Oh no! Is the chicken coop on fire? No its just the heat lamp keeping them warm (picture taken back when it was still chilly).

Too much rain!!

Yes indeed too much rain. We had s couple of beautiful beds of spinach that were to supply the CSA for the first couple of weeks. But after the last rainstorm (including large hail) apparently it contracted some unknown disease. I'm sure this was brought on by the extreme wetness of the soil. But the spinach went from green and healthy to yellow and dying within a couple days! So...no spinach this week. Arggh.

And with the cool, wet weather we have most of this Spring other crops are a week or 2 behind where we would like them to be  - Swiss chard, kale, potatoes, etc.
But because of our perennial difficulties in growing spinach well, I decided to obtain several different varieties of open-pollinated spinach and trial them in one bed together (see picture above). I plan to monitor them to see which grows the best in our conditions. I will harvest the others and let the best one go to seed and save the seed. And hopefully start developing a spinach variety that is better suited to our conditions. I am also planning to save beet seed of our own this year and I have been saving pepper, tomatillo and husk cherry seed for several years now.

Expected vegetables for week 1:
Choose 5 items
lettuce mix
spicy mix
baby kale
lettuce heads
pea shoots
sunflower shoots
radishes
baby carrots
flour, whole wheat bread or all purpose
kidney beans
black beans
vegetable transplants