Thursday, May 7, 2009

Work Day and Farm visit POSTPONED

This picture is from a few weeks ago, but also captures what we are up to these drippy days of early May.


Hello again!

We are POSTPONING the onion planting detail planned for this Saturday due to the amount of moisture in the ground. We just cannot get the ground prepped for planting. We would like to invite all of you NEXT SATURDAY, May 16th, 9-12 for the same gig and this time, we will do it rain or shime. If it is too wet for planting we will have another task to work on as a group and some time to see the animals, woods and share a bit of food.

Have a good weekend. Happy Mothers' Day to all the mothers out there.
Best,
Polly
and all at Village Farm

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Early May work party at Village Farm


Dear friends,

With the month of April waning, the farming season is gaining the familiar springtime pace. In other words, it's starting to feel a bit crazy. This time of year is filled with Spring cleanup, machinery tune-ups, and construction projects amidst steady seed-starting, caring for the seedlings and planning for the planting season. While we have sowed our first peas, beet greens, carrots and cilantro in the field, we spend more time in the gardens kicking clods of dirt, hemming and hawing and testing for dryness before we bring the tractor onto a particular piece of ground. This is the warm-up, so to speak, before the gardening starts in earnest. We also have new life on the farm in the shape of two new calves born in the barn and 50 tender laying chicks under heatlamps in the greenhouse. With any luck, it will be 16 weeks to our first 50 eggs! 4 piglets arrive this week to round out the "barnyard".

We expect two interns, Andy and Amanda, to arrive later in May, and a third worker, Laura, to start in June. We also have our own farmhand (new baby!) arriving in June to join older brothers Joseph and Ben. Lots going on, but we have lots of support and are perpetually grateful for what we have here.

And we are excited for another season of work, inevitable surprises and food from this land. Thanks, too, for your support of our efforts. It is meaningful for us to have people involved and invested in the farm. Going into our third season of full-time farming on this land, I have been particularly aware this Spring of the farm as a perpetual work in progress- with constant decision-making, tuning, planning and working to try and make it more successful in the broadest sense, for the land, our family and the community. I have really begun to see it lately as some kind of odyssey. I guess you call that Life.

So, we'd like to invite you out to the farm this Saturday, May 9 from 9-12 for a morning on the farm. Planting onions is a great job for many hands. We thought we could work on the onions for a couple hours, and then have some time to look around the farm a bit, visit the baby animals if you'd like and share a light lunch. We'll plan to have some soup. If you were able to bring a snack to share that would be great. We hope to see you then! If it's really raining, let's put it off. Please call with any questions or to check in about the weather. 382-6300

Please join us even if you don't want to get on your hands and knees in the dirt for some planting. There are jobs for many hands and all abilities, and we always need supervisors ( a.k.a. talkers!).

Kind regards,
Prentice