a lovely day

Today it is a lovely day! The sun is shining, the air is warm, the honey bees are out in force, and its hard not to be happy. We have a few daffodil bulbs that we "forced" to bloom inside and they are sitting on the porch today as we engage in some much needed spring cleaning inside, the bees, always keeping "busy", are all over them, fighting to get to the blossoms that are open. Its nice to know that the resident honey bees survived the winter (they belong to a friend who cares for them and we benefit from having them around, but not having to do any work!)

Things are growing in the greenhouse and our first tomatoe seeds are planted in preparation for transplant (perhaps some of them with your help on May 23rd) about 8 weeks from now.

This is my favorite time of year to look at onion and leek plants, each little plant reaching for the sky, sporting at the tip a tiny little seed coat, still clinging there and perhaps giving its last little bit to the growing plant. Eventually those seed coats drop and all evidence of their tiny origin is erased, but for now, the growth is so tangible, each time we look.



We have been reworking our irrigation system, replacing the 1 inch line with a 2 inch line out to our biggest vegetable blocks so that we can water more beds at one time. We moved some of the lines in the orchard around to in order to accomodate the new field that we will be growing cover crops in this year and vegetables in next year. We are plotting out where exactly to put our newest acquisitions this year. We have some more red raspberries and some new yellow and purple raspberries, asaparagus crowns, elderberries, hazelnuts, apricot, peach, and cherry trees and a few hardy kiwi vines to place. Its been fun to watch our plantings grow "organically" as we have money to invest in more plants as well as new ideas that make us want to take on a new project. Some no doubt will be failures, but many will be new sources of income and enjoyment for us (hooray for fresh peaches!)



The CSA memberships are always a pleasure to get in the mail, only darkened a little by the fact that several folks have missed the back of the form where instructions about who to write the checks to are written (Liz Martin, NOT muddy fingers farm, please). Its so neat to read the comments written on the forms, it takes me back to when we were planning our wedding and we would race to the mailbox each day to see who had sent an rsvp postcard back as so many of those had little messages inscribed in the empty spaces. It really makes our day to read that people are looking forward to the produce, or thanking us for letting them get involved on a farm, the other day one arrived that just said, "can't wait!" i could really relate! Farming can be such a solitary occupation, with spring being so full of things to do that it is easy to feel overwhelmed, its great to have a relationship with those who all the toil will benefit and to feel appreciated by them, especially since we appreciate them so much! It is hard to overstate how helpful it is to us to get an infusion of money in the spring just in time to pay our farm insurance, car insurance, school tax, and self employment taxes for the year! Thank you so much for investing in our farm!
happy almost spring!~
liz and matthew