Planting, Snow, Planting

March 5, 2010

Let's see . . . we finished the steel frames of both our hoop houses last week. Had to bring in a couple of fellas to help us out seein' as I can't lift anything right now and Patrick wasn't at full speed either. Jeeze. But it was a beautiful day, and two sparkly new sets of hoops now stand in our upper field, ready to be covered in plastic. Which we were going to do last Saturday, but you know, a piece of plastic 120' x 28' sure does seem very kite-like when the wind kicks up. We could have gone airborne if we had tried, but the breeze dissuaded us, so no plastic as of yet.

Monday was beautiful. Gorgeous, sunny day. I got out on the tractor and tilled in the cover crops for the areas I want to plant in April. It takes about 4 weeks for that green matter to decompose, so I'm thinking a month in advance. That's farming for ya.

Tuesday it snowed. Again. In March. Weird. But we were prepared to work indoors, and so we did. We seeded tatsoi, tomatoes, and parsley. We cut potatoes to get them ready to plant this week. Second time this year that we've seeded on a snow day. Our greenhouse is packed.

Wednesday was another beautiful day. Snow sandwich. We pulled the last of the carrots to make way for potatoes. We've probably got 200+ lbs of carrots in storage now, ready to sell. We can finally retire the processing table for a month before pulling it back out again.

Thursday we seeded summer squash and cucumbers. This week is the first week of seeding summery stuff. So soon? Guess so. The greenhouse is officially overflowing, with 4" pots of summery stuff sitting on the floor, waiting to germinate.

Friday we planted potatoes--3 kinds, over 300 feet. I love potatoes. Yukon golds, red pontiacs, kennebecs. Ummmm . . . potatoes. And we planted more carrots. Roots roots!

That's it for the update for now. Tomorrow we attempt the plastic application again. Fingers crossed for no wind . . .