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I saw this on someone's site, I wonder if it will work for me...

Rain, rain, come this way!

Well, it looks like it will rain in the next 24 hours! The chance is 89% and the most probable rain amount is 0.63". I love accuweather.com! Hope for that rain, we could defiantly use it...

This weekend was a planting bonanza, and with the rain to set everything in we should be golden for first market, if the weather stays at least reasonably warm. The next couple days of coolness are no problem as nothing will have germinated yet, and everything we put in is tolerant to at least to a light frost...

Both hubby and I got sun burnt this weekend, and I got fried!

I think I know when it happened, when I was mowing the lawn... I have to say, if you ever decide to get a farm get a house with a TINY yard, ours is 2 acres and takes a couple hours to mow, it is so frustrating when you know there is "real" stuff to do, but the lawn needs mowed when it looks as scraggly as ours did, and it looks so much better then it did, but I can never help feeling something else needs done more...

But this was a productive weekend, among other tasks we managed the following: disc and till a couple acres, lay over a mile of hills, plant about half a mile of seeds, weed wack all around the electric fence, remove all the kale from the rows, run to TSC to get some chain for the tractor, do Internet research on sunflowers and sweet corn, create a field map, mow the lawn and around the small field, pull a dozen 5 gallon buckets of rocks from the filed, transplant the last 200 tomato plants to bigger cells, and start a few more trays of seeds... Sometimes I wonder how much we would get done if the farm was our only job, but that is not to be for a couple more years, and for now we just need to put our heads down on weekends like this and work!

The Great Kale Massacre of '08...

I had hoped it would stay cool long enough for my kale to stay nice. Alas, it was not to be. So this morning, after planting a little less then 3,000 feet of various items I took our Stihl weed whacker and started on the kale.

It was quite dramatic, the kale shredding and wet drops being flung back on me... And what had started as two nice double planted 100 foot rows of 12" high kale a week ago was reduced to bits of kale leaf and fallen towers. Why towers? Because the kale had started to bolt, thrown up long shafts topped with flower heads, to reproduce in the way all kale wants to, promoted by the unseasonably warm days. Alas, in my garden un-authorized attempts at reproduction are swiftly and firmly dealt with! Hence the need for the great kale massacre of '08...

So there will be no kale for the CSA until fall...

Oh, and wish for rain everyone! If we do not get the 1/2" Accu-Weather is predicting we will have to irrigate tomorrow! IRRIGATE IN APRIL?!?!? Who heard of such a thing?

Me on a tractor!

You may not believe it, but I never ridden a tractor before today! Ours is pretty old and we are babying it until we can afford a nice new automatic one in a year or two. As there are so many things you can break on it through ignorance (which I as a city girl have in droves when it comes to machinery) I have always preformed non-tractor tasks...

Anyway when I got home from work today I noticed hubby was out on the tractor, so I grabbed a bottle of water and went out to let him know I was home... He was rough tilling one of our new for this year fields. He says "You want to finish tilling this when I pick rocks?"

All new fields have tons of rocks, the larger of which can damage the tiller. I looked at him and said "Sure, but you'll have to show me how."

So up I went on the tractor. This peddle's the break, that peddle's the break (why are there 2 breaks?), that one's the clutch, that lever engages the PTO be sure your foot is pressed all the way on the clutch before you press it!, that lever raises and lowers the tiller, that is the gear stick for high, that is the one for low, and that is throttle... UH? OK...

In all honestly all I had to do was drive in a straight line and raise and lower the tiller, turn around at the ends of the rows, and when I was driving a far distance turn off the PTO. I NEVER took it out of first gear which hubby put me in, and I never adusted the throttle, which hubby had adjusted for me, and I only pressed one of the breaks... Still there was a lot to remember and I was almost paniced at the end of the first two rows, because there is a lot to do even at .8 mph!

And I did not break the tractor and hubby said I did an OK job... Obviously I still need lots of practice because he is doing the final tilling right now himself... So we will get 7 or 8 more hills done tonight, these each 300 feet long.... And those planted will make it the most ahead April we have ever had!

New Bees...

Did I ever tell you I am allergic to bees? Well I am. I was not when we first started keeping bees four years ago, but 18 months or so ago I was out looking at the bees, one stung me and I ended up in the ER with a pretty severe allergic reaction... So no more bee keeping for me (although I did start shots, I had to stop and will not be able to restart them for a couple more years.) So hubby is the beekeeper in the family now, and I get to watch from the safety of the truck, so you will pardon the photos, as I took them through a window...

I thought I would go through the process of putting bees in the hive, step by step... As I do, assure yourself it is as terrifying as it sounds the first time you do it, but by the time you've done it a couple times, it is easy, and you are no longer so scared, and you being calmer actually reduces your chances of being stung! Bees like calm, slow, steady movements.

The first thing you do each year (other then assembling your hives, which we buy pre-made,) is to make sugar water. New bees will have only the little honey you give them, and so will need a lot to eat which amounts to gallons of sugar water. One part water to 2 parts sugar and bring to a boil. So far this year we have made 150 pounds of sugar into sugar water! We will use a similar amount in the fall... We make so much we use a turkey fryer burner so it boils faster (I use the same thing when I can!)

The next thing you do is wait for the phone call to come and pick up your bees! Bees come in two or three pound boxes and in many different types, Italians, Russians, Carolions, New Worlds, Minnesota Hygienic, ect and each has different characteristics. This year we wanted to order two 3 pound boxes of Minnesota Hygienics, but there was a problem with our order, so we ended up with two 2 pound boxes of what we think are Itialians... In any case when that call comes the clock is ticking and you should go get your bees that day!

The bees were shipped from California in the boxes and given a can of sugar water to sustain them through the journey, once that can is gone your bees can start to die! But here is a note to consider, if you are allergic, you should NOT go to bee pickup even if you are going to "wait in the truck" because they have just gotten a semi-truck full of boxes of bees and they will be buzzing every where! I almost had a panic attack sitting there, but no bees got in the truck, so that was good...

Once you get the bees you can spray them with sugar water and they can eat that, that will help sustain them until you can put them in their hives the next evening. When we opened the boxes one of the cans was totally out of sugar water and one only had a little left, this is why feeding is so important. You hive in the evening so they go into the box and learn where their home and don't fly off to a different hive during the day...

So now you have your bees, it's time to go set up your hives, which is a simple matter.

Now comes the fun part! First put your jacket on!

(You can see I was safely inside the truck with my EpiPen!)

Then carry your bees to the hives...

Then you have to try to pry the can out of the top of the box...

Remember this is a box full of bees!

The next step is the most fun to tell people about! You rap the box firmly on the ground a couple times! The goal is to knock all the bees to the bottom. You do this so you can get the queen cage out, she is hanging next to the can of food... Notice in the next photo hubby has removed a glove. It is delicate work to remove the cork from the end of the queen's cage and replace it with a mini-marshmellow. The bees will eat through this and by the time they do they will have accepted the new queen, if you throw her right in without this step the bees will kill her...

Then you carefully hang her into the hive. Notice he has removed some frames to make way for the next step...

Which is to pour the bees into the hive. This involves shaking and tapping and wiggling a box of bees! Many of them will fall to the bottom of the hive, but quite a few end up in the air! (That's why I was in the truck!)

But first the box gets hit against the ground again so any bees who have started to climb fall to the bottom of the box... (Notice you have to hold the can over the hole as you do this...

Then you shake...

Notice the blurs in the photo? Those are the bees... You shake for a while... When you are done you replace the frames, being careful not to crush the bees who are piled on the bottom of the hive.

Then you put all the pieces together, the little box over the main hive is the feeder, which we poured a couple gallons of sugar water into.

You leave the box near the hive entrance, because there are always stragglers who are still in the box and will find their way to the hive...

All done, two hives set up. As we lost one colony over the winter this will bring us to four, but one is really strong and we are going to split it into two which should give us 5 or 6 by the end of the summer (although we will not pull honey from the hives we split this year.)

I hope people enjoyed this, as it took a long time to post! Now you know what it takes to start a hive, not that hard, so if you've ever thought of being a bee keeper you should do it!

Happy Earthday!

On this 38th anniversary of the first Earth Day take a little time to enjoy the wonderful region we live in. The weather is near perfect so why not go for a walk in the Metro-Parks or in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park?


If you do keep your eyes out for all the birds and your ears open, it is amazing! When I was a kid there were next to no hawks around, and many other birds were harder to see.



In the past week I have noticed 4 very cool birds!

• I was driving in the valley and saw a crane gliding gently down, at first I did not know what it was, then I saw the long neck and he flew a bit closer to me and it was clear, and he was so elegant!


• This Saturday we were out in the field and saw two Killdeers in one of our fields, walking around in circles. I know what they were doing! Looking for a place for their nest. We will be tilling that area soon, and that should diswaid them from nesting in our field. We have previously had them lay their eggs right in the middle of a field, so we spent a couple months not touching the area close to the nest, but it is so funny if you get close when they have chicks, because they will flop around on the ground and look hurt. The first time I saw them do that I told hubby (then boyfriend) "Come quick, this bird is hurt, lets try to get it!" He laughed at me for being such a city girl! They like nesting in the fields because the color of the ground helps camouflage them, but I don't think that would be a good place for a nest because of my third bird...
  
  
• There is a large hawk of some kind hanging around. We have seen him a few times, but never close enough to see what he is, except for VERY BIG! Yesterday I heard the chickens squawk and as I turned my head they were all running into the coop... I saw this guy flying away! Thankfully our chickens are to big for a hawk to get, but the new chicks will need a cover when they first go out (note to self!) The chickens kept squawking for a long time, enough that I went inside to make sure no one was hurt, no one was, but they were annoyed that they had to be inside... (It is funny they run inside whenever they see a shadow pass over, like a low flying plane or the Goodyear blimp...)
  
• My final bird story in the past week, not as pleasant, but pretty cool, I saw a group of maybe 10 vultures together on the ground... I did not see (nor did I want to) what they were doing, but I was pretty close, and it was amazing how large they were!

I guess my point is that we have made some progress since the first Earth day. The birds are back, we no longer have silent springs, our water is cleaner (at least the Cuyahoga), and organic farmers are no longer fringy weirdo's but something more respectable (I hope!)

There is so far still to go, but we are making progress, step by step and day by day!

More leeks and the first hotdogs...

All I can say is WOW, are there a lot of leeks in a case! A case is 32 bunches, and a bunch is supposed to have 60 leeks, however, many have many more, even after I thinned out all the really thin ones!

Last night hubby repaired my car (my oil sender went bad - whatever that is!) and I was late getting home. So it was about 6:30 before we were ready to go to the field.

It looked like the sky would open up at any moment and it was occasionally spitting as hubby laid under my car in the driveway. (Hoophouse pieces are taking up our garage!)
The sky was so dark and the wind was picking up.

But as we went into the field it cleared and we got 8 more bunches of leeks in (which were not all our leeks, but all those that had been thinned.) So I sat down by the field and started thinning more leek bunches when hubby went up to the house to get some water and something for us to eat.

I got 4 more bunches done before he got back, bearing hot dogs... I wanted to laugh, hot dogs seem to be our standard "can't stop now!" and "gotta get more done" meal for dinner time in the field. For lunch it is fruit and a wrap with hummus and lettuce... But this was the first time last year for hot dogs in the field, but defiantly not the last!

He said it was after 8, we marveled at the beautiful evening, ate our dinner and then put in the 4 bunches I'd sorted... We were inside by 8:40 or so...

And we are not done with our leeks yet! we still have 6 more bunches if you can believe it!

Let me say that it does make it seem like a pretty long day when you work 9.5 hours and then come home and don't stop until almost bedtime, but it is so worth it and honestly, does not feel like "work." If you did not love farming and enjoy being outside there is no way you could do it!

(This photo is not ours, I just wanted to show everyone what a leek start looks like! Thinning them before not only gets rid of the small ones, but lets you pull the roots apart and separate the plants when you are not bent over in the field!)

Weekend tasks..

Saturday was beautiful... We were working by 8 and managed to get quite a bit done. I was playing with our transplants in the basement, and starting more seeds. When I did that hubby was discing and tilling. When he was ready we hilled the rows we needed. We were waiting for rain and needed to move fast! Our hiller is a little lite to work well, so I get to stand on the back of it as we lay hills to help make better hills!

We got about 1000 feet of hills done and then started planting! The forecast was saying it could rain at any time and the sky looked like it! So first we used our new Jang Seeder to put in some turnips, beets, radishes, green onions, and other pretty frost tolerant crops, aiming for the May 31rst farmers market. Oh, and our new seeder works like a dream! We only got 1/2 ounce of one of the turnip seeds as it was so expensive, I expected to be able to do 25 - 30 feet of row with it. But we set up the seeder for turnips and changed the gearing to put them down at about 2" apart, and I got 150 feet in and still have about half my seed left! The seeder was worth the $500+ it cost!

After we got all the seeds in that we really needed to we sighed in relief, because the rest could be done in light rain... So we started transplanting our onion starts. We got all 1800 onions in the ground! Then came the slightly harder work of putting the leeks in (the onions just go in an inch, the leeks go in so only an inch of the leafs are above ground so 3-4 inches deep). We got about 1000 leeks in before the sky opened up around 5:30. But that was OK as we were going to a friends surprise 50th birthday party and needed to shower and get there by 7:45. So it was a pretty long day, but we got a huge amount done.

On Sunday it was rainy most of the day, so we stayed inside did some bookkeeping stuff, ran some errands, did research on asparagus (which we need to order soon!) and played with our transplants and starts (go another 700 plants started and transplanted that many on to bigger containers.)

There is still so much to do, but we are making progress. This week we will hope for it to be sunny for most of it (looking good) and work on our hoop house while hoping we can put in more hills on Friday or Saturday... We have 800 feet of potatoes coming this week we hope...

And the best news of all, even though we were bent over planting onions for hundreds and hundreds of feet we did not wake up sore as we were expecting!

This weeks big purchases include the post hole digger, a potato plow, and the bees (if they come.) It feels good to not be behind in late April...

Spring is here!

It is SO beautiful this evening! I got home and hubby was on the tractor, a sure sign of spring on the farm. After I changed I went to say "Hi!" and marvel at how well the ground was turning over...

We are so blessed to have good soil here, at our old farm we fought with a high water table and heavy clay. The two together mean MUD! At the old house there is still water in the yard, here we plowed today, and tomorrow will till...

Granted, it was not dry enough to turn everything, but we got enough turned to give us a good start at the early spring crops (remember it is still spring!) so if the weather holds (18% chance of rain in next 24 hours) we will be able to start some turnips, radishes, and spinach in the ground. We have 1800 onion starts and 1800 leek starts which need to go in as well, and we have a few hundred beet starts ready to go in a week or so (a new experiment.) We also have Chinese cabbage, regular cabbage, lettuce, and a few other starts which will be ready to go in within a week or two...

We have a market to stock on May 31 (first CSA pickup is mid-June) and right now the only thing in the ground is Kale! We will start this years season as we ended last years, with LOTS of Kale! :)

Our hoophouse is here, but putting it up needs to wait, when you can turn the soil, that takes priority! In any case we have thousands of starts under grow lights in our basement. I need to remind myself, they always seem to grow slow at first, but they have 4-5 weeks before we'd even consider transplanting peppers, eggplant, or tomatoes. Our average last frost day may be early may, but that means that half the years see later frosts... So we will wait for the relative safety of late May, with the assurance of a warm 10 day forecast...

The season is going! Wish us luck, and good weather.

Suprise!

This morning I was congratulated by one of my co-workers for the nice article in EarthWatch Ohio...

Huh?!?

They said there was a nice picture from our farm of a harvest last year...

Really?!?

Here it is..

http://www.earthwatchohio.org/pubs/aprmay08/restoringfarms.htm

Nice surprise. Although, I imagine the true purpose of the article was to publicize the three new farms being offered for lease this year...

One more thing... Canned foods...

Confession time: Personally, one of my most used "quick" meals to make when I am in a hurry is enchiladas...

Over the past few years my consumption of processed and canned foods has dropped a ton, but occasionally they are so easy, like this meal... Cook up some ground beef , mix with spices and some shredded cheese, roll in a tortilla, put in a baking dish then open a can of enchilada sauce, pour some on the bottom of the pan and the rest on top. Serve with low fat canned refried beans...

This is my most canned of our regular meals... And as of today I need to stop eating it (at least in this quick form), and with it most foods in cans... Why?

Bisphenol A... Just one to three servings a day can put you over the "safe limit"... My quick enchilada blow those numbers away.

Read this article from Treehuggers...

And review these charts...

In the past few years one after another "normal" foods no longer find their way into our shopping carts (and market bags) now most canned foods will go the way of HFCS, artificial flavorings, bottled watter, artificial sweeteners, transfats, artificial coloring, ....

Eating healthier is taking one step at a time and day by day getting closer to our goals...

((Now to figure out how to make refried beans and enchilada sauce from scratch! I doubt it will still be considered a quick meal...))

The Human Footprint...

Watched a great show on National Geographic Channel called The Human Footprint... It laid out - literally - all of the xxx that one human uses in their lifetime. And WOW! was it amazing... The amount of resources that we consume, each one of us, is staggering. And there are 300+ million of us in this country and 6 BILLION of us around the world. ((Granted, we use much more then our fair share of resources...))

I tried to figure out when it would be on again and if it was a series or not, and the website was not very helpful. But if you see it on, take a second and watch it. Otherwise there are some videos on the link above...

King Corn...

The first public airing of the documentary King Corn will air this Saturday April 19th at 11:00pm. If you are not from Northeast Ohio check here for your local listings...

It is about two friends who grow an acre of corn and attempt to follow it through the food system, and what they learned along the way... Check out their website for more information and stay up late this Saturday and watch the movie!

Because my sister said...

I was talking to my sister this weekend she said... "Hey! I was looking at your photos on Snapfish, you should put more of those on your blog!"

Your wish, is my command...

This is the last real snow of 2008 (not the bad snowstorm, I so SHOULD have taken lots of photos of that, but since the snow was to my knees, I didn't want to walk around to much!

On a foggy day looking back towards the barn from the pass through to our front fields.

See how nice our hills turned out? Planting in hills, makes weeding and watering, and picking and everything so much easier...

Looking down a really weedy row! From left to right, green beans, weeds, eggplant, weeds, peppers. The fog and the terrain makes the row looks longer then it's 125 feet!

My sister mentioned this photo in particular. I have to say, I really like it, the moon and barn picture.

Is that enough random photos? Soon enough things will start looking better and I will post recent photos. Right now we are all brown though...

Indians Game...

Yesterday at the Indians game was supposed to be an promo for Earth Day at the Kid's Fun Day activities. The Earth Day Coalition was going to have activities for kids to do like powering a TV with a bicycle and stuff like that... But it was to cold, so they will reschedule that. (Remember Earth Fest is next weekend at the Cleveland Zoo!)

But the reason I went is that my boss (former president of EarthDay Coalition and designer of the solar panels at the Jake) was throwing out the first pitch! I was slightly disappointed, because he did not get to go the mound to pitch. For some strange reason, I don't understand, they pulled the tarp out halfway and were in a weather delay for 45 minutes, and when the tarp is out no one is allowed to go to the field... But it did not start snowing and freezing rain until AFTER they started the game... Go figure...

In any case sitting there for 2 hours (we only stayed for 4 innings, then our toes started to go numb and we left) made me remember that it is only mid April, and in Ohio, mid April is still pretty early, we could still have a real snow fall, and frost is likely for another month...

Quick Comment...

I am working on our expenses last year for taxes.
Last year this time we paid around $2.50 a gallon for diesel... Now it is $4.00 a gallon plus...

Remember that this summer when your food prices go up that diesle not only transports your food, but feeds the tractors & equipment needed to grow and harvest it and the pumps needed to irrigate (at least in California)...

Just a thought.

1588 pounds...

Our hoophouse shipped yesterday! We should see it on Monday morning, all 1588 pounds of it, which we are responsible for offloading from the truck. One pallet alone is 1,200 pounds! So we paid a little more so they will send a truck with a lift gate to help us unload it. They are also sending it in a stubby truck, so hopefully it can get up our driveway...

It will be good to have, as soon as we get it set up. I have hundrends of lettuce, cauliflower, and cabbage starts in my basement which would be fine in a less heated space... The tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and basil still need a little more heat... It did come with a propane heater, but we will need to wait and see if we actually need to set that up this year, it may be late enough we don't have to...

Junior Rangers...

Do you have a kid between 3 & 6? This summer we will be hosting 3 programs on our farm for the Junior-Junior Ranger Program. (Other Junior Ranger programs are available for older kids.)

Little Sprouts will be an opportunity for kids to come learn about seeds and actually have a chance to go into the field, plant a seedling, and pick something. One of the new farmers in the program attended with her little boys last year and shared some photos with me...

Ranger Katie helps teach the kids about seeds, after which they plant the varieties and then water them in...

Details of summer Junior Ranger programs will be coming soon...

Bad blogger...

I am sorry everyone, I know I am being a bad blogger!

There is so much going on at the farm that I want to tell you about, but at the same time there is SO MUCH going on at the farm... Here are a couple highlights:

1. Bees are coming next week, probably, that will bring us to 5 hives this year...

2. Starts are growing quickly, thousands done, thousands still to go!

3. Hoophouse is on it's way!

4. Onion starts and seed potatoes are on their way...

5. First seeds will go in the real ground as soon as it's dry enough to till, just a little!

6. Plans are underway for farm events, it should be a busy season!

I have been getting a chance to "Twitter" more, as I can do that in 5 seconds or as a text message from my phone, so look at the side of the screen and click "follow me on twitter" if you want, otherwise you can see me 5 most recent twitters there...

Weekend tasks...

First let me say it was a beautiful weekend! The weather was SO nice, unfortunately, this farmer did not get to enjoy much of it. It is still to wet to get into the fields, and honestly, just a bit early to plant much. If the weather holds till the middle of next week we will put our first seeds in the ground on some hills left over from last year. We are eager to try our new seeder!

This weekend was dedicated to seed starting and transplanting, as the next couple will be as well. Hubby worked on building a new propagation rack so we can expand our space for seed starting from 2ft by 8 ft to 2 ft by 24 ft! At 360 plants on each 1 ft wide tray that means our capacity to start is expanded from 2880 seeds to 8640! That is HUGE when we are starting some things that take a while to germinate like our peppers and eggplants which were started last weekend and are just now popping (8 days).

Meanwhile I worked on starting seeds and transplanting seeds that we have already started including transplanting 288 basil plants, 30 Mexican sour gherkins, and 72 eggplants. We also started 144 lettuce plants, 144 cabbage plants, 360 broccoli, and 1,800 tomato plants. This coming week I will start more seeds as I am able to begin transplanting the 1,440 pepper plants, 600 eggplants, 360 cauliflower, and 300 celeriac seeds which were started last weekend.

We start our seed by using a soil block maker which compresses a fine mix into little 3/4"X 3/4" blocks, 20 at a time. We put these on cookie sheets and the cookie sheets on the heat mat to germinate. As soon as they pop (within one or two days) they need to be carefully moved to trays, so their roots have more room to grow. Using this method means an extra step, but space on our heat mat is so precious it is worth it for us. Doing this lets us start up to 2,880 seeds on one 2X8 ft mat instead of just 288, which is all the room you have using the trays they end up in.

When more stuff is up and transplanted I'll take some pictures. All of these are currently hanging out under a 1000watt grow light in our basement, where it will stay until our hoop house is up in a couple weeks. But that is why I spent much of this wonderful weekend in our basement, listening to my iPod and carefully putting seed in tiny little blocks!

Other weekend tasks included finally ordering our seed potatoes and onion starts, taking some time and evaluating our fields and space needs for this year, and some basic cleanup around the farm (which hubby did while I was planting tomatoes.)

Also, as some of you have asked, we think that our bee hives have survived this winter! At least their were bees working at our hives today and coming and going! On Tuesday, if the weather holds, hubby will open up the hives and check that the queen is their and the remaining bees are doing good.

Googling me?

What kind of Google searches have brought people to my blog?

Here are a handful of recent ones - these are not edited...

why do farmers have ducks on their farms?

• Um? Because farmers LOVE eating duck? At least my husband and I do. But as of now we have no ducks and no immediate plans for getting any...

beaver dam pepper

• We are growing these this year as one of our Ark of Taste Heirloom varieties. I just started the seed this weekend. 180 of them... They should be available at the plant sale if you'd like some...

Amish pie squash

• Another Ark of Taste variety. These things are HUGE! We should have some squash available at the plant sale but we will not know how they start until right before, as they get started much later.

random passage

• Huh? I have a lot of these I guess...

northeast ohio csa farms

• Our CSA is full but we are taking names for our waiting list, so contact us if you are interested.

e&r seed

• We get some of our seeds here. They are an Indiana Amish company - no phone! We were kind of hesitant first time we used them, but now we get some seed from them every year. They have a lot of open pollinated items...

is filtered honey heated

• I actually did a blog post on this last year... It turns out YES. To get unheated honey you need strained, not filtered honey.

farm jobs northeast ohio

• Sorry, no jobs or internships this year. Want to work for free???

New seeder and starting...

Yesterday we recieved our Jang Seeder. This thing, while not cheap is amazing! It seems (based on rolling it around the living room!) to do a great job of percision seeding, just what we need! It is made of heavy steel and is a substantial thing! I need to take photos of ours but this is what it looks like... Now all we need is for it to stop raining for a few dats so we can start planting seeds!

Over the past week we have started thousands of little seeds in the march across our heat mat (to aid germination) before they go into trays. We are able to start about 360 seeds on one cookie sheet using 3/4"x3/4" soil blocks we make. Then one seed goes in each block and the whole tray goes on the heat mat. Problem is that trays are backing up, there is only room for 9 at a time on the heat mat and we still have thousands and thousands and thousands of seeds to start. So it is time to order a second heat mat!

But why would we need so many plants you may ask? Isn't 180 of one type pepper plant more then a small CSA needs? Arne't you growing lots of types of peppers? It is, and we are. But there may just be a late May PLANT SALE in our future... Lots of heirlooms, and some Ark of Taste varieties in there... Let us know if you would be intrested and help us gauge the demand...