This week on the farm it unexpectedly snowed two days in a row! The mustards had already sprouted, but since we stored them in the greenhouse (just in case of frost) they didn’t get clobbered after all. We’ll check the peas as soon as the snow melts to determine if they were damaged. They were protected under floating row covers (called Agribon) but they had just sprouted too so we might need to re-plant. Farming can be pretty tricky at this time of year! We decided to spend most of our time in the greenhouse weeding vegetables like scallions, kale, pac choi, broccoli, and lettuces which was much easier than weeding strawberries out in the field under two inches of snow. In the hot house we seeded lovage, marjoram, summer savory, nasturtiums, and marigolds.
This season we’ll be planting a lot of beneficials including: stinging nettle, valerian, chamomile, dandelion, oak tree, borage, poppy, caraway, dill, flax, petunia, calendula, sage, yarrow, and Russian sage. These herbs and flowers can be used for teas as well as “traps” that distract pests away from vegetables and fruits.
We’re getting fifteen Rhode Island Red chicks and fifteen Golden Sexlink chicks in two weeks and forty Cornish Cross chicks the first week of April. Our neighborhood pig farmer will have a litter of Duroc weaner piglets ready by the end of April. We’ve thought about raising our own sows and boar but we don’t have the infrastructure at this time.
We love the late season honey we stored over winter and it seems to help with allergies too. We’re looking forward to keeping bees again this summer for the honey supply and the pollination. Our nuke supplier has extra hives we’ve offered to store on our farm where they’ll have plenty of forage for food. Bees love forage and we have a lot of that!
Gardening tip: now’s the time to remove blackberries using hand loppers and flame weeders.
