growth just happened at a steady pace as spring progressed. Now as a farmer, I understand that not only does growth continue, it gets faster and more exuberant with each passing day.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Much about this spring was precisely according to plan, and even above expectations. Our first year of garlic production features huge and healthy garlic plants that will hopefully yield beautiful, gourmet garlic that we can be proud of. Our spring lettuce couldn’t look more full and couldn’t taste better.
But there’s been many setbacks and failures as well. We lost a good chunk of our tomato crop to a very hard freeze in late April, one that we weren’t expecting and weren’t prepared for. Luckily we were able to re-plant, but our tomatoes will be later than we’d like this year.
We’ve also had moderate pressure from flea beetles, which have done some damage and reduced the yield on things like arugula, turnips, and radishes.
Farming is never going to be perfect, and just about the only certainty is that things aren’t going to go exactly to plan! We embrace this reality by taking excellent notes on both successes and failures and trying our best to learn from both.
Looking Forward to Summer
We’re a little over a week away from the beginning of the summer harvest season, where we hope to spend over half of our time each week harvesting produce, washing and packing, and selling it directly to customers.
That doesn’t mean that seed starting and transplanting goes away, though. We’ll be putting new plants in the ground each week until early September – it’s just a shift in our focus.
We look forward to reflecting on how the summer months differ from the acceleration of life that we saw in spring.