Sunday, March 21, 2010
Wow! What a Wonderful Start!
Weather & Precipitation Summary: We experienced great conditions all week for working–until a cool rainy day today, but just in time to water in all of our plantings. …I would call it rain at the right time!
We Planted:
1. Lettuce – Johnny’s Ovation Series: Our first bed from last Monday night was up already today!
2. Radishes – french breakfast/easter egg blend and cincinatti market (26 days)
3. Turnips- tokyo cross and hakurei-as well as seven tops turnips for greens (35 days)
4. Beets – early wonder (55 days)
5. Broccoli raab – spring raab (42 days)
6. Scallions – purple bunching (60 days)
7. Peas – 1200 feet of peas! 400 yellow podded and 800 sugar snap! (65 days)
We Tended:
1. Garlic (removing some of the straw for more sunlight to penetrate)
2. Our more than 5000 seedlings in the greenhouse; including tomatoes, eggplant, husk cherry, basil, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, kale, swiss chard and flowers!
We Harvested:
1. Nothing yet… unless you count the weeds!
We prepped 17 beds and planted 17 beds!!! Outstanding!
We used the following new infrastructure, tools or supplies:
* large blue water barrels (thank you Steve!)
* a wheel plow (thank you John Wilkerson!)
* bamboo stakes (thank you Keven!)
Celebrations & Special Memories:
* Everyone was able to meet Caroline Mueller on the farm’s “opening day” on Monday, the 15th! And you heard it from her first: She “doesn’t like vegetables”! 😉
* We celebrated DeeDee’s birthday on Friday with thin mint frozen custard from Whistle Stop! (Happy birthday also to Holly, whose bday was on Friday & Dave, whose bday was on Saturday!)
* Saidia’s little brother Naim was moved by the spirit and led us in a prayer over the crops thanking God for bringing our family together! Precious!
Special THANK YOU to:
* Everyone who brought water up to the farm
* Bob Gittemeier, for delivering organic beefsteak tomato seeds for us to start!
* Slow Food St. Louis, for a $500 grant to help cover our seed costs!
* Keven, for cutting and delivering all of that bamboo for our pea stakes!
* Steve, for picking up the blue barrels from Schlafly for our water storage!
* The gardeners of Florissant and Kevin Tucker at North Tech High for all of the help in the greenhouse!
* Melissa, for an extra trip to the greenhouse to take care of the seedlings.
* Moira & the gang at Overlook Farm – for hosting the first EarthDance staff retreat!
To everyone worked on the farm this week: We accomplished even more than I had intended…. I just love seeing the friendships forming, as everyone is getting to know each other. Thanks for all of your hard work and dedication–especially the rainy day crew! We will work tomorrow 2-4:45 and head out to New Roots from the farm if anyone wants to carpool-please feel free to meet us at the farm!
Namaste.
Vicki