Produce is finished for the season. This newsletter will be your way of knowing when we have veggies again in the spring.
Produce boxes and more will pick back up in late March or early April, depending on the weather, so stay tuned – the weekly newsletters will continue to keep you informed throughout the wintertime. Thanks so much to all of you for a fantastic 2015 season!!
For some reason, last week’s 2015 year-in-review email didn’t land in some people’s inbox. If you were one of those people, read it here. We are trying to work out a few kinks with MailChimp, this email platform, and it’s just taking awhile to fix them. In the meantime, please make sure we are in your email address book to ensure delivery each week!
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This field beneath Lilly’s House is in full-sun on Monday morning, when it was completely shaded out before removing the trees – this will make for an immensely more productive round of crops this spring, which we are most excited about! And the cedar trunks and branches will be used as fence posts, arbors, and potentially some unique artwork in the coming years – nothing goes to waste around here.
Ruth and I sowed dozens of varieties of spring and flower seedlings last week, including but not limited to snapdragons, stock, campanula, eucalyptus, eryngium, Queen Anne’s lace, foxglove, sweet William, and yarrow. We have lots of beautiful flower varieties at Renfrow’s whose seeds can be started indoors alongside your tomato and peppers in the coming months. I will have a photo update of these germinated seedlings next week!
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You may have a notion that farmers lie around and read novels during these slow winter months when there is nothing to harvest and little to plant, and while I admit that I will get a chance to catch up on some fun reading and sewing projects, this time is in no way slow and boring for us!
Here’s a sneak peek at just a few of the events and projects up our sleeves:
- Jeff Rieves and Pressly will be giving a spring gardening talk at Wing Haven Gardens in Myers Park later in January. Date, time, and specific details will be provided next week.
- Pressly will be planning out the farm’s entire 2016 planting calendar and field map. Even MORE tomatoes, broccoli, sunflowers, and collards – check! We are going to be pushing the envelope on maximizing our field space.
- Ruth, MB, and Pressly will be weighing up seeds at the hardware store and making preparations for months before our busy seed season begins in mid-March.
- Planting potatoes, onions, spring garlic, strawberries, and asparagus are all ordered and awaiting arrival – newsletter folks are always the first to know when we receive new gardening items! Expect the first round of collard, broccoli, kale, and cabbage transplants to be in our greenhouse during the first week of February.
- Pressly is going to a flower farming conference in March
- We are working on posting all of these newsletters on the farm website so that newcomers can see old posts and that our resources will be available to anyone who wants to see what we’re doing and learn a little bit in the process!
Take care and stay warm this week!
~Pressly Williams,
Ruth Harris,
& the farm crew
& the farm crew
