This week on the farm we made a lot of progress on our spring prep. The heavy rains slowed down our work on the cow’s pasture fence, but we did receive our new seed shipment!
Included in the seed order from Territorial we have: artichokes (to trial), green beans, haricots verts, black beans, beets, brussels sprouts, broccoli, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, celeriac, corn (to trial), cucumbers, eggplants (to trial), kohlrabi, lettuce, fennel, salad greens, mustards, pac choi, watermelon (to trial), storage & scallion onions, leeks, parsnips, parsley, & peas to name a few. This doesn’t include our seeds left over from last season either! We also have plenty of saved seeds from last season as well as volunteers like arugula, chard, and mizuna. Tomatillos tend to be prolific volunteers too, but they haven’t sprouted yet. Very soon we’ll start seedlings on the radiant heating coils in the hot house. We’re almost done with our potato & sunroot order.
The layer chickens continue to have good production (despite the grey weather) because of the light we put in their dry coop. We should be ordering new layer chicks next week. We won’t be ordering Cornish Cross meat chicks until the end of March because they need a lot more heat in the beginning.
We’re planning on weaner pigs (weaned piglets) for the end of March as well. Much like the chicks, young pigs need dry weather to stay healthy so we don’t raise them until spring/summer. The rabbits are doing fine in their hutch, and we’re waiting for a dry day to construct their “bunny tractor”. We had an owl sighting recently so we don’t want to get too cavalier!
The bees were flying when we got some sun & we’re looking forward to getting more nukes (portable hive nuclei) for the summer. Allergies from the fir pollen have slowed us down a little, but we’ve been eating raw honey from last season’s harvest & it helps.
We’ve been interviewing students from Oregon Institute of Technology all week for our summer farm internships. It will be great to have help on the biogas digester & other renewable energy projects on the farm!
Braeside Farms merchandise is now available! Just click on the sunflower icon to place your order.
