Jay Hill Farm Blog!: March 2008

Busy Bee

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Wow! Please forgive my tardiness! This perhaps the busiest part of the year for us here on the farm!

Mom and Dad have been gone on holiday to celebrate my sister's graduation from the master's program in history at the University of York in England as well as their 30th (!!!) wedding anniversary. I don't begrudge them a moment of this time, as both are amazing feats. I am however, snowed under with the sheer amount of work that's required at this point. It makes the good old days of only working in the greenhouse seem so darn easy! :)

Quite a bit got done yesterday, which is wonderful. We planted our outdoor lettuce as well as outdoor beets. Next will be spinach (hopefully I won't be forever short on that crop!) and in a few short weeks we'll be planting the zucchini, winter squash, outdoor peas, and a whole host of other goodies!

For now what I would most like to say is that I appreciate the support all of you have show to the farm over the last few months. When I began this program, I truly believed we would be providing this service to a dozen or so people throughout the winter, allowing me to experiment in the greenhouse and make my car payment. :)

What I have found instead is a wonderful group of super-supportive, unbelievably smart folk who are dedicated to helping farms such as ours thrive - encouraging people in their community to think, buy, and support local!

For those of you who are currently engaged in "seasonal" and "local" projects for the year -- only buying what's in season and locally, you are at the forefront of a movement that will help build a better world for us all. As someone who began her life trying to explain what "organic" meant, I know that this can be an up-hill battle. Acceptance can only come gradually, and understanding is usually a bit behind that. Taking the forefront of any worthwhile cause can be daunting and I applaud your initiative and dedication!

Ill end this now, as it's 7:30 and the sunshine is streaming down, but I'm going to include a photo of myself with 2 of my sisters from Easter weekend (thanks so much for the day off!)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Cheers!

slugs...

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Jeeze! How has it been 9 days? I don't know where the time is going these days. Things are CRAZY here on the farm.

In the last week we've gotten most of the east field cleaned up (old pumpkin vines make great compost!) as well as some close in field. I've also dug 3 new rows in the greenhouse, so we planted a bunch of easter egg radishes as well as a new variety of sugar snap pea. As I mentioned before, I planted a different new pea variety in one of the other rows. I'm really looking forward to comparing them!

I also planted a row of d'avignion radishes, which are some of those beautiful french whites. For once I didn't over-seed (a very bad habit of mine) so they're growing by leaps and bounds!

My biggest concern at the moment, besides getting everything in on time, is that we're having a big problem with slugs. Strangely enough, they're only appearing in one of the rows of lettuce, but it means I have to do some serious cleaning to get a bag of salad mix put together. :(

There are several methods of getting rid of slugs organically, but our personal favorite here on the farm is beer. That's right, beer. For whatever reason, slugs love beer, they'll run (haha!) over to it and jump right in. I personally think this is the most humane way of dealing with a pest... honestly, what could be better than death by beer? Okay, maybe not... but I still like it.

Anyhow, the funnier parts of this method are: 1) As a child, my dad actually found a beer called "beer" ... It was in a white can, with red lettering and it just said "generic beer" on the side. 2) CSU (my alma mater ... go Rams!) has done a study on the effectiveness of beer as a slug trap, even going so far as to compare types! This article was written by one of my favorite professors of all time, Whitney Cranshaw who is also the author of Pests of the West. 3) After living in Prague, I am known to my liquor store as something of a beer snob. This is not necessarily true, but if I'm buying beer, it's probably an import. Yesterday I bought 3 cases of Busch Light... talk about wierding folks out! :) (Yes, I eventually explained... I couldn't let them think I would actually drink that stuff).

I have to say though, with the rising costs of fuel, the movement of large mono-cropped farms towards corn production for ethanol and the SERIOUS lack of hops for making beer, this method may become too expensive. When beer and bread are too expensive for the masses, I think of Rome.

Anyhow, that's the longest blog I've written yet, which I hope makes up for the long delay. It's now 6:19 a.m. and I think I see a touch of color in the sky. I'm off to let the chickens out and care for our menagerie of animals before I get picking for the day.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and a fantastic St. Patrick's day! (which is today in Ireland... the Pope officially moved it because the 17th will conflict with Holy Week) that's trivia for ya! So celebrate twice if you can!!!

Cheers!

Welcome to March!

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Well, things keep on keeping on here at Jay Hill. I'm so happy to see blue skies again, it's admittedly a much better site than the cloudy and overcast situation yesterday. I have to admit that we took a snow day. :-P

I spent most of the day doing organizational stuff here in the basement (and I watched a movie... can you blame me?) :)

We're on track to get a bunch done today though, which is mostly due to getting all of that old stuff out of my head and putting me back into the present. There are a lot of things that have to be done at any given time, so it's nice to get the junk flushed out.

Today's goals are fairly fast, though not necessarily easy. I have to dig three more beds, transplant the onions out of the old arugula beds, plant more lettuce and another row of my favorite, easter egg radishes. Once that's done, I'm going to check on all our seedlings. Mom planted 8 types of tomatoes this year! We'll still have our favorites from last year, including San Marzano, but we've also added some lovely yellow tomatoes and cherry tomatoes to the list.

Some news that will probably end up in an e-mail pretty soon is that the kale looks like it might try to bolt any day. The lovely warm weather that's making everything grow so fast has sent them into a dizzying shock, and since our new Kale is currently sitting at two inches tall, it may mean a small break in kale supply. *sigh*

Better news than the loss of kale is that the sugar snap peas are coming up! I did my normal morning walk-around yesterday and was excited to see them popping up green shoots!

And the best news, though it will have minimal impact, is that I planted an experimental box of nasturtiums in the plant studio in October. I didn't really expect anything to come of it, just wanted to see what conditions they can survive in. Well, not only do they survive, they thrive! We've gotten our first few blooms from them, so hopefully I can start putting nasturtiums in the salad mix again on a limited basis. *yay!*

Anyhow, that's all I have to say for the day. I'm off to get to work on all those tasks, we'll see how many I can actually get done.

Happy March all!

Cheers!

Blue Jay photo provided by Bill Schmoker Photography

Previous Trends

Archives