Spring Update

I had such high ambitions for the Winter. Unfortunately, I caught the flu. And then the flu induced a very fluke occurrence of hepatitis. Let’s just say, January and February were full of doctor’s appointments and hours in bed with a heat pack on my abdomen. Thankfully, I’m mostly healed and starting to get back to my normal. Sadly, planned seeds did not get started, classes I’d hoped to create are still in draft mode, and blogs I’d outlined have sat idle. I’m disappointed but also know that if I didn’t take care of myself, there’s no way I could be there for my family or the farm in the long term. But thank goodness for cool season flowers that went into the ground late Fall!

I’m doing my best to prioritize Spring tasks and get it all done for our pending opening. The farm's VIP for the season: my supportive workhorse husband! Primarily spurred by his initiative, we were able to do a minor field expansion.

Last year, we layered 8-12 inches of mulch on some pretty ugly dirt (note dirt, not soil). When we moved the dahlia bags, and peeled back the landscape fabric, the soil was much improved.

This section is where we composted 8-12 inches of mulch in place, covered with landscape fabric, and then removed it after a year.

We used the same method in the corner of the field. We pulled the deer fence out, layered 8-12 inches of mulch and covered it in landscape fabric. We moved our grow bags to the top and added 7 rows in the newly cultivated section.

This is an action shot of spreading the mulch 8-12 inches deep in the newly added back corner.

This is after we've finished spreading and smoothing the mulch.

We covered the newly spread mulch with landscape fabric and moved our grow bags onto the new space.

Our newly formed rows for our late Spring/early Summer flowers.

One thousand square feet may not be much in the big scheme of things, but that fact that we were able to complete this project in spite of my illness is a major win. These rows will be our late Spring/early Summer flowers to transition out of our cool annuals. As a bonus, they’re right next to our sitting area and should make for a fantastic view.

We've still got several tasks before the farm will be visitor ready. But it's finally coming together. Stay tuned and we hope we have our opening day announcement in the next week or two.