Any one want to work?

We are thinking we will hold our first ever farm work day Sunday, May 25th... We realize that lots of people have things going on at this holiday weekend, but if only a handful of people are interested it will help us a ton!

This is still tentative and weather permitting. We are thinking of starting around 2:00 and going until around 5:00, or sooner if we get done...

If you plan on coming, or are thinking you might, please let us know, so we can coordinate with people and cancel at the last minute if the weather turns bad or it is to muddy to get onto the field! If you are bringing children please let us know so that we can send you a quick form to fill in. Please do not bring other people's children and just use your best judgement on if your kid is ready to help! Many of our seedlings are still tiny, so they need gentle hands to plant, discression to pull weeds and not seedlings, and care not to step on rows. I know several 5 year olds who would be great help, and many 8 year olds who would not be ready yet. There is no reason you have to stay the whole time, but we would like people to come all at 2:00 so we can talk to everyone and assign tasks at the same time.

This is just an email to determine interest, if we get none we will not do one, and if we get a ton we may need to reconsider how to do the event, so please do NOT show up at the farm unless you get a confirmation email from us! We will ask everyone to bring some basic stuff with them including a reusable water bottle for each person, gardening gloves, and boots (if it is muddy.)

Please email if you are interested to basketoflifefarm@yahoo.com. Let us know how man of you there are and if there are any kids and their ages. We are not planning on limiting this event to CSA members, but may need to if we have a strong response...

Hope to hear from you soon...

Our newest toy. It is used to pick any type of roots including nusrey stock. We will be using it mainly for potatoes and sweet potatoes... This thing is HUGE! To bad it will be months untill we can use it...

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Why to grow slowly...

So many people ask us "If you have a long waiting list why don't you add more spots?"

We say that we are growing slowly and deliberately so we can be sure of the quality of what we give our members and can grow the amount that we need to provide fair, reasonable shares. We see growing slowly as a key to our long term success, although we could easily have taken 150-200 members this year (based on willingness of people to buy a share, not our ability to support that!) we are just around 35, which with also adding a farmers market will mean growing more then twice what we did last year.

Today I ran across this website for Covered Bridge Produce (please note, this is not the local Covered Bridge Farm.) They grew from 300 members in 2005 to 600 members in 2006 and were out of business before the end of the season, and sold their farm (one assumes from the site) in 2007.

We hope our farm will be sustainable for the long term. Embracing the triple bottom line; Planet (Environment), People (social), and Profits (Economic). We want to grow sustainable food, create a community around it, and support our family financially.

We do not want to be another story of a small farm that failed... Grow smart & grow slow until you know what you really can grow!

Onions.

The onions are looking great... We should have lots of wonderful leeks and onions this summer.

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Fence supplies.

Not including 7 four thousand feet spools of wire and a 50 pound box of staples, this is what $2,200 of fencing supplies look like. That is enough to fence 12 acres of fields with some left over for trellises. Of course, the wood posts are more but we bought a couple hundred of them (black loctus) last year. It is fence time!

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Rush to plant.

Last minute frantic rush to plant more seeds before it rains for 3 days. This is when it would be more convenient to have been home all day and not to have gotten home & rushed before it started to pour. But where would be the fun in that?

The tray is Pac Choi, and we also put in radish, Kale, turnips, and more!

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Weather forcast...

More rain... Not necessarily bad, but 2 inches plus in the next 4 days is a lot! Hopefully our little seedlings do OK and it is a slow steady rain, not a hard, pounding wash things out rain...

The better news! The 15 day forecast which puts us to May 21rst is for no frosts! Happy Dance! If the rain is not to bad between now and Sunday we will probably put some stuff in the garden... Oh, and our Hatfield Transplanter actually works the way it is supposed to! Amazing, that such a relatively inexpensive little thing can so hugely improve the time it takes to put plants in... Look here, and then click on the little camera at the bottom of the description for a video...