A Look at What’s to Come

Although Spring brings a heavy workload for all farmers, this spring has been filled with what feels like more work than usual. After having plowed and tilled our fields in mid-April, we have been hand-forming each of our 46 raised beds. These beds constitute one half acre, the other half-acre within our fence line has been planted to buckwheat, a cover crop designed to tackle the immense weed pressure that has come forth after cultivating a fallow field full of perennial weeds and grasses. We have had great help from close friends and family in forming these beds, but nevertheless, each one takes us nearly an hour to weed, rake and clear. We allowed ourselves time for this large task however, and planned for a later than usual planting. That being said, we got many things in the ground in early May, planting into the beds we had shaped the day before, and the photos below detail just some of what we have currently emerging.

Given the work we have done already, the first appearance of a seedling in a bed brings a great deal of satisfaction to us. Since we have decided to plant most of our crops directly from seed this year, the growth is in fact quite simple. We lay our seeds with a number of different methods, by rolling the Earthway or Precision seeders, or by hand, placing one seed per hole as we move on down the bed. We water the seeds in, and then wait for sunlight and rain to do the work. Occasionally we have had to provide supplemental water to our beds prior to germination, but the rain has come often enough that this has been seldom.

Each seedling emerges in a different fashion. The beans themselves pop through the soil as the first sprout emerges through the broken seed. The sprout unfolds and then gives birth to green leaves, growing at a rate greater than most else we have in ground. The carrots come forth much more slowly, each tender plant is barely visible on its own, yet as you look down the bed you can see the silhouette of three rows, neatly laid and gathering density at its own pace.

This week we enjoyed our first “harvest”. As it came time to thin our beets, turnips, and swiss chard, we pulled tiny plants and saved our thinnings. On a large farm this may not be the most economical choice of thinning, for it requires a bit of sorting out the weeds from baby veggies along the way, but for us, we could not resist the temptation to eat these tender greens, and we could not stand to waste the plants that had each emerged from their own seed. We have since enjoyed sautéed beet greens with Lakestone Family Farm eggs, turnip greens with soba noodles and peanut sauce, and fresh beet greens on Lakestone chicken salad.

This week will be another large push for planting. We plan to form our final two beds this morning, then we will top them with compost in preparation for tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, grown for us by Lighthouse Gardens. We will be trellising our fresh shelling beans this week, and will be planting baby greens and radishes for our first CSA. We wake up every day and realize there is an eternal to-do list for the farm, yet we enjoy the pleasures of working and watching it all emerge, the fruits of our own labor indeed.