Welcome to Another Year of Farming with Us!

 

The growing season has now officially begun!

Though, actually, we've been growing vegetables all winter long in our 20'x96' greenhouse.

The greenhouse has been doing an amazing job keeping plants a live and growing, though sometimes slowly, even in below freezing temperatures.

Carrots and Beets - 5 months from planting to harvest

Salad Mix - 2 months from sowing to cutting

Sallions planted in between the beet rows - 6 weeks from planting to pulling

Swiss Chard - 3-4 months from planting to harvest

Kale - 6 weeks from transplanting to harvest. This plant has actually been producing since September 2010; we just moved it indoors when winter came. Notice how close the leaf stubs are together, starting at the bottom - 1/2 inch? Those leaves grew last fall. Then look how close the leaves (middle of the plant) grew together during the cold part of winter - really close. Then look how quickly the plant has been growing recently with all the heat! So, you can have fun tracking how fast it's been growing for the last 7 months.

Over 80 degrees in the greenhouse on a day when it was about 35-40 degrees outside.

The garlic, which we planted last November, is coming up great.

My two brothers, Philip and Timothy, planted 1,400 lettuce plants for me last Friday. 

They did a good job!

Potato planting time!

We planted 600 lbs. of seed potatoes this year, which translated into over 1.5 miles of row! Anyone want to help weed...? 

I love this job because it's one of the first things we do outside in the spring, and it requires us to use some big, fun machinery, which we don't get to use much the rest of the year. I like powerful things!

 

This is how we farm, Elise. Do you want to help Daddy in another couple years?

I hope you enjoyed this post and will continue to do so with the upcoming ones we're hoping to do to help keep you informed on what's happening how "down on the farm".  Please feel free to leave a comment; we love hearing from you!