In February we raised our first baby chicks! In the past we have purchased pullets (8-10 week old hens). We quickly learned that our dog Boone could not be trusted with chicks for even 10 seconds. He dispatched 18 of them in a matter of seconds.

We learned that even with good intentions it is sometimes better to wait to get young seeds in the ground. We lost quite a bit of arugula, mustards, beets and radishes because of late winter temperature fluctuations causing them to go directly to seed/flower.

Our biggest pest issue is consistently rabbits and voles. We finally got all of the rabbits out of our fenced in growing space, turns out we may have fenced a family in the space last year! Voles on the other hand are consistently a problem, these will hopefully become in balance overtime with predators like hawks and owls. We will be fencing in a space to grow sweet potatoes and winter squash this year. Turns out rabbits will consistently eat sweet potato greens and we saw zero harvest from our approximate 200 sweet potato slips that were planted.

In previous years we’ve always had a REALLY bad tomato hornworm problem. This year we planted borage in our tunnel and experienced an unexpected benefit of less hornworm pressure. The star shaped flowers of borage are often confused for tomato flowers.

Green Beans! We had them coming out of our ears in the spring. Starting them early when temperatures are ideal and pest pressure is minimal had us harvesting 80+ pounds of green beans in 1 week.

In late summer we received a grant we had been waiting for years for and added 4 caterpillar tunnels to our farm! This will allow us to extend our growing seasons and grow more tomatoes, cucumbers. We also anticipate growing consistent carrots and beets with better greens in these tunnels.

We grew turmeric successfully for the first time this year. It isn’t selling as well as we had hoped but we’ve really been enjoying turmeric in smoothies and will eventually dehydrate it and grind it into a powder to use throughout the year.

Our first apples were harvested from trees we planted 9 years ago! We are still learning when the peak time to harvest the different varieties. With experience we are hopeful for longer storage. We are growing Early Harvest, Red Jonathan, Stayman Winesap and others we can’t remember the name of.

We started making our own compost this year! Compost is the only amendment we use on the farm and is our biggest expense. This has been a journey in the making.  Something we’ve put a lot of thought into.  Is it possible? How much work is involved?  We learned that with a steady supply of plant debris, vegetable scraps and wood chips/leaf matter we can build a large pile of compost in a years time. Turning the pile with a shovel did not prove efficient or give much motivation to the concept… so a tractor was added to our farm this year.  The tractor made turning the pile 100 times quicker.  We are excited to not only be “closing the loop” but also take joy in knowing exactly what is going into our pile.  Truly giving back to the land what it has given to us.  A winter check of the compost pile… and just like that compost worms have taken up residence in our pile.