Is there anything more magical than a springtime snowstorm? While my first instinct as a farmer may have been to moan and cuss at the weather gods, there was no way not to rejoice in the beauty of last Wednesday's sunrise, and the light cast on all that freshly fallen snow. A springtime snow is so much more beautiful than a mid-winter snow because it is so ephemeral and fleeting. For much the same reason that fresh bouquets of flowers are so special, in that they have to be appreciated in the moment, you know a spring snow will be gone within a few hours and you must seize the moment and relish its beauty right now. I guess this is all just a metaphor for life - be in the moment, for this too won't last.
So, while all the rain and snow was a setback to getting anything planted this season, you really did have to take a moment to enjoy this late reminder of the winter past. At mid-day, while there was still quite a bit of snow still on the ground, it had warmed up enough to get the peepers singing in the wetlands - clearly a sign not to lose hope for the coming spring.
While it has remained too wet and gooey to plant anything in the fields yet, we have been busy getting lots of stuff ready in the greenhouses. Lettuce and assorted early vegetable crops are just about bursting out of their containers, waiting to be put in the ground. Needless to say, once things dry out, we will be working like crazy to plant everything and get back on schedule.
We have also been busy seeding the warmer weather crops like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant - both for the farm and to sell the plants. We anticipate growing about 400 tomato plants for the farm and over 1500 for sales. It always amazes me the biomass of food that can be produced from a hand full of seeds; from the plants that we expect to produce it's possible that over ten tons of tomatoes could be grown!
We start each plant by seeding into a mini-block, which is a compressed soil block about a half inch cubed. This allows us to start about 300 plants in the standard 10 x 20 flat.
Tomatoes and peppers like it warm - about 80 degrees, so we place the flats on heat mats to keep the soil warm and speed up the germination.
After the plants have germinated, we pot them up to grow them up to size. We are growing many of the popular varieties that we've grown in the past, but also have a few new surprises for this season. More on that later.
Even with the late spring, we did manage to get the first set of lettuce planted out to our fieldhouse. It's been staying pretty cold at night still, so it's not growing very fast, but at least we got something planted. I don't expect it will be big enough to cut by our first market, but should be ready by mid-May.
We also have been working on our shiitake mushroom production. Drilling holes in all those logs we cut last month, and inoculating them with sawdust spawn. These logs won't be in production until next year, but last year's logs will be ready to produce as soon as it warms up later in the spring.
On a side note: our farm website has been totally revised and updated - just another one of those winter projects. Be sure to check it out at www.newminglewoodfarm.com. If you are in the Saratoga area, we will see you at the farmers' market in just a couple of weeks.
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