Sounds (and Sights) of Spring: the Sequal

After a week of summer weather, we spent our Sunday afternoon tucking in all of our baby vegetables in preparation for a winter storm. The snow started to fall while Craig and I organized the greenhouse and hooped and row covered 20 beds in our 2 hoophouses.

We're grateful for these indoor growing spaces that help extend our growing season. The crops that we have planted in here are cool season crops, and they are all pretty cold hardy. With our first harvest 10 days away, we’re babying these baby vegetables.

We are all happy for the sun today - for the sound of our roof shedding snow and the mud being tracked into our home. Hopefully my next update will be from the field!

Sounds (and Sights) of Spring

We've been savoring the gradual return of spring. The first killdeer, bluebird, meadowlark. The melting pond and the spring peepers’ songs. Dirty feet and the kids asking to eat every meal outside. The hum of tractors and the greenhouse fans. And the return of the many shades of green!

Outside farm work has been ramping up over the last month or so. Weekly greenhouse seeding, planting in the hoop house, cleaning up the packshed. It has been so nice to have this beautiful week for tractor maintenance, field prep, and hoop house weeding. There may be a couple of cold nights in the forecast, but spring is officially here!

Our first harvest for the spring share is only 2 weeks away. We've had a beautiful, restful winter, but we sure are looking forward to all that lies ahead! Fresh veggies - here we grow!

Full Days and Full Hearts

This week is our final week of the spring share season, and summer shares start June 8th. We’re entering into the whirlwind of late spring/early summer. Our weeks are full of planting, weeding, and harvesting. So many vegetables to care for - and eat!

Here are a few photos from the last couple of weeks…

Sugar snap peas - reaching for the sky!

Gabriella in the freshly weeded hoop house. Lots of greens and three beds of carrots. These will be our earliest carrots. We’ll start harvest about a month from now.

An example of a veggie driven dinner. Leftover chicken broth from the fridge, venison from the freezer, udon noodles from the pantry, the last of the carrots from 2021, fresh salad turnips, garlic chives, microgreens, and vitamin green in a delicious (and surprisingly kid friendly!) noodle bowl.

A rare family photo! Our days are full - and so are our hearts.

Spring has sprung!

I can officially wish you a happy spring! We just wrapped up our first full week of outside field work. Lots of planting! Onions, brassicas, rainbow carrots, spinach, lettuces…

The above picture is of garlic (planted last fall) poking through the straw mulch.

The hoophouse is looking gorgeous! Due to the slow spring, we have pushed back the start of our spring share one week. Our first harvest will be this Friday for next Wednesday’s first share! We’re looking forward to the return of fresh greens.

Where can you find Meadowlark veggies in april?

You can find our produce on the menu at Wonewoc’s Farm and Hearth Woodfired Bistro!

Storage veggies like our beets and cabbage…

And our red onions in their French onion soup!

Authentic slow, local food served in a welcoming, cozy atmosphere. We highly recommend Farm and Hearth for your next relaxing evening out. Let Stacia and Jeff know that your farmers sent you!

We’re now a family of 6!

We welcomed our fourth child last week. Maximilian Jude was born March 22nd at 1:15am. He was 9 lb 3 oz and 22 in long. We’ll call him Miles or Max. We are all grateful to be home - healthy and enjoying lots of baby snuggles.

“Pray that my love will be without limits.” – Saint Maximilian Kolbe in his last letter to his mother.

The hoophouse and greenhouse are filling up with baby vegetables. The cold temperatures mean not much growth for our crops seeded and transplanted in the unheated hoophouse. The sunshine sure has been appreciated these last few days!

Greenhouse work and onion seeding

We fired up the greenhouse this week, and Craig has been working on seeding our onions. Onions and alliums are a staple in our crop plan and kitchen. We grow 14 different types of alliums - including scallions, pearl onions, shallots, torpedo onions, cippolini, sweet, red, pink, white, and yellow storage onions.

It feels good to smell the soil and see the baby veggies soaking up the sunshine!

Hello, March!

March is here, and the farm is waking up from a restful winter. Our first seedlings are thriving under grow lights in our basement. Fennel, frisée, head lettuces, and spinach for the spring shares, and rosemary for the herb garden.

Our second hoophouse has its plastic on! We are so excited to have more hoophouse growing space. This space enables us to offer 20 additional spring shares. We’ll also be growing lots of 🥕🥕carrots🥕🥕 in here!

And the kids are thoroughly enjoying the beginning of mud season.

We’re patiently awaiting the arrival of our fourth child in the coming weeks. Hoophouse planting, greenhouse seeding, and spring preparations will be sprinkled with plenty of baby snuggles!

In full swing

July is well underway, and we just arrived at week 6 of our 20 week summer season. Our days are full - and so are the walk-in coolers! It has been a beautiful growing season so far.

Greenhouse seeding continues!

Broccoli has been bountiful and beautiful.

Our garlic crop is almost completely harvested. Just one more bed to go! The garlic will cure in our greenhouse for 2-3 weeks before getting cleaned and trimmed.

Each Tuesday, we pack our shares. It is amazing to see all of the clean, colorful produce lined up and ready to head home to our members.

Blessings are everywhere!

Strawberry Planting

On Thursday, we planted 900 row feet of strawberry plants. Strawberries are one of the 3 fruits that we grow, and they sure are a labor of love. This is the first year that we are growing them on landscape fabric (primarily for weed control). We’ll harvest a few berries from these plants during this year of establishment, but next year the berries will be in full production mode.

We buy dormant, bare root strawberry plants. This variety is Honeoye. When planting the berries, you want the roots to be planted vertically. Craig made this awesome little tool for making the job much easier.

A simple piece of metal! It is funny how the littlest things can make such a big difference.

Welcome, Dexter!

We have been looking for a puppy for the last 6 months, and we are delighted to welcome Dexter to the family. He is part redbone/Australian cattle dog/lab and is 14 weeks old. Our 6 year old Mountain Cur, Cassiopeia, has been patient and playful. These are working dogs on the farm - mainly working to keep the deer away from our produce.

The last week has been beautiful for our field work. We seeded down new bio strips and drive lanes. Oats and peas and bell beans were planted as cover crops to build soil and fix nitrogen. Ground was prepped for our first spring veggies and strawberries.

It sure does feel like spring!

New Season, New Tools

We grow produce on a relatively small scale, but 3 acres is a lot to manage by hand! A tractor is used for tillage and some cultivation, but seeding, transplanting, harvest, and weeding is all done by hand - with the help of some amazing tools.

This season, we have added a few new items to our tool lineup. This is our new gravity seeder in action.

Belle is pouring pelleted mini lettuce seeds onto the seeder. The seeder is shaken until one seed is in each hole. The top plate of the seeder is pushed and each seed drops through a larger hole into the dibbled cell below.

Each one of those seeds will grow up to be a crisp head of mini romaine lettuce. We’ll share the next part of their journey - transplanting with a paper pot transplanter - in just a few short weeks!

Working Together

Back in 2011, Craig and I spent our first season working on a vegetable CSA farm. We had almost no experience growing food before that first season as interns at Turnip Rock Farm. By the end of the growing season, we had not only fallen in love with the farming but found that we loved working together.

Transplanting spinach in the hoop house

We savor the times that we are able to work on a task together. We joke that a couple hours of shared work is a lovely date - but it is the truth! Working in the soil towards a shared goal is good for the soul (and our marriage!).

Sunshine and Hoophouse Work

We are all enjoying the return of sunshine and physical farm work. The hoophouse is such an amazing place this time of year. Warm and full of life! Craig has been working on revamping our raised beds in preparation for planting for our spring shares. (And the kids have been enjoying rides on the broadfork!)

Those little green sprouts may not look like much, but these baby carrots will be in our members’ shares in late May/early June. Planted the last week of February, carrots can take up to two weeks to germinate (especially in cool weather). When Craig pulled back the row cover and we discovered the little bunny eared carrot sprouts, there was much celebrating. Little Leo even dressed for the occasion…

Here we grow!

Seeds are organized, and our new germination chamber is full. Today, we fired up the greenhouse! The early spring share crops, like fennel and scallions, have been under grow lights in our basement. The transition to the greenhouse is a welcome one - the full spectrum light and plentiful space to grow.

The snow is melting… spring is on its way!