Spring is springing
Some people look at fields and see just land. We, as farmers, look at it and get excited about the life that lays within the soil, the worms, bugs, critters, the fertilizers feeding it and the wide variety of plants that will soon occupy that soil. We plant in expectation that within months our fields will be exploding with variety, color, flavor, and deliciousness by way of healthy organic fruits and vegetables. And soon we will bring in this year’s livestock component, likely turkeys and pigs.
Daily we continue doing more seeding and tending the seedlings shooting up in our greenhouses, giving them water in their little cells of healthy Fort Vee Vermont Compost. We make sure our equipment is ready to plow and disk the fields, and our great friends and neighbors at Freedom Rains Farm just down the road lend us their bed shaper so that it creates a perfect bed for the little transplants to take up residence in their new home after they have been hardened off.
Of course we have to balance our work with Mother Nature and bring protection from frost, water when needed and arm ourselves for battle with the pests and varmints that we know threaten our crops.
Primary among these pests is weeds.
Weeds. The bane of the organic farmer’s work. We hoe, we mulch, we flame burn, we sometimes kill them off with double strength vinegar. And they prove year after year to be the most resilient plants on the farm. So we have come to a place of understanding in our relationship with weeds. They start early in the season and dog us up until killing frost, but by that point in the season we are pretty much done with most of our harvesting except for some of the hearty, frost tolerant crops. After 40 years we like to think we know exactly how to manage weeds, but new varieties pop up, and sometimes we don’t have the staffing to keep up with weeding when other field priorities take prescedence.
Farmer Dick & farmwife Vic took a trip to Florida in late March to recharge prior to growing season ramp up, visiting family members who relocated there from NY. They took bikes, pedaled around, hit yard sales, spent days on the beach, slept in late (which is uncommon to farmers), Vic went to the Van Gogh digital exhibit at the Dali Museum while Dick went to an air show, they sought out organic foods and cooked great meals. And just when they thought they’d spent enough money, Farmer Dick found another outlet to empty his wallet. He loves to buy Florida vehicles, so he invested time in critical research to locate the just the right “new to us Grindstone mechanical family member”, an E350 van that we can use for markets and large deliveries.
So we’ve lots to do now that we’re back at the farm. The earth is warming up, and our first crop of each season, asparagus is starting to peek up through the soil after a long winter resting and gathering energy to produce it’s deliciousness. It requires picking daily — and in fact, if it is warm and rainy, we often have to pick it twice daily because it grows so quickly. Look forward to seeing it in our Best Boxes soon!