Seeding, planting, and CSA
Can you believe it? The CSA begins in just one month! So many plants are ready to go in the ground, and we are busy seeding, hardening off, and transplanting. We welcome the rain and the natural watering it’s doing for our seedbeds of carrots, radishes, turnips and spinach, as well as our newly planted elderberries, pears and cherry trees.
The next big perennial planting will be raspberries: 100 feet of them! The balance between annuals and perennials is energizing us more and more, and as we plant perennials like raspberries that will be ready to harvest in just a year, or elderberries that should be producing in just two years, they keep us filled as we wait for the pears and apples to grow into production size many years down the road.
This past winter, Edge and I took a weekend “retreat” at home while our son spent the weekend with his grandparents. It gave us time to look at our goals for the next 5 and 10 years, and perennials took a center stage. Our goal for this land is to tend it in a way that enhances its already vibrant nature, to build healthy soils, and to balance our work in a sustainable way throughout the seasons. Planting berries, fruit trees, and perennial flowers is a natural way to increase the biodiversity, expand the harvest, and offer long lasting crops that can sustain us in many ways as we grow older ourselves. Of course, vegetables still play a large role in the vision of our farm, and we welcome the balance that annuals and perennials bring together.
As we head into May, we’re entering full-on planting mode, in sight of the first CSA harvest on May 30. We do hope you’ll join us for a bountiful season! You can sign up for your share on our website.
We wish you a lovely spring time week!
In Good Heart,
Katie and Edge