Down on the Farm

April in the Kingdom

Erica is a blog reader who phoned in a request. She is from the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont but is living in Colorado. She wanted some pictures to get a sense of our field layout. While I don't think these photos really give a coherent picture of the veggie field, they at least show off the wonderful April weather we have been having up here -- sun, sun, sunny, with 50s and 60s during the days and 20s and 30s at night. Dry, clear, with lots of stars at night.

Looking east toward the Connecticut River Valley and the White Mountains. On a clear day, you can see Mts. Washington and Cannon.

Facing south along one of the sod roads cutting through the veggie field.

To the west, with the sun in your eyes a little bit.

Looking north, with the green pickup truck across the field. This year we are expanding from roughly three acres to roughly five acres. As I took this photo, I thought, "How are we ever going to fill this up with veggies?" By late June, I predict we will have run out of space.

By the way, you will notice there aren't a heck of a lot of veggies out there yet. That is because it is still in the 20s at night. Erica said that the farm she works on in Coloado is already harvesting garlic. I laughed because we are still at least 10 weeks away from garlic, if not more.

Happy spring everyone!

Tomato flowers

Henry is five months old!

Happy birthday Henry! With Uncle Geoff and Lois who were visiting this weekend.

Garlic's up

The garlic we planted last fall is coming up in the field. And it has taken until late April for me to get 2 weeks behind on everything that needs to happen this time of year. I think last year I was 2 weeks behind in late March! So that's progress. And it looks like another beautiful day today. It is hard not to be optimistic about this season these days.

Spring is here to stay (hopefully)

So I took the snow chains off of the John Deere tractor today. It may seem like I am a little late in doing so, but you never know.

Plowin' time

It has been a relatively warm and dry spring, so the field is almost ready for plowing. Time to get things moving around here!!

Localvores!

I am on the board of NOFA-VT, and one of our quarterly meetings was yesterday. I always come away from these meetings pretty jazzed up because the NOFA board and staff are an amazing bunch of people doing great work for organic farms.

Part of yesterday's meeting involved a presentation from Barbara Duncan, who is the Executive Director of the Vermont Earth Institute. She explained to the board that there are a series of localvore networks sprouting up in different parts of the state. For example, here is one group in the Champlain Valley area of Vermont, and another one in the Upper Connecticut River Valley.

Localvores are people who try to eat only locally produced products, and typically these groups will have local-only potlucks, or challenge themselves to eat totally locally for a week or month at a time. Then the whole group helps everyone else in the group to reach the goal, by pooling information about farms, recipes, and products. As you can imagine, it is easier to eat all-local up here in August than it is in January, but either way it takes effort and ingenuity. I mean, we don't grow too much coffee, or mine too much salt, up here, even in August. But localvores try to do it all!

Anyway, Barbara wanted to discuss with the board how NOFA might be able to hook localvores up with local farms, or how NOFA could otherwise help support this movement. We had a great brainstorming session. Maybe we will have a little household local only challenge this spring or summer. It looks like it would be fun.

Turnip greens

Some salad turnips got ahead of us, so won't get transplanted. We ate the tender new greens though. Good.

Soon

The remains of some feast from last year. Mesclun, pickled beets, cucumber salad, roasted potatoes, veggie plate with peas, salad turnips, string beans, and bowl of cherry tomatoes. Soon soon soon!!

Buds on the sweet peppers

Seeding trays

Dana came to help seed trays. There is a lot of seeding to do!!

Usually we can entice Dana to come work (and visit) with the promise of a bright warm greenhouse, but today it is so cloudy that even the greenhouse is cool. And they're predicting snow -- a lot of snow -- for this afternoon.

Greenhouse season

Waverly still fits under the tables, though not quite as well as last year.

Surveying her domain.

Seedlings

Beets

Cucumber