Farmer Tom's Field Report
April 5th, 2010 - New life at the farm
The plants in the greenhouse are growing beautifully. So far so good! The Zinnias, for our baskets and gardens around the farm, are by far the largest, with the peppers coming in second, and the tomatoes just now pushing through the soil. Last week we planted new trees around the orchard. We planted a 100 new peach trees of two of our most popular varieties - Red Haven and Harrow Diamond. The mild winter was easier on our peach trees this year, and we are hoping for a full crop. On another note, today we have 6 new chicks in our henhouse. We've been waiting and watching as the hens have been warming their eggs, and it looks like this Easter Weekend has brought a few new additions to our Critter Corral!
TO DO list:
- Germinate the Melon seeds in the greenhouse - 5,000 (including cantaloupe and watermelon)
- Care for the pepper and tomato plants growing in the green house
- Prepare our corn fields for planting
- Repair Irrigation equipment
- Pray for more rain and snow in the mountain so we will have enough water this summer!
March 15th, 2010 - Spring at the farm!
Pruning is FINALLY done. With 25,000 fruit trees to prune (and all by hand) it takes us from Mid December to sometime in March. Everybody is happy to be done, and now we have time for the rest of the spring projects. This is our first year with our new greenhouses and so we have ventured into a new learning curve - coddling a seed through germination into a healthy plant to be transplanted (moved) to our fields mid-May. We are growing veggie transplants for tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers and 5 varieties of melons - That's over 24,000 plants! IT's going to be an exciting journey (experiment)!
