Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Spring Hiccups

Spring has come rushing in like a mad-thing throwing everything into a riot of bloom and activity. We have fruit trees budded and blooming to the point that its nearly obscene. The most exciting to date is the apricot trees, which only bear every 4-6 years.

An Apricot Promise
The bees have been out in the trees in full force, despite the wind and cool temps. To add to the excitement, we added another 12 hives just this week, with an additional 5 to arrive in a few days. As I mentioned on the farm's Facebook page, there is something a little crazy about driving any distance with +/- 144,000 bees in your car. Luckily it was a fairly uneventful trip.

Given the great early-season working conditions, we were able to get the gardens prepped earlier than usual, (mostly due to the fearless new BCS). This was an unexpected plus, given that we are now cold and soggy with 100lbs of potatoes to plant and 6,500 asparagus crowns that have already been postponed twice. Ah spring, you heady tease!

The real topper for the craziness occurred last week as Sean was practicing his "death-defying-ladder-and-electric-saw-dancing trick", while working on the new building. The ladder provided the trick and down they both went. Luckily the saw didn't follow them down, but Sean was rewarded with a nasty banged-up knee and a fancy new piece of hardware (knee immobilizer). So now he is mostly relegated to household duties and hard surface work areas.

Despite the madness we are marching forward and mostly making progress. Thanks to the ever-supportive Blue Gate Parents, we planted nearly 300 row feet of shallots just before the rains started. And just today we hosted Dr. Dolezal's Nature Writing and Environmental Literature class from Central College. This great group of students and their fearless leader came out for a cold, rainy-day tour, asked some great questions and then helped weed the high tunnel and assemble beehive parts. What a crew!

So here's to the promise of Spring , what a crazy temptress she is, hiccups and all!
 

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Progress

We are making progress on many fronts these days. The high tunnels are all sown and growing, we have a sunroom full of little (and not-so-little) transplants, we burned some native prairie areas plus some of the gardens that were overcome with weeds last year

we bought a "fancy" new BCS walking tractor/tiller and have prepped a good percentage of the beds and we are still making forward progress on the new building...


its about enough to wear out a farm dog (or two farm dogs and a farmer) out!