This Week on the Farm…February 12

This week the snowbirds have arrived. They are large flocks of white geese with little flecks of black on their wings. They fly by the hundreds and land in fields that surround our little farm. They look like sparkling diamonds in the sky when they are en masse flying back and forth and back and forth before they land. I will never tire of watching them. They are like magic in the sky.

Our exciting news this week is that we have ordered our first Gothic Pro High Tunnel from Farmer’s Friend. Currently we grow only for our little family- but we are excited to learn what will be successful inside of it, how it will extend our season at both ends and what it will mean for our future. We didn’t read the fine print on delivery and quickly learned that although it will arrive on a truck we are responsible for getting it off the truck and in our case lugging it to where it will live until we build it. Please cross your fingers that the arrival is on a day I am not home alone. I think I may need to hire a local moving company to be here to move it from the truck to the barn as it is going to be quite heavy from what I gather. Look for all of our videos about this process on our YouTube channel which we are currently growing.

On a little smaller scale, but with as much enthusiasm, our seeds and supplies have been arriving as well. The bulk of our seeds are from Fruition Seeds down the road in Naples, New York. You might remember that we sell Fruition Seeds in our shop. With incredible varieties and amazing germination rates, we can’t love this company any more than we do. We also purchased a small soil blocker and inserts this year to accompany our large soil blocker. Soil blocks have been super successful for us and we are looking forward to using the smaller version for all the tiny seeds. From Johnny’s Seeds we have ordered numerous flower seeds and some seed starting trays for all the soil blocks we plan to make. We are excited for all the seeds we have ordered, but are especially looking forward to trying to grow ashwagandha, Organic Coyote Cherry Tomatoes, and all the curcubita moschata variety of squash that we are hoping will keep the squash beetles away. I don’t even want to tell you how many flower seeds we have ordered. We are hobby growers, so just seeing what will happen with some of the new ones like carnations, celosia, scabiosa, and hollyhocks. It is still too early for us to start most of these so in the meantime we have been enjoying tray after tray of microgreens.

At home we have completed installing the last of our sconce lights for the time being. When we moved in there were so many, and some matched, some did not. They were lovely and old. We opted to update them with something more our style, a little bit fancy and something that would be consistent throughout the house. Our next big project is to tackle a small guest bathroom. When you live in a house this old there are no shortage of projects.