Blackbirds Return, Sabbatical Planned

The red winged blackbirds have returned to Minglewood... the first true sign that spring is surely on its way. We no longer can rely on the robins and bluebirds to send us this message since they now seem to be here all winter long. Winter has been relatively kind to us in this part of upstate New York - not much snow, at least for the second half of the season, and remarkably mild temperatures for early March.

The farm is slowly waking up from its winter hibernation and activity can once again be seen in the fields and greenhouses. The warmish weather motivated me to do some 'frost seeding' of clover and annual rye while there is still a chance for some frost. This is a great way to establish and early cover crop. Below you can see me broadcasting seed right over top of the winter killed cover crop of oats that were seeded last fall. The freezing and thawing of the soil actually works the seed into the soil where it will lie dormant until temperatures rise to the point to allow it to germinate in the early spring.
We have also been busy thinning out the woodlot to get our oak logs ready for inoculating with shiitake mushroom spawn. We will start the process of 'drilling and filling' in a couple of weeks when it's a little warmer. These logs will then sit for an entire year as the mushrooms colonize the logs, and be ready next summer to produce shiitakes.

Winter is the time for fixing things. One of this years projects has been to repair and rebuild the greenhouse table beds we use for growing baby salad greens. This has been a long and tedious project and I'm only a little more than half done. If I can stay on schedule, they should all be done before I need to start growing in them in another week or two.

The main heated greenhouse was started up last Monday, so the first seeding of lettuce and spinach are up and growing. These will be transplanted out to a fieldhouse or 'high tunnel' in early April and hopefully be big enough to harvest for our first markets in May.

Sabbatical Planned

In addition to all this activity, Tammara and I have been doing a lot of planning... for a big trip from August - October. For those of you who don't know, Tammara leads a double life. When she is not selling vegetables at the farmer's market or doing the farm bookkeeping, she is working as director of a non-profit organization that accredits land trusts, which in its self is more than a full time job. After eleven years of farming, and many more of full time work, we are both ready for a summer vacation. Recently Tammara's employer instituted a sabbatical program that will allow her to take twelve weeks off. With an offer like that, it was too good to refuse - none of us is getting any younger.

So, our plan is to take three months off this year, from August through October, and travel throughout the western US and Canada. We will farm this year, but on an abbreviated season from May through July. This was a difficult decision for us to make, we hate to disappoint our dedicated customers who shop with us all season long. Hopefully, this trip will give us time to reflect and re-energize, so that we can come back and continue to farm with renewed enthusiasm and excitement for many years to come. So take heart - this is our anti-burnout strategy, and will be back for the whole season in 2011.