Week Three of CSA.

The third week of CSA deliveries has come and past. There have been some set backs that we have had to overcome and are still dealing with. We have been slowly regaining control in the vegetable gardens. We could not get in the fields to cultivate because of all the moisture. It was stressful not to be able to see what was growing withing the weeds. Now with a lot of the weeding done we are more confident with the progress of the gardens. Because the weeds grew so fast we are now discovering what seeds were smothered out and are doing some reseeding. We have not started selling at the Kingston Farmers Market yet because we are focusing on the CSA and making sure that we have what we need each week for the bags. The potatoes are doing much better than last year. We will be offering new potatoes this week in our bags.















We have been making some final decisions about the open farm day. August 15th will be the day. The time will be between 1pm and 4pm. We will be putting more details in the August newsletter.

Week 3
Spring Turnips
Green Onions
Mixed Lettuce

Carrots

Beet greens

Garlic Scapes

Snow peas

Tatsoi

At least we have rain...

The weather hasn't been too cooperative this year. With all of the rain it has been hard to get on the fields to even weed. The weather has been great for the slugs unfortunately. The slugs ate a whole bed of lettuce in the greenhouse. The temperatures have been cooler here as well.

Thinking back to last year this year is a lot better already At least things are growing even if not as fast as we would like them. Last year there was no rain for irrigation and the irrigation spring on the mountain couldn't recharge itself fast enough. We dug two new irrigation holding ponds on the mountain.

July 8th was our first CSA delivery day. Because we took on more customers this year it takes a full day of non-stop work to get the bags ready for 4:00pm. It will take a couple of weeks to get the systems going smoothly. The most trying part of the evening deliveries was finding street names and house numbers but we found everyone.

Because of the wet weather we were just able to get the lime and pelletized chicken manure spread on the fields. The oats and clover will be sowed this week.

KINGTSON FARMER MARKET

If you have been to the Kington Farmers Market you would have noticed that we have not been selling our produce yet. We are aiming to start in August. We have put off going to the market to concentrate on the CSA bags.

In the above picture there is Mizuna with honey mustard, balsamic vinegar and alive oil. Tangy but good. Andrew made up some club sandwiches using our lettuce, chicken and bacon. We had swiss chard, spring turnips and tatsoi sauted with chinese cabbage and garlic.

More Pictures

We have been eager to get on the fields. Today the garden that will have mostly greens and some root veggies is being tilled and hilled. Hopefully we will be sowing this particular garden today or tomorrow with crops that don't mind the still chilly temperatures. (spinach, lettuce, green onions etc). The drip irrigation has been placed the in the greenhouse. We invested in the drip irrigation last year and it has proved to be invaluable. We were taking too much time hand watering the previous year. We used drip irrigation on the outside gardens too last year and we are hoping to put more down this year.

We are very pleased that our garlic survived the winter. There was some damage from deer traffic through the field this winter. Most of the damage was the garlic being uprooted by the deer walking through. The garlic is now almost four inches tall.

A New Season.

I thought it was about time I updated our blog considering that the 2009 season is about to start. We have been seeding leeks, celery, green onions and bulbing onions. We are keeping the trays under growing lights in our hallway and in the basement. This is our first year mixing our own potting soil. We have started to prepare the greenhouse for spring planting. We will be planting the greenhouse the first of April.

Our parsnips are still in the ground from last season. We hope that the mice and deer didn't find them during the winter. We will putting up crop protection from the deer this spring. We have never seen deer as we have this winter. There has been alot of damage done to the apple trees and cedars.

We have been corresponding with our CSA members from last year and the response has been great for the upcoming season. We are happy to be adding more spaces for this season's CSA.

The seed orders have been placed and now we wait for them to be delivered. We will be trying some new varieties of fruit and veggies this year. Ex. melons, squash, onions, tomatoes and garlic. We are excited to see if the garlic we planted last fall has survived the winter season. There was plenty of snow cover and we mulched it well so everything should be good.