Thursday, January 7, 2010

Winter in action

I am pretty excited that school comes back into session next week. That means that the help will come back!!

Heather came out over the break to help plant (did I just say "plant"?), clean out chicken coops, shovel snow. . . yep, sounds like the ideal winter break to me. What a great help it was though. She managed to help me get caught up just in time to bring everyone back. That means new projects!!

The hoops are growing greens . . . and purples. . . which we are hoping to offer in the cafe in February.
Um. . . did I mention planting ?!?! Why yes, yes I did!! In our "secret garden" we planted something like 300 new greens, 150 new pea plants and oodles of herbs. With any good fortune we will be actively producing usable quantities starting in February with increasing yields right into the summer!
In our "secret" garden we have taken Doc's raised beds from the summer's square foot garden and covered the bottoms with some left over hoop house poly - to hold the water in. In the first frame we keep our newly started seedlings, and a few lonely left overs from the summer. . . notice the sad looking eggplant (it was too cold this summer for that poor fella to produce, but it refused to die. So now, we are looking to see if we can make something happen in the winter).
Once the seedlings get to big for the start trays, they move into one of the three remaining frames. In the case below. . . sugar snap peas.
Once they reach maturity we will be harvesting them and sending them to Chef to improve them in some festive culinary way. . . And then there are the ducks. . . They don't live in the "secret" garden. They are still out in their coop, waiting - always waiting. They want the snow to leave and the slugs to come out. Until such time they are tolerating the chickens and enjoying water changing time every morning when they come out to take a very "splashy" (okay, splashy isn't really a word. . . yet) swim.

1 comment: