By: Andrea Yoder
 |
| The first asparagus poking through just in time for the first CSA box! |
Before we go any further, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Andrea and I started here in 2007 as the summer farm chef. I spent my first summer cooking for our crew of about 30 at that time. I have since moved on into other roles and have assumed many other responsibilities. I do still hold onto my role as a Farm Chef, however I now use my culinary training and expertise to develop, research and test recipes to share with all of you through our newsletters and blog articles each week! If you are interested in my full story, you can read more about my journey on our blog. I also want to introduce you to Richard de Wilde, the visionary behind everything that Harmony Valley Farm has become. He is our founding farmer and has been farming since the mid 70’s. In his early years of farming he played an instrumental role in the development of organic standards and certification. In fact, he has been described as a “Pioneer in Organic Farming!” He has led a very interesting life and has many achievements to celebrate, but Harmony Valley Farm is his greatest joy and the result of many hours of labor and devotion. You can read Richard’s full bio in an article we published on our blog several years ago. Richard’s desire is for the farm to continue indefinitely into the future, which is why he has been cultivating the next generation of farmers to continue the work that he started. And that leads me to today’s final introduction, Rafael Morales Peralta. Rafael has been working with Richard for over 10 years, originally coming to Harmony Valley Farm on a H2A work visa. He demonstrated such potential, skill and passion for vegetable farming that Richard invited him to become an owner. He has been tasked with downloading all of the farming knowledge from Richard’s brain, a task that he is quite good at! Rafael is enthusiastic, optimistic and energetic while also being very innovative. Rafael has had an interesting journey as well, which we shared on our blog last year. There are many other individuals who work at Harmony Valley Farm, each with important roles and responsibilities that contribute to our collective success. Throughout this CSA season we hope to share some of their stories with you as well!
 |
| Dark Green Overwintered Spinach! |
Now that you know who we are, we want to tell you what we have been up to since our last farm update several weeks ago. Spring is always an exciting time of the year, but it is also a super busy time! Early in April it looked like we were on track to have an early spring. The weather was beautiful with sunshine and warmer temperatures. We were able to dig overwintered sunchokes and parsnips as the ground dried out quickly. We also started harvesting our overwintered spinach crop in early April, ahead of when we typically see this crop start to mature. While we were thrilled to have green food coming out of the fields again, we also panicked a bit as we really wanted to preserve that crop to harvest for our first two CSA boxes in May! Well, Mother Nature decides the timing and there really is not much we can do aside from responding to her cues and seeing how she’ll show up for us each year. We have had several very strong weeks of spinach harvest and really thought it would be finished before our first week of CSA. However, we got lucky and preserved one portion of the field that we could still harvest late last week and this week! So, we are at the tale end of the season, but there will be one delivery of overwintered spinach!
 |
| Ramps as far as the eye can see! |
The season for ramps, another spring favorite, started in mid-April as well. When we first started to harvest, it looked like it may be a short season that would end in April. If there is one thing we’ve learned, and sometimes still forget, it’s that you should never underestimate the power of Mother Nature to show up for us. Over the past few weeks, weather conditions shifted and what looked to be a warm, early spring turned into dry, cool conditions that slowed things down and moved us back to more of a “normal” time schedule for spring. As such, the conditions have been favorable for continuing to harvest ramps and we are excited to send you at least one week of this special spring vegetable. We are crossing our fingers to be able to deliver them in the second week too, but that verdict is up to Mother Nature.
 |
| Transplanting Strawberries |
While we have been staying busy with harvests, we have also been working very hard to do the necessary field work to move forward with our spring plantings. We started planting early in April and have had a very productive month leading up to the first week of May! This year in particular we carried a heavier load for spring plantings as we needed to plant some perennial crops along with all the other standard crops we plant every year. Last week we finished planting a nice field of strawberry plants for next year’s harvest. We also planted a new field of asparagus along with rhubarb and a few horseradish plants. It will be 1-3 years before we harvest some of these perennial crops, but we have to plan ahead to ensure we have these crops ready for your tables in future years!
While our seeding plan starts the first week of April, we seldom actually plant that week. This year however, we were able to do our first “5/15 row plantings.” This is a group of crops we plant every week, some crops for the entire season and others just for spring and fall. That first planting is still small, but it looks like we may be harvesting our first baby arugula next week!
 |
| Tiny little red radishes! |
Red Radishes also look promising and we estimate they’ll be ready to harvest within the next 1-2 weeks! Spring planted spinach and cilantro will follow very closely behind . We anticipate we’ll be harvesting spring spinach in about three weeks and cilantro in 3-4 weeks!
We have actually been hoping for rain over the past few weeks. Unfortunately we had not received more than a little sprinkle here and there. The irrigation crew has been working very hard to try to get water to some of our newly transplanted crops as well as some of the new plantings we had seeded. Without adequate water the seeds just set there and do nothing or try to sprout and then die. We all breathed a
huge sigh of relief Sunday evening when the clouds rolled in, we started to hear rumbles in the distance and it started to rain! It rained throughout the night and we were happy to dump an inch of rain out of the rain gauge this morning! Everything looks bright green and fresh today and we are anxious to see some of our direct seeded crops like peas, beets, carrots, parsnips and burdock take off now that they have some moisture!
 |
| Storm clouds over our farm Sunday night bringing us the rain we needed! |
 |
| Our cows grazing on the hillside |
The animals are also happy and content as they are back to grazing and rooting around our hillsides. Our little pigs, which came to our farm several weeks ago, made acquaintance with our beef cattle when the cattle were rotated to a pasture close to the pigs last week. The pigs acclimated very quickly to their new environment and can be found running around the woods, playing in the creek, or munching on some of the spinach and parsnip scraps from the packing shed! While the beef cattle are large creatures, they move quietly and calmly through the pasture. It is a pleasure to see them so peaceful on the hillsides. In the goat pasture, there is quite a lot of activity! Last week we welcomed nine more kids into the herd and throughout the day we now see little goats darting around the pastures, climbing all over their mamas, playing in the feeders and exploring their world.
As spring continues to unfold around us, we welcome the bounty our fields will afford us this year. We hope you enjoy this year’s adventure alongside us as you discover new favorite foods, new favorite recipes, and benefit from being part of our CSA community!
No comments:
Post a Comment