Bluebirds Abound

All this past week our crew of growers sited numerous couples of Eastern Bluebirds scoping out nesting sites on the farm. We are all hoping they will choose our location to settle and make baby bluebirds this spring. We are working closly with Park Naturalist, Denise Gibbs, to provide habitat for these very personable creatures. My armchair reasearch tells me that these little birds love to eat cutworms during the spring and so we are quite happy to welcome these workers to our team. It takes a village!
Woody

Spring is Here!!!

The growers spent some time this week in the 60 degree weather cleaning and sharpening our hand tools. Once the ground warmed up our Field Manager was able to begin discing our early planting fields. Dispite a warm winter we have found the early spring to be quite cold and wet. Thus, we feel our planting is running about a week late at this point.
We are grateful to Park Naturalist Denise Gibbs for supplying us with 15 bluebird boxes. We will assist in monitoring these boxes for bluebirds throughout the spring and summer. Here in this photo the growers are installing one of the new boxes. These are now 20 bluebird boxes ringing our 12 acre farm! habitat.

Growers begin the new season's work

Last week the growers began cleaning seed flats (photo above) and planting seeds. We already have kohlrabi plants germinated and growing under lights in the office. About 20 other flats are seeded and being watered and watched for germination. This week we are setting out new blue bird boxes (thanks to the MC-MNCPPC park system for their assistance) and we are preparing to plant potatoes, onions and peas as soon as the ground can be worked. Our CSA is full to capacity with 80 "shares" pre-sold and now it is time to begin the planting season! We have a great team of growers led by Adrienne Altstatt, Red Wiggler Field Manager, who has spent the winter preparing for a productive season. 2007 is looking to be a great year! WW