This week on the farm we planted leeks, onions, peas, and mustards! We’re trying a new onion variety called Talon which looks interesting & should taste great. We chose it because it’s perfect for onion soup and it carmelizes well. It grows firm and crisp making it easy for sautees. We order our seed from Territorial Seed Company in Cottage Grove OR. Another onion variety we’re planting is Purplette, a purple mini onion we harvest for bunching and pickling. Giant Musselburgh leeks also got planted, they’re a Scottish heirloom that makes tasty soups from large tender stalks. Tah Tsai mustards will be ready in about a month and a half. They’re so easy to grow in the early spring and we cook them in stir fries or add to salads. Oregon Sugar Pod II peas sprouted from last week’s planting, and we’ll plant a new round in a couple weeks. Garanoir grape cuttings have been ordered from Hollywood Hills vineyard, we like them because they are a short season variety.
We’re getting 8-14 piglets in March, and 40 Cornish Cross meat chicks every 2-4 weeks starting next week as well. We’re getting 30 layer chicks as soon as possible to increase our egg production. (Chickens and ducks help us out by getting rid of tiny pests on the crops). Easter is a pretty cute time around here! Lots of pictures to follow 
We’ll be getting nukes of bees in April and possibly keeping some hives for a local bee keeper who needs more food for his bees. Bees help with pollination and we’ve never had a year without them. They help us care for the crops by pollinating and grooming vegetables and fruits. We’re getting ready to clean up our chives bed to divide and expand them. Chives grow easily here but they can get weedy so we have to start managing them early in the season.
This week’s harvest went well and the stir fry mix was so tender it could even be eaten as salad. It included baby kale, baby pac choi, baby mustards, collards, and broccoli. We also harvested baby scallions which had delicious flavor. The rosemary hasn’t flowered yet so we’ve continued harvesting it and next time we should have some oregano ready.
We’ve continued our tractor and farm implement maintenance and we fixed the delivery wagon! A side effect of using lots of biodiesel is that the filters need to be changed often. Biodiesel is such a good detergent that it cleans the dirt off of everything in the fuel system. We’ve hired two seasonal agricultural workers to start helping in March, so there’s no excuse not to have the weeding done this season!
There will be more merchandise for sale soon- Stay tuned……..
