March Snows Bring Warm Aprils?

Hopefully!  (With 10 to 18" coming down, our fingers are crossed that this will come true!) Either way, spring is on it's way at SOME point this month, and thus, seed starting (and Growing Season 2014's official start!) are underway!  We'll get going back on our normal blog posts now (we didn't have much going on during our much needed winter break) since summer is gearing up around the farm FAST!

This week's news includes seed starting, greenhouse prep, CSA shares, and translating chicken...

First the fun news!  Seed starting is under way--onions, early leeks, shallots, scallions, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and some flowers are in their flats and getting ready to germinate!  As you can see from the picture below (and our cramped seed starting pics on Facebook), we have them in the house on vast numbers of tables now set up in the living room and kitchen.  It's funny, 2 years ago we swore we wouldn't have this many seed flats in the house ever again after we upgraded our greenhouse heating system.  We are eating those words so quickly for two reasons--first, we wanted to start getting away from buying in all our onion plants and try out some new varieties from seed (and onions need to start a few weeks before we want to fire up our greenhouse).  Second, we were oblivious to propane supplies and prices early in winter and all of a sudden, cohabitation with ten thousand seedlings for a few weeks seemed like a quite reasonable prospect!

The greenhouse is also looking good--we'll have details and pics on that in our next post.  We have fired it up a little bit (though we are waiting until this weekend for the official heater start day), have it mostly cleaned out, and are working on this season's upgrades (new floor and watering system!).  It's been wonderful working to prepare the house this week--even without the heater running, things get toasty during the day!

We do still have CSA shares available--Tuesday in Fayetteville, Liverpool, and Syracuse, and Friday in Fenner!  Give us an email or call if you want to learn more about the CSA or signup online.

And we promised you some chicken translation... Well, we are pretty sure we made out some F-bombs to the chickens clucking this morning.  The poor ladies were relishing the sun and warm temperatures as they managed to excavate some actual grass and dirt in their dooryard this week.  However, they are extremely under-impressed with this big snow and have been squawking to make their displeasure known (though the good girls keep on laying!).  We have promised them grass (and possibly a new house?) sometime in the next four weeks!  The farmers are also under-impressed with this storm, which is the first one blowing from due north, so it deposited a thigh high drift in the yard between us and the hen house.  Spring is coming, isn't it?  Our next blog will be set in the spring-like greenhouse at least!!!

Winter Resting Going on Here...

So we haven't written for a few months, but farming is going on still at Hartwood Farm while we work hard on our 2014 planning!  We've been taking some farming down time after last year's marathon summer, but are re-energized and excited for next season (though we do keep our fingers crossed for some normal weather!).  As we start gearing up for the season, check back here for more farm updates and pictures of new projects!

Irrigation pond icing over...

Most of our outside winter work right now are relatively easy chicken chores.  The hens are laying well (almost one egg each hen per day!).  In order to keep them laying, we do have them under lights (hens produce eggs best when they have 14 hours of light a day).

However, the chickens are utterly unenthusiastic about snow and are incredibly bored without bugs to chase or grass to dig up.  Every thaw they go wild when the grass reappears, and we've been trying to put objects in their house to try and keep them distracted during the day (so far pumpkin seeds are their favorite, but hay bales seem to keep them entertained the longest).  They, like us, are waiting for the longer days of spring!

Seed Starting Days!

We've been busy starting seeds in the anticipation of it getting warmer at some point!  It's been so dreary, we decided to make a big mess in the hallway of our house and start the seeds there (so the pictures are a bit dark)...

Cleaning House!

It was a busy weekend on the farm as the weather starts breaking.  Yesterday, we headed over to NOFA-NY's Syracuse CSA fair and got to meet a lot of great folks.  We love seeing how more and more people are getting interested in CSA.  We might be biased, but it really is a great way to connect with your local farms and enjoy delicious seasonal food! With today's beautiful days, a bit of the fields are starting to poke out through the snow.  (Since we are at 1400 feet elevation, we have a bit longer a thaw than everyone living down in tropical Syracuse or Utica.)  Matt used the break in the weather to finish cleaning the greenhouse in preparation for firing it up this week.  We have all our trays, seeds, and soil ready--we just have a few more heating system tweaks and we are good to go!  I'm working hard to control myself from starting seeds too early.  Last year we had such good early growth the plants were ready before the weather was!  This year we are waiting an extra 5 to 10 days on our first seeding round.

While Matt played in the greenhouse, I finalized (for the sixth time) our irrigation order (I definitely got the bum end of the deal).  Each year I tell myself I'm going to pawn off irrigation planning to a high school algebra class, but each year I forget to do it until midway through the process.

We survived last season with our existing irrigation system, but the severity of the drought definitely made us realize that even though we have a pond, we need to be more frugal with water (since the pond is not limitless).  This means changing around our set-up quite a bit, and each change involves solving for a range of variables (flow rates, water pressure, length of the lines, and more).  Hopefully we have perfect weather this summer (3 days of sun followed by 1 day with a gentle 3/4" of rain) and don't need all this irrigation, but we want to be prepared just in case!