We are so excited for our first harvest of the season! We have been working hard on the growing end, but also on the planning and management end to bring you the best, local veggies in a safe and responsible way. If you haven't received our pre-season emails detailing our Food and Hygiene Safety Practices, Our Pre-Boxed Share option, or our Farm Guide, please let me know. I can be reached at farmer@homefields.org. If you are new to the farm, don't worry! We will have extra staff available this weekend to guide you through your first pick up.
FARM UPDATE: The weather has been mostly agreeable for spring planting and weeding. Our first round of cucumbers and squash are growing nicely. The potatoes look amazing. The peas, beans and edamame are getting bigger every day. Watermelons, winter squash, peppers and tomatoes are almost big enough to transplant out into the fields.
This spring we had a crop failure of carrots, spinach, beets and lettuce, all items that I wanted to have in the shares the first few weeks. My timing with the direct seeding of these crops and the rain wasn't quite good enough and the weeds got the better of the beds before the seeds germinated. Most of these crops have been reseeded and the new beds are looking better, but this means that shares will be a little short the first few weeks of the season. We will make it up to you in July and August when everything we're planting now is coming up in abundance.
This week, the strawberries are starting to ripen and they are ripening fast! It was hard for us to predict this morning how many will be ripe on Thursday, Friday and Saturday so we're including a pint in everyone's share. If we run out this week, know that there will be plenty more ripening and you will be able to pick this week's pint in an upcoming week.
We could not hold an in person Open Barn event this spring, so we made a bunch of videos and held a virtual Open Barn instead! If you haven’t yet, check them out on our website at www.homefields.org/openbarn. There’s a farm tour, a mindfulness session, some snippets of spring life on the farm, intros to our staff, residents & volunteers, and much more!
CUSTOMIZING YOUR SHARE: Because we are a little short for shares this week, there won't be items available to swap. We're sorry about this because we love this new feature. But we're confident that in the coming weeks you'll be able to try out the customization tools if you'd like to.
ADD ON SHARES: Please note that if you signed up for an add-on share those items are automatically added to your order. You don't need to choose or swap them. If you didn't sign up for an add on share, we do have eggs and mushrooms available to purchase as one-time "extras".
In short, we are thrilled to be growing food for you and your family! We will see you (from a safe distance) out on the farm soon!
Your farmers,
Katie, Elizabeth, Brad, Brian, Christina, Kelly and Matt
