{"id":2869,"date":"2017-04-05T21:27:34","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T01:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/?p=2869"},"modified":"2017-04-05T21:27:34","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T01:27:34","slug":"spring-at-orchard-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/?p=2869","title":{"rendered":"Spring at Orchard Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_8719\"Is it spring? It must be because there are English Violets (so fragrant it’s incredible – here infusing some sugar to be used for a future project – perhaps a FARM DINNER in June??!), apprentices and the greenhouse is looking – well, green.<\/p>\n

Come see us this Saturday, April 8th at the Go Wild Grow Wild event in London at the Western Fairgrounds! There are tons of fun people to see and things to do (hawks, snakes, climbing wall) – we will be there spreading the word about the CSA and handing out popcorn. If any of you members need some popcorn – stop by and pick up some at the farm or at Go Wild!\"IMG_8372\"<\/p>\n

We also have a lot of eggs from some enthusiastic new laying hens – the eggs are $6\/dozen and they’re in the white cooler, just drop the money in the (plastic) jar!\u00a0Last week Martha and I, with baby Frankie, went to get some new laying hens \u2013 organic pullets from around Kitchener.\u00a0 A pullet is a young hen that\u2019s ready to lay. We\u2019ve got 50 new chickens \u2013 hopefully they\u2019re more obedient than the chickens that we have now \u2013 we have 20 chickens that we got in the fall that will not stay in the beautiful huge pastured area that they have to explore, because they\u2019ve discovered the rest of the barnyard and feel as though they are being ripped off if they can\u2019t eat blueberry roots, dropped grain and all the roots of the flowers in the flower beds.<\/p>\n

Greenhouse is filling up, but there’s still more to go in for another couple of weeks. Onions, leeks, shallots, hoophouse tomatoes, ground cherries, tomatillos, herbs and lots of flowers have been started, along with some sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kohlrabi. We just planted out the first pok choi and head lettuce into hoop houses. We plant head lettuce every 2 weeks from now until September so that we can offer lettuce every week to our members.<\/p>\n

When it gets really cold, we have to stoke the fire in the greenhouse in the middle of the night, as well as before bed and right away in the morning. Not having to keep all the plants warm makes spring that much sweeter!<\/p>\n

Ken and Martha have made a lot of progress on the massive bunkhouse renovation in the last few weeks \u2013 they\u2019ve got the propane hooked up for hot water and a working stove. Martha did all of the drywall, mudding and painting. Ken has made all of the trim for the window sills. They have a bathroom that\u2019s awaiting tiling, and a kitchen that is gradually getting cabinets, drawers and counters \u2013 there\u2019s a lot of beautiful raw edged walnut from the farm. Martha loves it that it\u2019s been raining because it means that Ken wasn\u2019t been pulled away from construction and wood working to do farm work quite as soon as he might have been. Here is the fancy moving equipment that we use here on the farm!\u00a0\"IMG_8495\"<\/p>\n

Now we have 3 new members of the team \u2013 the interns Connor, Yoan and Maike! They just arrived last week and have been settling in \u2013 today they started working with the horses and they did great! It\u2019s always fun to meet the new people that we will be working and (mostly) living with for the season, and to see things from their perspective for a while.\"IMG_8697\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is it spring? It must be because there are English Violets (so fragrant it’s incredible – here infusing some sugar to be used for a future project – perhaps a FARM DINNER in June??!), apprentices and the greenhouse is looking – well, green. Come see us this Saturday, April 8th at the Go Wild Grow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2869"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2871,"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2869\/revisions\/2871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.orchardhillfarm.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}