I could start every Farm Happening off with the phrase “It’s been busy on the farm” and this week is no different. We’ve been working on on boarding our new farm crew team for the past month while also attending some very busy Saturday farmers markets. We’ve also been busy planting, transplanting, direct seeding, weeding and setting up all the necessary infrastructure to help the farm thrive!
Our farm crew this season are all new to our farm and farming in general but luckily our staff are picking things up quickly and learning not only how our systems and procedures work but also why they work. You’ll start to see our farm staff helping out at our weekly farmers markets and all of our staff will be attending markets throughout the season.
To date we’ve planted over 21000 seeds for transplanting and roughly 80% of those have been transplanted! That doesn’t even include things that we direct seed like beets, carrots, sweet corn, beans, and so many other crops. We’ve got about 80% of our farm planted and the remaining 20% is being saved for our continued successions of crops so we have a steady supply of vegetables for you!
June is a very big weeding month on the farm. The phrase “grow like a weed” is very much rooted (haha get it?) in reality. We use a combination of mechanical weeding and hand weeding to manage the weeds and while the farm is certainly not weed free it is in pretty good shape. Want to hear me geek out about weed control? Just ask me about our Tilmor Walk Behind Tractor!
Finally, we’ve been working on getting our infrastructure set up. We have our field tomatoes caged where necessary and stakes set for our Florida Weave trellis system for the others. We’ve also got irrigation lines set up and put to use as it has been rather dry for the past couple weeks now. It wasn’t too long ago we were disheartened by all the rain! We have the equipment and the well to irrigate our farm so dealing with dryer conditions is easier than excessive rain. We can’t do much at all when it rains too much.
