I'm so glad spring is here. The weather has been great. If only we could get a bit of rain. We have a great start on transitioning to our spring time routines. This year promises to be busy as we pull together all of our plans for the the gardens and make them a reality. In addition to the gardening, we are feeding cattle and monitoring our cows as they calve. We have a bunch of new babies running around with more on the way. We have big plans this year that include getting our new greenhouse operational, getting a produce operation out of the start up phase and operational, and hopefully finishing the construction of the ranch house.
W Diamond L Produce
Over the last couple of years we have been able to sell our surplus produce from the garden. This year we decided to go big. In February we applied for a cost sharing grant from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) which is a department within the USDA to put in a high tunnel grow house. We are still awaiting word on approval. If this happens we will be putting up a 30 foot by 96 foot growing tunnel. This will give us nearly 2900 square feet of protected indoor growing space that will productive nearly year round. In addition to this we just completed construction of a 450 square foot greenhouse. Mom and Dad have been talking about building this for years, and this year it became a reality. It was built using mostly salvage lumber and materials. The windows are recycled sliding glass doors and windows that have been acquired over the years.
We planted our cool spring crops on Sunday. Beets, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and peas are all planted. We have been harvesting asparagus regularly for just over a week now. We've been working on getting garden beds prepped for over a month now. and we still have a ways to go as we are creating new beds in the orchard to grow melons and squash. We recently ordered our seed for this year from Sustainable Seed Co. They have a great selection of non GMO open pollinated seeds at spectacularly great prices. Their website is very informative and helpful in seed selection. Our plan is to sell at regional farmers markets and to a few wholesale customers this year and starting in 2013 we want to start start selling produce through a format called community supported agriculture or CSA. The concept allows us to sell memberships to people who pay up front to help us cover costs of getting our crops in the ground in exchange for a weekly delivery of fresh seasonal produce. This allows consumers to know where their food comes from and help the farmer out by assuming some of the risk of agricultural production. There are several ways to keep up with what we are doing. The first is to follow this blog. You can follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/wdiamondlranch and also at LocalHarvest.org. For questions or for more information contact us at WDiamondLProduce@gmail.com.
Cherry blossoms at sunset.
One of our new calves dubbed Patches.
No comments:
Post a Comment