Asparagus, radishes, salad turnips, bok choy, spring herbs, and salad greens are now filling our farmers' market tables. We also have plenty of fresh eggs, black beans, and our very own sauerkraut to round out a delicious meal. This week we begin our full market schedule, we hope you'll stop by: Tuesdays 3-5pm VA Hospital Farm Stand, in front of the main hospital at the gazebo Fridays 3-6pm Fairlee Farm Stand, in front of Chapmans Store Saturdays 9am-1pm Norwich Farmers' Market, look for our two red tents at the entrance Our CSA shares are off to a great start this week with a beautiful mix of salad greens, spinach, radishes, asparagus, bok choy, gold potatoes, and chives. It's salad season! This time of year, we eat greens with breakfast too! Check out the recipe section of our website for some ideas on how to make your own homemade salad dressings. It's a simple way to pull together a delicious salad in a variety of flavors for any meal of the day. We're glad this isn't snow! This white sea of remay covers our early cabbages, kale, broccoli, and cauliflower. We use row cover to protect all of our brassicas from flea beetle damage. In our high tunnels, scallions and basil are interplanted with trellised cucumbers. In the background, bok choy and spinach are ready to harvest for CSA shares. Vegetables galore! Our patchwork of fields is changing every day as we prepare the soil, plant more crops, and cover crops of rye and clover grow taller every minute. We finished planting our onions and leeks last week. Radishes, turnips, and spring successions of salad greens and brassicas are all starting to size up in the field. This week on the list to plant we have potatoes, parsley, radicchio, and the first of our field tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and zucchinis will go under row cover to protect them from possible frost. Ben has been working hard and looking super stylish in his fire-proof snail pattern welding hat. He's been designing and building a new cultivation system that's appropriate for the scale of our small farm. We're really excited to finally have this basket weeder set up on our Tuff-bilt cultivating tractor. With his new set up, Ben whizzed through the garlic weeding at high speed! The rear mounted engine of the Tuff-bilt allows for excellent visibility of the crop below. This little machine will be a big time saver for us.
The weather shifted at warp speed from frosty spring to hot, dry summer last week and all of our hoophouse greens doubled in size! Just in time- CSA Shares begin next week! We'll start the season with tender asparagus, crisp radishes, fresh herbs and salad greens, gold potatoes, sweet carrots, and heirloom black turtle beans. We still have a few CSA shares available so if you're not already a member, don't delay, sign up today! Learn more about our CSA options and sign up online for your weekly CSA delivery. This week we'd like to highlight our partnerships with Niko Horster at Shire Farm, and Jake Torrey at Honey Locust Farm. We've collaborated to bring you the highest quality local grass-fed beef, pastured poultry, and heritage breed pork conveniently delivered at a savings over retail. We've chosen to work with Niko and Jake because of the incredible knowledge and care they have for their animals, and the attention to detail that goes into raising their cows, chickens, and pigs on pasture. Their products have the highest level of nutrition and superior flavor. Did you know we've improved our delivery system for CSA Meat Shares for the upcoming season? Members will receive two bulk distributions during the summer season to have a better selection when planning weekly meals. Learn more about our Meat Shares and sign up online today! If you've already signed up for a Vegetable CSA share, you can simply log-in to your account and select from our add-on share options. You can get the highest quality local foods delivered at no extra distribution charge. We pass all the savings directly on to our CSA members. This sudden hot, dry weather has us working overtime to keep up with irrigation as we plant out our fields. We were able to pause for a moment yesterday to check out the magical dew lined up on the edge of the bok choy. Amazing!
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Newsletter Archives
December 2022
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