This Week on the Farm 4/4
It is an absolutely gorgeous day out today. The birds are singing, the tulips are in bloom, and everywhere there is green. I often wish our members could stop by on a day like today and see how much life there is on a farm (even one without livestock).
It has been another busy week. Tyler spent a good portion of the last week working on equipment. Everything has had an oil change and all of the filters and spark plugs have been checked.
Yesterday we spent the majority of the day replacing the brake lines on our red truck. We replaced one line that was leaking only to find another larger leak. After two trips to the store, we now have functional brakes. Most importantly, I can now say that I helped fix a truck!
This morning we worked in the garlic. We have three varieties this year and all three overwintered pretty well. There are a few areas where the manure was spread too heavily and the garlic didn’t come up, but over all we are pleased with how well it came. We were concerned with the lack of snow cover this winter that the garlic would have been damaged by the cold, but thankfully it was a mild enough winter that we didn’t see a huge drop in productivity. Later this week we will side-dress the garlic with a high nitrogen fertilizer (composted chicken manure, a.k.a. Chickity Doo Doo).
The plants in the greenhouses look good. We moved the first batch of plants into the new greenhouse this past weekend to make room for all of the stuff being planted this week. The cabbages, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi are taking off and have vibrant true leaves. The napa cabbage is starting to look pretty tasty.
Friday I am going to transplant the next round of celery. We should end up with three groups of transplanted celery when we are done.Although we planted everything at the same time, germination was uneven and some of the plants are taking longer to get to the stage where they are ready to be transplanted. That works for us though. A little variability helps us later in the season to have crops ready for different weeks.
The raspberries are growing rapidly. 
I went through earlier in the week and placed the canes inside the trellis wires. We need to come through with the rototiller and till in between the rows so that it doesn’t become a raspberry patch. If all goes well we should have a decent crop of raspberries this year. Yum!
If you know someone who is interested in signing up for a flower share this year, make sure they get their form in soon. We only have 16 flower shares left!