Since late February, Linnea, Sondra, Mel, Bethany, Melissa, Lisa, and Van have been planting thousands of flats in the greenhouses, consisting of onions, lettuces, tomatoes, cutting celery, herbs, broccoli, cabbages, kale, collards, cauliflower, kohlrabi, edible flowers, peppers, eggplant, leeks, escarole, beets, spinach, fennel, melons, and more. Because we were running out of greenhouse space, Chico's crew including Tony, Angel, and Eric built a new one which has been dubbed "the papa" due to its massive size.

In the past few weeks, we have been blessed with lovely weather, which enabled us to plant many of the vegetables outdoors. The transplanting process can be laborious considering much of it is done by hand, but certain vegetables can be planted with a transplanter, which makes the process easier and more efficient! 

Yesterday, we planted over 40,000 strawberry plants in record time. Our new transplanter enables us to plant 4 rows at a time, which is a dramatic improvement over our old 2 row planter. The strawberry crop for this year should be wonderful, provided we don't get any late frosts that our irrigation system can't handle. They should be ready around the first or second week in June; however, much depends on the weather between now and then. Check the website and facebook page around the beginning of June for strawberry updates.

Our highly anticipated asparagus is now available, and should continue to be for the next couple of weeks. It is for sale at our farm stand, as well as the milkhouse refrigerator. If you have a vegetable share and would like us to reserve some for you, call or email us! The price is $3.20/ lb. for CSA members, and $4.00/ lb. for non-members. We have an abundance this week, so large orders can be accommodated.

For all of our eager CSA members, summer share pickups will begin as soon as strawberry season starts, around the first or second week of June. In addition to the head lettuce, spinach, radishes, chinese cabbage, potatoes, chives, and cutting celery, we plan to have beets, carrots, Valencia oranges, and red grapefruit from our Florida farm. Of course, the above list of produce is tentative because it is so weather dependent, but we are hopeful! If you are interested in our CSA and would like to learn more about it, click here. If you plan to join and haven't sent your registration form and check in, please do so we are able to grow enough produce to accommodate you!

Over the weekend, we sent our young Jersey cows out to pasture, where they will live until late fall. They were thrilled to be out on grass after a long winter of snow and mud. The laying hens are utilizing their outdoor yard more now that the weather is nice, so the egg yolks may become a richer shade of orange due to an increase in vitamin D! 

Unfortunately, April was a very wet month, which prevented Mike, Jeremiah, Abraham, and Elijah from planting the barley at the optimum time. Thankfully, the ground dried up in the past couple of weeks and they were able to plant 100 acres of barley and clover on the 24th of April (clover is used as a cover crop, as it improves the nitrogen level of the soil). They are currently planting oats and clover, which brings the field crop total to approximately 500 acres to date. Soybeans, corn, and wheat are up next.