Small scale, Local produce
We have a sun shining higher and higher each day, temperature forecasts gradually warming, and a near fully-booked 2022 membership! It’s with excitement and appreciation for our new shareholders and profound gratitude for both our returning 2021 members as well as those choosing not to renew, that we open this year’s growing season. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
We feel truly privileged that, through your investment and support, we’re allowed to do this kind of important work, to experience the challenges and and rewards of human-scale organic farming, and to be exposed to inevitable, priceless, unique lessons found on a farmstead. It’s not taken lightly, or for granted. The intrinsic value that we personally receive from the program is impossible to simply repay with a weekly box of food.
Your instinct to help grow small scale, local produce is admirable and humbling. While we can’t always replace the weekly trip to the grocery store in its entirety, it is ultimately our goal to help our families skip a few sections. We believe that by participating in CSA and supporting a regenerative, resourceful, functionally organic market farm and garden, you’re using your speech to promote short supply chains, mindful growing practices, and the importance of sourcing efficient, local calories.
After a long winter’s nap benevolently confined to their shelters and barnyards, livestock is back on pasture and have resumed ranging. Chickens again forage through leftover crop and weeds, fallow field stubble and litter. Our flock of sheep begin a rotational grazing schedule, only staying on the same paddock for a day at a time this early in the spring. It was a successful lambing season this winter as we introduced 10 new lambs to the world, happy and healthy, spending their days learning to graze grasses and forbs, and their nights sheltered, cuddled tightly with their mothers and siblings. Egg production has exploded with the season and collection has again become a regular chore.
And, of course, we are well on our way to producing a surplus of herbs and vegetables for our 2022 member families!
Our farm has three gardens: Block A, Block B, and Block C. The A block is built to hold 24 rows of crops, 50 feet long and 3 feet wide. Our B and C blocks are much larger and each were built to hold 18 rows of crops, 100 feet long and 3 feet wide. At the peak of summer, when all the blocks are planted and established, we have over a half acre of row space in production.
Each block receives a spring planting and a summer planting so that, in general, there is a newly-planted garden for each of the six months of the growing season: an April Garden, a May Garden, a June Garden, a July Garden, an August Garden, and a September Garden.
Our April garden has been sowed, mostly, except for a few early warm season vegetables like Cherry Tomatoes and Early Sweet Corn waiting patiently for the threat of frost to clear. This garden (Spring Block A) is where we begin with hardier cool season vegetables, herbs, and ornamentals. This is the garden where we grow brassicacae like Broccoli and Cabbage varieties, Bok Choy, Kohlrabi, Kale, and Arugula. In this garden, we’re also including cool weather herbs like Rosemary, Thyme, Parsley, and Oregano as well as salad greens. Root vegetables including Carrots, Beets, Onions, Turnips, Radishes, and Potatoes are out there too.
Some seeds get planted directly in the garden while many have been starting slowly in our indoor nursery since as early as February. We are encouraged by upcoming temperature forecasts and as a result, this ought to be a big week for the farm. Now is the time to begin marching thousands of individual warm season seedlings like Tomato and Pepper varieties to continue their slow adolescent growth protected in the hoophouse.
For the remainder of the month, as our first garden is filled, our attention shifts toward preparing the large warm season blocks for Tomatoes, Peppers, Squashes, Melons, Sweet Corn, and Beans. Each row will be broadforked for deep cultivation, amended with compost (Price Farms’ “Zoo Brew”) and organic fertilizer (Ohio Earth Food), and shallowly tilled to incorporate the amendments and prepare ideal tilth for planting. By July, after filling our third garden, we will be back to our first block, harvesting any remaining crops and preparing for its second planting to be harvested in the fall.
The crop plan, which feeds over 250 individuals, is in motion and we are so very close to reaching our goal of 40 membership families for the 2022 CSA season.
Thanks so much to our supporters for helping spread the word about the program organically- It has been critically important and helpful and we are, again, very grateful.
Expect further updates in these weeks leading up to our first harvest in Mid May and feel free to reach out with any questions or comments. We look forward to seeing our returning members, meeting our new shareholders, and feeding everybody this Spring!
Thanks again for your support,
Erin & David