Today is the ordering window for this week's delivery. Deadline is tonight (April 27th) at midnight. Starting next week our regular farmship deliveries will begin and we will not be using this shopping cart model as much.
There is such abundance on the farm in the spring! Eggs, spinach, flowers, baby animals, and more! So grateful to be the current stewards of this little piece of God's earth.
As a farmer our work is impacted to a great degree by the weather. And we can't count on the weather always doing what we think it will. Sometimes there is a lot of rain. Sometimes there is very little rain. Spring can be cold, or warm. But we have found that there are many ways that you can minimize risk on the farm related to weather so that you can have a greater likelihood of succeeding even if the weather is unpredictable. Here are just a few we utilize:
- Use portable animal shelters: Chickens love to be outside, but when the weather gets bad they need shelter. And, depending on the weather, those shelters allows us to take them to spots around the farm that have good forage. If it is wet we can let them forage on the high ground. If it is dry we can let them forage in the valleys.
- Garden with minimal tillage and mulch: When the soil is not plowed it both drains and retains moisture well. This prevents standing water in wet periods and allows us to plant and work ground even right after a rain. In a dry season the soil stays moist under the mulch and needs much less water.
- Keep planting on a regular basis: This keeps veggies coming in and means that if a hail storm or bug infestation kills one planting, another planting is on its way to replace it.
- Tunnels: I prefer to grow outside, but we have a few beds that are covered with 14 feet wide hoop houses and protect crops in the winter from frost and summer crops like tomatoes from getting too much water.
As farmers we can either complain about the things we have no control over like the weather, or we can ask God for resilient solutions that honor his design in nature. As a farmer you never stop learning!
