What's New at the Farm? Spring snowfall

It's beginning to look a lot like spring even with the snow we received on Monday and Tuesday this week. One nice thing about snow this late in the season is we know it won't last long.

Signs of spring are showing up in lots of places now. I've seen lots of ducks and a few turkey vultures. The sap is running strong and the ice on the lakes looks thinner by the day. The snow has dropped about four feet outside my office window so I can see the Main Trial field and the crops we left there last fall. The snow that was threatening the greenhouses of two weeks ago is but a memory now. Fine by me.

The ducks are well into breeding season now and are anxiously awaiting the ice out of the pond. This is the second full year for many of them and they are laying eggs all around -- under the henhouse, in the garage, and other "hidden" spots we'll find throughout the spring. Hopefully we'll find them before any critters do, like foxes and minks, both of which are plentiful around here.

Pearl and Franklin enjoying a sunny day.

Here at the farm we're gearing up for another busy season. The greens in the poly tunnel seem to have over wintered fine and are growing slowly now. They speed up once we get some sunny weather. Each time I look at them they have grown.

The positions we had open on the Farm Crew for the season are filling up fast. We should finish interviewing and hiring this week. We have lots of exciting projects to do this year and I'm looking forward to getting out of the office and back into the field. Some projects -- trials to be exact -- are new. They include row cover trials, plastic and paper mulches, insect netting, potting mixes and fertilizers and different colored plastic mulches.

Other projects: We have an irrigation pond to design and dig, a new driveway to put in, and lots of drain tile to install.

We have an 18-acre field we are anxious to put into production and with this infrastructure we'll be able to – hopefully for the 2012 growing season. I'm anxious to get crops planted over there – it's perfect soil for carrots and other root crops – I think there's one rock in the whole field and that came in on some compost.

While I was out taking pictures this week here's one of the farm.

It looks kind of bleak as we had just received snow and we're expecting more. Soon this will only be a fading memory:

And what's growing in the greenhouse? Tomatoes of course!

Until next week – looking forward to spring.
Brian