Late April Farm Update…What Might Be in the First CSA box?

By Richard de Wilde & Andrea Yoder

April 23, 2024:  Transplanting Onions

Looking back to February and March when we had gorgeous sunny days with clear skies and temperatures in the high 50’s and 60’s, all indications were that we were going to have an early spring.  The garlic pushed through the mulch and was taller than we’ve ever seen it that early in the season.  We worked diligently to stay on top of the greenhouse planting schedule to make sure the plants were ready for the field as soon as our field crew returned from Mexico.  And speaking of crew, we did everything in our power to keep the visa process moving along to ensure a prompt arrival, with a goal of no later than April 1.  Well, we succeeded, and the first group of field crew started work on March 25!  

We dug parsnips and sunchokes, transplanted celeriac seedlings into larger trays in the greenhouse, and did our first harvest of overwintered spinach.  On April 1 we sent our first planter out to the field to seed cilantro, red radishes, dill, baby bok choi and baby white turnips.  We were on a roll!  And then the temperatures dropped, and snow fell from the sky.  By Wednesday, April 3 the spinach field was covered in snow, and we called off work for most of our crew because of poor road conditions.  We cancelled spinach harvest for the rest of the week because the daytime temperatures were never high enough above freezing to melt the snow!  Thankfully the sun came out over the weekend, the snow melted, and we were back out harvesting the following week.  

April 11, 2024:  Washing 
Overwintered Spinach

We’ve done our best to take advantage of windows of opportunity to get our outside work and field work done, but it has been a challenge at times!  We’ve had snow, rain, hail, lightning, high winds, freezing temperatures, and finally this week we’re starting to see the temperatures rise and have had mostly sunny skies!  Is it still early spring?  Yes and No.  As mentioned, we were able to plant on April 1.  April 1 is always our goal for the first planting, but seldom do we get that opportunity to actually be in the field that early.  Those crops that were planted on that day will be ready for harvest on the first of May, likely just in time for that first CSA box!  Our overwintered spinach crop definitely came in ahead of schedule by a few weeks, an indicator of an early spring.  But the cool weather held back the ramps to a more “normal” start of the harvest season.  We had hoped to start transplanting some plants in the field earlier in the month, but rain and freezing temperatures caused delays.  We aren’t too far behind schedule, and we’ll catch up quickly, but we are a little late.

April 11 2024:  Silvestre seeding cover crop
seed in the Asparagus field

Thankfully, we’ve been able to get quite a lot of field work done despite the weather challenges.  We were able to get minerals spread on all our fields at the end of March.  We’ve also been able to spread compost on most of the fields that needed it and we’ve been working on making new compost and turning our piles.  We’ve also managed to do three plantings of our lineup of crops we strive to plant weekly.  These crops include the ones I mentioned above (red radishes, cilantro, baby bok choi, etc.) as well as our baby greens including salad mix, baby arugula and spinach.  We’ve also been able to plant beets, carrots, chard and just this week we managed to complete our parsnip and burdock plantings!  The field crew has been busy laying plastic mulch and drip tape in preparation for many of our crops that are transplanted.  Thankfully we were able to start planting onions and shallots earlier this week and will definitely finish by the end of the week.  The leeks are planted, along with the first plantings of broccoli, cauliflower and spring cabbage and kohlrabi!  By the end of the week, we should have the first planting of kale and collards done as well.  The potatoes are planted, and we even managed to put in a new strawberry field earlier this month!  

First Radishes of the Season!

In addition to field work, we’ve been busy with other projects.  We’ve done oil changes on tractors and field vehicles along with changing filters, checking brakes, lights, etc.  We’ve also checked wheel bearings on all the harvest wagons, so they are ready to go to the field!  We finished some cleanup from a riverbank repair project we were working on last fall.  We had cleared some box elder trees that we burned this spring.  We took the charcoal and added it to our compost windrow, our own biochar!  We are also working on some improvements around a beautiful spring on one of our properties, taking time to clear away honeysuckle and prickly ash so we could plant some ramps in the area.  We also planted another two acres of pollinator plants!

Mini Romaine Head Lettuce......coming 
to CSA boxes in mid May!

The first CSA boxes will go out for delivery May 9/10/11 and it looks like they are going to be nice boxes!  We’ll have to see how ramp season plays out, but we’re crossing our fingers that the season will extend long enough that we can put ramps in that first box.  We anticipate including baby arugula, fresh red radishes, nettles, overwintered parsnips and sunchokes as well as some potatoes we squirreled away from last fall!  We’re also feeling like we may see asparagus pushing through any day now, especially if the temperatures warm up as predicted.  Asparagus for the first box?!  We’ll take it!  Plus, we have a crop of cilantro that overwintered from last fall, a side benefit of a mild winter!  We can’t recall ever including cilantro in the first CSA box, but it looks like it will be in that first box as well this year!  We have a crop of mini romaine head lettuce planted in one of our greenhouse tunnels and hope that will be ready for the second or third delivery.  We’ll be putting together herb packs later this week with plans to deliver them with the third & fourth delivery weeks.  

Oscar & Luis laying drip tape in the 
new strawberry field

As in every year of farming, there are opportunities and challenges and if we play our cards right, we can turn those challenges into opportunities to succeed!  While April has brought us a variety of conditions to work with, we’ve also had a lot of productive work and have made great strides towards the start of what we hope will be a very prosperous growing season!

While deliveries are just around the corner, we do still have plenty of CSA shares remaining.  In fact, we would like to pack another 200-250 boxes each week in May!  So, if you have not yet signed up, please submit your order soon so you don’t miss out on any deliveries!  And for those of you who are already signed up, please tell your friends, neighbors and anyone else you can think of who might be interested in delicious vegetables!  Remember, we offer referral coupons to those of you who help us recruit new members, so it’s win-win all around!

We hope your spring is off to a great start and we look forward to sending delicious vegetables your way very soon!