Farm Notes
After a seemingly endless string of cold rainy days, we finally got some blue skies this afternoon! We could use a lot more sun to dry up our soggy beds, because at this point it’s too wet and muddy to do much work without creating a big mess. Thankfully, it looks like we have a few more dry days coming up… though maybe our first snow on Friday?
But maybe it’s better that I’m stuck inside, because there is a lot of planning and ordering happening right now. If you could see my “desk” (aka our kitchen countertop) right now, it’s strewn with seed catalogues, seed packets, receipts, planning spreadsheets, etc etc. I placed my big seed order for 2021 with Johnny’s last week, and this morning I sent in a big order of spring seedlings from Banner Greenhouses, based near Asheville, NC. We’ll do our first big planting of spring veggies in early/mid March, and some things will be planted from seed (radishes, hakurei turnips, sugar snap peas, carrots, arugula, etc), and some need to be planted as established starts (kale, broccoli, cabbage, swiss chard, beets, onions/scallions/leeks, lettuces, fennel, kohlrabi, etc).
Because we don’t have the capacity for a nice greenhouse right now, I order most of our seedlings through Banner or from other local farms. Growing nice starts is an art and requires constant attention and fine-tuning, and I’m happy to pass on that job to someone else while I focus on managing other aspects of our farm. I do have a few mini indoor greenhouse structures + grow lights that I use to start a small amount of plants – things like our specialty herbs and edible flowers, as well as quick-growing seeds like anything in the cucurbit family (zucchini/squash, cucumbers, melons, etc).
Kitchen Notes
It’s a leftovers kinda day here… we enjoyed some freshly baked sourdough bread from our neighbor, toasted and dipped into warm bowls of broccoli cheddar soup that I made last night. As I was making the soup yesterday (#sundaysoupnight), I realized I hadn’t ever made broccoli cheddar soup before, so I was pleasantly surprised by how it turned out! And now if you’ve now got a hankering for some broccoli + cheddar, here are a few good recipes that I used as inspiration: Smitten Kitchen / Bon Appetit / Cookie & Kate.
Today’s stats
Low temp: 35F
High temp: 48F
Sunrise: 7:23am
Sunset: 5:12pm
Moon Phase: Waning Gibbous
Additional Notes: Cloudy in the morning, finally sunshine and blue skies by the afternoon.