Newsletter 5/7/14 – Hakurei Turnips
has been yet another fabulous farm week! This past week we welcomed a new crew member, Jillian. Jillian just moved here from Bend, Oregon where she was working as a ski instructor. She also very recently graduated from Cal Poly Tech, where she studied nutrition and got her hands dirty working at the college’s Organic Farm. Jillian was drawn to Port Townsend because she had heard that it had an exceptional farm community and local food movement. Plus, the opportunity to live “so far North” was really appealing to her. In her...
read moreNewsletter 4/30/14 – Transformation in motion
This week the farm has undergone a full transformation and it feels we have emerged into another phase of the spring season. Ben (pictured above) and Jeff spent cumulative days on the tractor spreading the basis of our applied fertility- chicken manure in the form of dried pellets known as Nutririch. After spreading, we follow with another tractor pass, this time tilling the manure into the soil. Then, we form the beds with a final pass of the tractor. Once the beds are ready, we get to plant! And plant we did this week. All by hand, or what...
read moreNewsletter 4/22/14 – Ready. Set. Go!
Ready, Set, Go! We are at that stage in the season where everything needs to be done at once: Transplant starts, seed starts in the greenhouse, irrigate, harvest, prep ground, move out and tag plant sales, go to market, pack CSA. Before we know it another week has gone by and more has gotten added to the to-do list than eliminated. Although there is so much to do, the highest priority this week is to plant stuff in the ground! Broccoli, cabbage, kales, collards, strawberries, lettuce, scallions and more HAVE GOT TO GO OUT! Last week, we got...
read moreNewsletter 4/16/14 – What the heck is Raab?
While the weather has been wet and cold, when asked how the season is going, I can’t help but grin and say, “Great!”. Somehow we have been managing to take advantage of the dry-weather windows as they come, short as they may be. Currently we have salad mix, scallions, pac choi, radishes, Hakurei turnips, beets, carrots, peas, Walla Walla onions, spinach, arugula, chard, kale, and lettuce in the ground. Plus, our new crop of strawberries, as well as over-wintered annuals and perennials are thriving in these gradually...
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