Finally a break in the winter weather

The holidays are finally over.  The snow has melted, at least for now.  More snow and cold to come, no doubt.  Time to start getting serious about choosing our new vegetable varieties for the upcoming season.  We are excited to get things rolling.  I have already been to one farming convention and we are gearing up to attend another trade show in a few weeks.  We have learned much, what to do and what not to do!  We are going to be implementing many new techniques this season!  Everything is going to happen quickly once we get a little closer to spring.  Our volunteers are chomping at the bit to get started again. We will be adding several new work shares and many new volunteers to help us keep up with everything in the garden, in the berries and with the bees. 

We are forging new relationships with neighboring sustainable farms and other local businesses.  The 2011 season is shaping up to be a great one.  We have decided to add pastured poultry as an add on this year.  When you come out to the farm you will be able to see your chickens, and maybe turkeys??, out foraging.  We will also have some of our egg layers at the farm site this year!  Lots of possibilities.

We are taking new customers for the 2011 season.  This may be your best bet to get into the CSA as we are expanding this year.  I cannot imagine expanding much more than what we will do for this season again, so now is the time.  Shares are currently selling quickly.  Go to our website at http://www.schoonerberries.com/ and signup now to ensure acceptance for 2011.  You can always call with any questions. 

Now that we are gearing up we will be making regular updates to our blog.  Stay tuned! 

The farm is "put to bed" for the season!

As of Wednesday, the farm is considered officially "put to bed" for the season.  Tim and Larry worked hard to get the carrots and onions that we are trying to overwinter, mulched with leaves and weighted down with extra sandbags for the long winter's nap.  We covered the most mature row of blackberries with a double layer of row cover to prep them for winter also.  I decided not to cover the second row as it wasn't as far along as the first row.  So we will see how much difference the covering makes.  Yet another farming experiment.

Just because the field is put to bed for the winter doesn't mean that we are lazing around!  Much planning and ordering and selling of shares will be done over winter.  Two trade shows to attend and 1 additional education session to go.  We will be spending quite a bit of time researching which types and varieties of vegetables to grow.  We will be expanding next year’s garden area by more than double.  We will also be researching new ways to create a natural energy flow into the plants.  More to come on this topic.

The seed ordering will commence right after the first of the year.  New tools and equipment will be added, if necessary early in the spring.  We will also be spending quite a bit of time lining up our volunteers and work shares to allow for the expansion to occur.  We are considering adding a livestock share of meat chickens.  The egg share will continue same as last year.  We may even offer some grass fed beef and Snowville Creamery milk dairy share as an option also.   Many decisions to yet to be made. 

Thanksgiving has come and gone already.  Hard to believe how fast time passes!  Christmas will soon be a memory.  Not a lack of things to do that is for certain! 

The rain has finally arrived........6 months late! But it is here for now!

Rain, the wet stuff that falls from the sky, has finally found it's way back to NW Ohio!  I think it must have been on vacation for most of the summer and early fall.  Much is needed.  More than we will get tonight, I'm sure, but we will take what we get.  They claim more than an inch before it is over tomorrow.  Tim planted more garlic today.  Several thousand garlic cloves are now in the ground and beginning to take root for next season.  Tim and Larry started to hoop up the garlic beds in preparation for covering with leaves and row cover.  We want to "put them to bed" for the winter properly!  How nice is it to finish a majority of the outside shutdown chores BEFORE the bad weather hit?  Quite nice indeed!

It was cool and cloudy for most of the day until late this afternoon when the rain started. 

Big job finally done!

Today was the day to finish a pretty sizable job of putting in a 100' long 6" tile at the end of the CSA field.  The trench has been dug since early this spring when we had the flooding that knocked out the sweet corn and potatoes.  A little tweaking with the transit and we had a very nicely done tile that should prevent any future episodes of flooding anywhere in the field!  What a relief to complete that job.

Larry spent some time leveling off the walking paths in between the newly pulled plastic mulch rows for next year's garden.  We will plant clover in between the rows in the spring to minimize weed problems and provide our bees with somewhere to forage for nectar.

The weather was cooler but not too bad once the sun came out in the late morning.  It was a very nice day to work outside.  The rest of this week is not supposed to be as nice with some much needed rain moving in tomorrow night.  There is very little moisture in the ground.  We need some recharge badly.

Winter is On the Way

Winter is coming.....quickly, I am afraid.  The past summer has been extremely hot and dry and I imagine this winter will most likely be extreme too.  It almost always works that way, it seems.  We spent the day on Friday pulling 20 new beds of blue and red plastic and tilling up another 20 root bed areas.  More compost is being made and we did haul some finished compost to the homestead farm in preparation for applying to the ground where the squashes for next year will be planted.  We are already working on next year's seed selection and figuring out how to improve our CSA from this past season.  More to come