Irrigating Strawberries and Fighting with Row Cover in the Wind

We are surprised by the long drawn out spring with the cold, windy and dry weather! Everything seems to be on hold and  poised ready to burst forth, just waiting for  some encouragement from weather! We are hoping to have our first CSA pick-up on Tuesday, May 8,  and have faith that it will warm up in the meantime. It has been  very dry for April and we got out the overhead irrigation to water the strawberries and our early planted garden. Friday and part of Saturday we spent removing row cover, row cultivating, hoeing, recovering with row cover and then irrigating. Working with row cover in the high winds is quite a challenge. Last Monday the wind was also quite a force to contend with, while planting our new strawberry plants for the 2013 season the apprentices thought it was quite comical to see me almost blown off my feet. I really can’t remember it ever being that windy.

Grayden, Elizabeth, Amanda, Bill and Paul

The coming week will be full of activity here on the farm. We have another batch of direct seeding to do in the garden, we also have our first outdoor transplants of onions, leeks, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, celeriac, kohlrabi, fennel, head lettuce, parsley and radicchio to go in. It is also time to start our greenhouse transplants of melons, squash and more broccoli, cabbage as well as brussels sprouts.

Hooking up at the Irrigation Pond

Our Suffolk Punch Draft horses will be busy discing and cultivating the garden area to be planted and Ken also wants to  plough the ground for the 2013 garden so we can start preparing the soil for a good crop next season. We purchased two 15 year old Suffolk x Belgian geldings that were actually  born here on the farm to help with our horse power. Unfortunately, they need some conditioning and discing will be a good way to introduce them back to working…Gena is hoping that they step up to the plate so she doesn’t have to work so hard this season.