Spring has sprung and the farm is buzzing with life. While we're busily getting our cover crop tilled in, fields prepped, and crops planted, the wildlife is busy too. Our barn swallows have arrived and have started their tireless attempts to build nests above the shared washer/dryer next to the officew. City Bees hives have arrived and the bees are working the blooming apples and pears. Our Livestock Guardian Dogs in training are putting on lbs a week.
We just finished grafting our tunnel grown tomatoes (pictured above). Last year was the first time we tried this and we definitely saw better vigor and disease resistance, so we're going to give it another go. We graft our chosen varieties of tomatoes onto plants of super strong, vigorous, and more disease resistant varieties that don't have very good fruit. The outdoor planted dry-farmed early girls aren't grafted, and already went into the ground last week at our Butano Cutoff location (where there's no frost). Believe it or not, we have to keep delicate plants covered here on the Home Ranch till after Mother's Day if we don't want to risk losing them to frost.
Anyways.. the Spring is marching by and we're trying to keep up. CSA deliveries start in about a month... so we've got to get all the big jobs done before we switch gears and start doing lots more harvesting and packing boxes. There's still time to sign up, but we are almost full, so make up your mind soon..
