We are looking forward to our first CSA pick-up tomorrow. Just when we thought the weather was warming up we have gotten another cold wet series of days that has brought the asparagus growing to a halt!  We are taking a leap of faith and starting regardless of the weather. Speaking of asparagus, our daughter, Ellen, has posted an Asparagus/ Bean Salad recipe on her pommeroyale.com blog (see “Links We Like”).

Last Wednesday we hosted a CRAFT DAY at our farm for the network of apprentice farms that we are part of. (See CRAFT ontario on the “Links We Like” for more info.) About 70 people participated for the day. Ken led a workshop on Soils and our apprentices were the “stage crew” holding up different puppet soil components to demonstrate their interactions in the soil. We enjoyed a great pot luck lunch, farm tour and a work bee where we mulched our half acer squash and pumpkin field in 20 minutes! Many hands really do make light work!

We have been very busy planting between the rains. Our 2012 strawberry plants are in and the potatoes for this year as well. We also have a 20 year old team of Belgian mares leased for the summer. We are really missing Jasmin, our Suffolk mare we lost to colic in December. Our apprentices need to have well trained horses to drive. We also purchased a Belgian mare, Princess. Suffolks are a rare breed of horse and it is not always easy to find replacements. It goes to show what a great horse Jasmin was that we need three horses to replace her!

Lots of transplanting has also been going on onions, leeks, shallots, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, pac choi, kohlrabi, fennel, celery, celeriac, head lettuce and radicchio have all been transplanted outside. The west side of the garden, that was previously too wet to even plow, has been plowed and our greenhouse of tomato transplants have also gone in. So….we have been very busy. Today we worked in the greenhouse and are getting the pick-up room ready for our big start tomorrow.