Breaking New Ground

Thanks to everyone that has signed up for this year’s Farm Share. Hopefully there are some readers that came to the website after finding a Farm Share flyer at their door after efforts to canvas neighborhoods near pick up sites. Early sign ups really help the farm out in the spring as expenses are kind of high without a lot of produce ready to be harvested. These early sales make it so we can keep on track with all of our planting and keep up the momentum we already have this season with favorable weather and a larger team. We are really excited about the ammount of produce we already have in the ground outside and already in need of more hoop house space as they are full of over twenty kinds of tomatoes.

art tractor

As always, we are growing every season and breaking new ground. Art says his favorite thing to do is work ground, and with such nice dry weather he will be doing a lot of that this weekend. Yellow flowers have been adorning our overwintered kale for some time now are about to be turned in, but in the early season they make a great habitat for much needed polinators. Walking through the kale on warm sunny day one can hear a constant humming and spot bees with their legs caked in pollen.

outside prop area

We are still running out of space in our propagation houses with continued seeding and up potting of warmer weather crops. The cold tolerant brassica and beet starts get moved to an open air covered table to harden off before next weeks planting. This next planting we will get to use the new transplanter, which is a welcome addition after many seasons of laying out all the starts and planting by hand. Though an enjoyable activity on a nice day, the transplanter will allow us to get more done when weather windows are right, ensuring the best variety for farm shraes and markets. We will continue to seed every week through the whole season and will soon move on to seeding cucumbers, summer squash and winter squash along with salad items and brassicas, which are on a constant seeding rotation.

tomatillo

The tomatillos have been having a somewhat surprising growth spurt in the main propagation house and have been moved to the cooler one to wait a while before transplant. Some plants already have small latern shaped husks growing. This was a bit earlier than expected, but they are proving themselves to be strong plants given the sometimes cold spring weather. With a few nights of frost last week, our summer crops are still needing protection and all squash and tomatoes that have been planted remain covered in a few layers. We are looking forward to some warmer nights followed by rain, which is always a good combination for plant growth in the spring.

lettuce starts

Our farmer’s markets are just two weeks away! We have been busy getting plants together to sell so people can plant their own gardens. We will have a good selection of vegetables, with a focus on tomatoes as they are always the most popular. We will be at the Beaverton Market and Oregon City Farmer’s markets starting the first Saturday in May. This is when our season really kicks into gear and on top of the plantings, seedings, weedings and projects we get to harvest all the items we planted a few months ago when everything outside was still in winter mode. It seems like just a few weeks ago it was still winter and all we had were some tomato starts under lights on heated propagation mats. Time goes by really quickly every spring at the farm with so much to do and it is exciting and rewarding to see the seasonal changes happen so quickly. We have also been busy cleaning up the farm and organizing for our open house. Please come and bring friends, family and a picknic lunch and enjoy the farm scenery. More details are on the previous blog posting.

Thanks again to everyone reading and thank you to everyone that has signed up for the Farm Share!