Moose & Bean Farm

                       Welcome to your second weekly farm update

What the Moose & Bean?

This week..
It was so wonderful working in the 'warm' sunshine this week! Another bed of carrots was seeded and covered and we will be doing one more once it warms up again in a couple of days.

We put up some deer fencing in the area we have our berries (which now also opens on to the veggie area).  I thought 'Not this year my friends, you won't get a single bite of berries!"  And what do i find at 4:30am today when i'm up doing my first look around - a deer sneaking around!  Looks like finishing the fence is first thing on the 'To-do" list when it warms up again.

Two of the 4 beds were completed that we had hoped to do this past week.  We moved some of our overwintering veggies into these beds - kale and leeks were moved early in the week, giving them at least a few days to settle in to their new homes before the heavy frost last night.

This week we started many seeds in our prophouse / greenhouse - Our hot pepper seeds were started early in the week in addition to romaine lettuce, green onions, kohlrabi, lettuce for baby greens, early cabbage and cauliflower.  We direct seeded several unique poppies - one even looks just like a shaggy pink peony.

We've placed our last seed orders for the growing season (we hope).  One order should be arriving next week, the other order should be more towards the end of February/early March.

The wait list for the CSA program is continuing to grow.  If you received an invoice from us and you are no longer interested, please contact us so another family can take your spot. Unpaid spots will be reserved until Feb 28, after which the spot will be offered to wait listed folks.

If you were interested in the CSA but you have not filled out the registration form for the CSA, please do so here. It is not the same as signing up for the email list, which does not give us the info we need to get you on the correct wait list.

Moose has decided on her newest entrepreneurial project - growing cat grass to sell at farmers markets and from the farm.  We have picked out a blend of grasses and are doing a small trial run right now - they've germinated in literally days in the greenhouse and we will be running taste tests on our two cats once the grass is a few inches tall. :) We will update you on this very interesting and important venture as it develops. ;)

CSA Dollars at Work

We did two more seed orders this week, hopefully our last.  We areparticularly excited for the Zucchini (Grilled baby zucchini, or chocolate zucchini bundt cake? Yes, please!), Brussels sprouts and microgreens. We also purchased a new seeder that is more accurate than the current one we use.  This equates to less seed waste, and more time efficiency (we will no longer have to seed the same row multiple times to get even coverage).  We will be trial running a type of seed starting cells that are not the regular plastic cell trays from the store. These are much more rigid plastic (will last many, many seasons), and will result in a plant similar to one started in a soil block. This means it will be a stronger plant with more fine roots - roots get air pruned as opposed to root bound. 
 

Next Week at Moose & Bean

At the Ladysmith farm... The most important on the to do list is finishing that deer fence.  We are going through our compost piles to get finished product, and relocate it to a slightly different spot.  We will likely be ordering more compost than we have finished right now. We are starting to build our larger worm bin so we will be able to start offering worm castings later in the season in addition to using them on the farm.  We've got two more beds to finish and another 100' or so of carrots to seed.

At the Cassidy farm.. We are starting assessment of the 100' greenhouse including what infrastructure needs to be built, such as pea and bean trellises. 
 

Until Next Week’s Update..