wet farm, tired farmers

This weather is testing our patience and threatening to dampen our spirits. I think it's safe to say that this spring will stand out as one of the most challenging for all farmers. I know it has been for us, for many reasons. Still raining here with a bit of sun in between and more rain in the forecast. Let me start off by saying that we're feeling incredibly grateful to just have rain to complain about while folks in other states have felt much, much worse. I mean seriously, we're happy to still have our farm, our home and our animals safe.

But this weather had made it really difficult to farm. Unfortunately, even though we've had days of sun here and there, it's still too wet to get into the fields with a tractor, which we desperately need to do. We have to start transplanting things into the ground so there's food ready for the start of the CSA. We need at least 2-3 days of consecutive dry, sunny days to be able to get into the fields without doing irreversible damage. If we drive on the soil now and try to work it with a tractor, we risk every farmer's worst enemy...soil compaction. And that's something that never goes away. So, we wait.

And we wait.

We're hoping that our CSA members will understand if things end up being slightly later than usual. This past week we resorted to doing some of the tractor work by hand just to get some veggies in the ground. It was 3 days of back breaking work. The rows had already been spaded but it has been so long since we've been waiting to plant that grass had started to grow. We knew that if we didn't weed the grass out now, it would be a weeding nightmare in the future. It took us 3 days to weed and plant 2 whole rows by hand but we did it and we finally have some broccoli, chinese cabbage and kohlrabi in the ground! Add that to the few things we already have in the field and the things growing in our high tunnels and we just may squeak by.


The lambs are doing well and are spending the sunny days (few and far between) outside frolicking. They're even starting to nibble on some grass. All of the winged creatures on the farm are being shuffled around as we prepare for the arrival of our first batch of broiler chicks coming this week.

And the new high tunnel? Well, we're getting there!