It's hard to believe that this is our final CSA pickup for the winter season! We hope you have enjoyed the experience of eating locally grown, seasonal, winter produce.
As this season ends, the main farming season is just beginning for us. This time of year, we're so busy with spring planting that it's easy to forget to look up from the dirt and take the time to say thank you! We realize you could have gone to HyVee to pick out your winter produce. Thanks for choosing to buy it from your local farmers!!! That's a big step toward making sustainable local farming possible and we don't say thanks enough. So here's to you!!! Thanks!
So what are we up to on the farm? Well, biting our nails a bit with this late frost in the forecast. We've had some damage to field crops and we've been covering with frost blankets, but this cool spring has slowed the growth of everything out in the field and caused us to delay planting of some things. Most of the crops are still coming from the tunnels when normally this time of year we'd be harvesting from spring planted outdoor crops. Right now, the only things we're harvesting outside were fall planted, overwintered crops. These overwintered crops have a head start on the spring planted crops so they are ready earlier and we're glad we have them as we watch the tiny seedlings wait. Part of the difficulty is cool soil temperatures. Since we don't use chemical fertilizers, we rely on soil biological activity to make nutrients available to the plants. At cool soil temperatures, the biology in the soil is mostly dormant. One of the biggest advantages to the high tunnels is the increased soil temperatures, not necessarily protecting from frost or warmer air temperatures during daylight.
The fields are filling up with cold hardy plants. Garlic, onion, kale, broccoli, chard, lettuce, peas, fennel, beets, dill, cilantro, spinach, kohlrabi are filling the outdoor planting beds. The warm season plants like tomato, pepper, okra, green beans, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, ginger,basil and other herbs are waiting their turn in our seedling greenhouse. The seedling greenhouse is feeling really small right now as the log jamb of plants awaits warmer temperatures. In the meantime, the tunnels are transitioning to warmer season plants. Outside may be growing slowly, but the tunnels look like jungles!!!
For our Final Bead shares we'll have:
Artisan: Italian
Sliced: Sourdough
Thank you,
from the whole Redfearn family
