Happy April everyone! It's finally, truly feeling like Spring around here. The earliest-blooming spring flower and trees have come and gone and more are following. Hillsides of trees have that lime green glow to them which heralds an impending bursting-forth of fresh, green leaves.
The temperatures are not consistently warm yet, but it's getting there! Wearing a t-shirt on a sunny day isn't too far-fetched anymore. And a cold sparkling water sounds more appealing than a hot tea more often than not.
Here at One Acre Farm we've been diving into the new season with baby plants and other field projects. Our first field planting always consists of brassicas - the family of vegetables that include cabbage, kale, collards, broccoli, and cauliflower. These hardy folks do just fine in the chilly spring nights and will provide us with the first spring harvests in a month or so!
We also have chard, lettuce, napa cabbage, and bok choy plants ready to go. These guys are also relatively hardy but sometimes get a covering of white fabric that protects them from the worst of the wind and cool temperatures.
Our challenge this Spring has been the rain! With four days in a row of intense rain this week, the fields are pretty soggy. Additionally, since the temperatures have been on the lower end, the soil hasn't had much of a chance of drying out. So, getting a tractor in there to shape beds and lay plastic is out of the question!
Luckily we had made a good number of beds that we could plant into last week! However, we're still sitting on a whole bunch of plants that really should be planted by now, but alas! That's farming!
Potatoes went in two weeks ago now and will slowly start sprouting as the weather warms up. The few dryer days at the end of this week has seen the crew outside getting onions planted, slowly but surely. We order these onion plant starts from a farm that specializes in onions and they arrive in bundles of super-slender little shoots. We pop the root end into a tiny hole in the plastic covering the soil bed and surround it with some compost. We can't wait for early summer to start harvesting these early crops!
Inside our little greenhouse where we start a small fraction of our own plants, thing are decidedly more summery! Little eggplant seedlings are on one side, sprouting peppers and fuzzy tomatoes on the other. Herbs and lettuces fill out the tables.
We hope you're feeling energized by this Spring weather as well and ready for some delicious local veggies! If you're not yet a member, make sure to head to our website and sign up! We've got a great year ahead and we'd love to have you join us!