Hello Farm Friends!!
Thank you for supporting our little farm and giving us the honor of providing you with farm fresh treats! You’ve all made an incredible commitment and we don’t take that lightly. So far, with the money you’ve sent us we’ve been able to move forward in purchasing a holding tank, seeds and some important irrigation equipment! YAY!!! We’re moving forward together. We’ll try to send out weekly emails to all of you until the season begins. This way we can keep you in the loop and give you progress reports before you get your boxes, which looks more and more like the beginning of June. We’re about to experience a coldspell, according to the weather report, so we’d better be safe than sorry. We still haven’t found a drop off spot in Roseburg yet, so if any of you have ideas or possible leads please contact us and we’ll follow up. Also, once the season starts you’ll get a weekly (harvest & pick-up day) reminder to check our website for our farm Newsletters. I’m not sure yet if we’ll make a separate link or if we’ll end up including it on our blog. If you have any preferences please let us know. We’re going paperless because not only is it easier on our pocketbooks, but it is better for the environment in many ways. This might change, but for now this is what we’ve discussed. Let us know if you have trouble downloading our site information because we have the capability to print, so in essence we’d like to hear from you on this.
So here’s the scoop for this week:
Anthony is nearing the final stages of putting up our 2nd greenhouse complete with heat and everything. It’s beginning to look like a small apartment! We’ve placed the entrance of the GR parallel to our front door so that we could just roll out of bed in the morning and land right where all the little green babies are coming up!
We gave a talk on Tuesday night at the Umpqua CDC in Roseburg for “Think Local Umpqua” in order to introduce our farm and talk about the CSA model. The house was packed and poor Anthony was quite nervous, but of course he did a great job and people were really floored by the idea. We’re beginning to receive more and more support in the community, so that’s wonderful!
On Wednesday Anthony and I added dolemitic lime, alfalfa and potash to our upper garden rows. These are all natural and organic additives, which are used by most organic farmers. These things provide much needed nutrients to the soil, which will in turn make nutritious and delicious food. Why add anything to the soil? Well, the Oregon rainfall actually helps to leech out these elements throughout the year, so we need to add them back annually because if we don’t the soil will be deficient in the necessary minerals. What you get when trying to grow food in nutrient deficient soils are fruits and vegetables which lack nutrients as well. We take annual soil samples in order to decifer what we need to add at a given time.
I’ve also been planting onion sets! The view from our place over the short valley that we’re tucked into is absolutely beautiful. There really isn’t anything more gratifying than working in the field on a sunny spring evening…Today is a different story.
Well, that’s it for now. I’m headed back outside to plant more onions!
All the best to you and your family!
Sandee & Anthony
“For myself I will plant a cypress tree and it will outlive me. That’s what I miss about the fields, the sense of the future as well as the present. That one day what you plant will spring up unexpectedly; a shoot, a tree, just when you were looking the other way, thinking about something else. I like to know that life will outlive me, that’s happiness.
Keeping busy on cold winter nights!!
Hello Everyone!!