July 2nd Week 2

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Joni and I disappeared for the day Wednesday last week. As we were packing up to leave our regular volunteer, a CSA member, and Ashlee who does the flower bouquets were all arriving and headed into the garden. Kyle was out there working on the beginning of harvesting for the week. Although we were headed out to hike it was a bit hard to leave, they were all out there moving around harvesting, chatting, laughing, being part of the farm.

Joni and I met up with friends and made a second attempt (after an incomplete version last summer) of making it up the White Cairn trail to Blueberry Ledge in Evans Notch. I had gone back on my own last fall to complete the loop and to assess how far we had gotten with the kids relative to the top. It’s become a favorite spot of mine, just enough of a climb with beautiful views to satisfy my mountain cravings. I knew Joni was ready for it this year, and the two girls made it up easily, energized by the long rock staircase just below the start of the ledges. We had lunch at the top while dogs rested in the shade and then both kids ran almost the entire way down until tired legs and possible a loose shoe gave way to a big fall. Joni had trouble recovering, but we managed to salvage the day with a visit to the Basin and then ice cream.

The garden is doing its thing, and I almost hate to harvest, it feels like ruining a finished painting. But we will replace many harvested sections with new plants for fall that are growing in their trays waiting for their turn to grow.

Please take 8 items this week:

  • Snap peas

  • Very baby carrots

  • Rainbow Chard

  • Summer squash/Zucchini

  • Purple Kohlrabi

  • Kale

  • Baby Beets

  • Red Scallions

  • Garlic Scapes

  • Parsley

  • Bok Choi

  • Red radishes

  • Red lettuce

  • Maybe Celery?

June 25th Week 1

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The days are filled with hours of hoeing, up and down the edges of the garden beds, switching lefty righty lefty righty lefty righty to not tire one side out. It’s strangely meditative, the flow only occasionally broken by bending over to pull a large weed growing up next to the plants out of the holes in the plastic. The resident killdeer family and robins know when we are working and join in behind us, tussling over who will be first in line to get the bugs unearthed by our strange tools. They hop along pecking the freshly scraped dirt doing their own type of work.

Joni helps more in the garden this year than ever before with school being done . We’ve fallen into a routine of spending a few hours in the morning out in the garden, me weeding, her with books and animal figurines set up in a chair. It’s a mix of self propelled play and regularly appearing suddenly next to me to help or announce her extreme boredom with the whole situation, then repeat.

My sandal tan lines feel like one of my biggest accomplishments of the season so far, my feet being a filthy testament to the hours spent this year in the garden. Feet squished through the sucking sloppy mud of the early spring garden and are now happily traveling over drier ground, bending, planting, weeding, hoeing, reaching up on tip toes to tie up the tomatoes. The dirt on my feet and in the small cracks of my fingers and hands has become permanent for the summer season, stuck despite many vigorous washes.

The garden has become alive, the energies of the sun and the soil have been absorbed by the plants, taken up by their roots and absorbed by their leaves and given back in explosive growth. Time to harvest.

Some items are limited this week and will be first come first serve but everything will be in abundance soon…

Please take 7 items

  • Bok Choi

  • Rainbow Swiss Chard

  • Romaine Lettuce

  • Garlic Scapes

  • Baby Beets

  • Kohlrabi

  • Curly Kale

  • Summer Squash

  • Scallions

  • Parsley

April News

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April 2026 New

 Cold nights and these late season snow sprinklings feel like winter is having as hard a time transitioning to spring as I was having, although the sudden greening of the grass and ever persistent blooms of the daffodils make clear the inevitability of the change.  The peepers came back to life a few weeks ago which always signals it's time for me to start sleeping out on the screened porch, their chirping along with the distant sounds of turkeys doing their mating cry strangely soothing throughout the night.  Long hikes have shifted to early morning local woods walking and coming home with wet feet and a muddy dog.  

Kyle and I made a last-minute decision to put up a new small greenhouse to act as an intermediate space for more cold tolerant seedlings that are not ready to go outside.  We had been visiting a friend's farm and saw her seedling setup, and it gave me a good visual of what I felt like we needed to expand on here.  We fill up our small heated Seedhouse fast and usually move things out to the big tunnel. This new greenhouse will save us running many feet of hoses, is close to the house and is small enough to lightly heat during a below freezing cold snap as expected over the next few nights.  I made some phone calls and we were able to purchase, pickup, and build the new tunnel to completion just in time to move onions into it making space for the next round of seed starting.  The kids were amazingly tolerant of our rushed building timeline, Ryah in particular self-entertained near us working for a long amount of time, although at one point from up on the ladder I looked down at her crawling through the grass "roaring" having shed all of her clothes. The tunnel model is called a "bobcat" and we are keeping the name, as it feels an appropriate reference to all my track sighting this winter and spring. 

The sheep we picked up to keep Stetson company earlier this winter were listed as not bred, so the very distinct cry of a lamb last week when I went to do evening chores startled me out of my auto pilot feeding routine.  I glanced into the stall and saw a perfectly fluffy white lamb alongside one of the ewes.  There was a chaotic half hour of us separating the mom and baby from the horse (although he seemed quite peacefully excited about the new addition, his size is a hazard for a few weeks), but everyone then re-settled in.  Sometime between morning and evening feeding the Ewe had given birth to the lamb and cleaned her all up, so she was fluffy and dry.  Joni and Ryah were beyond excited, hanging over the stall asking to see the new "cub", a testament to their current obsession with all thing's lions.  We have yet to name the lamb, originally thinking we'd go paw patrol themed but I'm now leaning towards "Simba".    

The other bit of farm news is we are considering dropping our Organic Certification next year.  Many of the farmers in our circles have done this already or are thinking about doing the same.  The cost of certifying has become prohibitively expensive, and the federal cost share rebate has not come through for last year and it is unclear if it will at all again.  We also personally feel like the certification process through MOFGA is inadequate and doesn't fully capture the type of farming we do here.  I have a good friend who is a professor of sustainable agriculture at UMASS Amherst, and she is working with her students to come up with marketing signs and a survey for us to have at our markets and CSA pickup to see how people feel about the change.  Stay tuned...and tell me what you think! 

We are still waiting to hear if we will receive USDA funding to put up another full-sized greenhouse out in the field along with funding to do pollinator habitat improvements like adding shrubs and bushes that flower at the tail ends of the season.  We expect to hear back sometime this spring,  

We will be attending Bridgton, Kennebunk, and Scarborough Markets starting in late June.  Our summer CSA season kicks off in late June, and we always look forward to our winter CSA cooperative the Foothill Farm Alliance.  

We have not received a huge amount of interest in the Earle Farm pickup, so please reach out if you are planning on joining for that pickup so we can make a timely decision on offering that location.  

Happy spring,


March news

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March 2026 Farm News

I have done little to no farm work since the last newsletter beyond the normal daily routine of chores, some sprinkled in spring clean-up tasks, and supply ordering.  The season is sneaking right up on us; we are scheduled to begin seeding in just about two weeks right around the middle of March. I'm trying hard not to mourn the passing of winter; it's been a really good one.  The pond froze solid again for the second year in a row which brings Kyle and me this unexplainable joy at having it as part of our winter playground.  We both are out there almost every day, together, separate, with kids, without kids, with dogs, with friends. Its gives us ice skating when there is no snow, and a magical place to ski around and access trails while avoiding the road.  The morning light out there is my favorite, if I can get moving fast enough, Moon and I are often cruising across just as the sun pops up over the trees casting bright shadows behind the frozen cattails and illuminating the tracks of all the woods creatures who have been out in the night.  From the pond we often cruise the loop I call the high-low rd. belonging to my neighbor or head up the mountain for some sunshine.  There have been lots of coyote and bobcat tracks this winter.  They like to use the snowmobile trails, and the machines act like erasers. If I'm first out, I know any tracks I see are fresh within the last 12 hours or so.  I've been trading tracking photos with a more knowledgeable friend on the other side of the Hosac Hills, and she thinks we share the same coyote pack between us. Her knowledge is a much more developed intimate relationship with the individuals, while mine is a distant fascination.  

The winter adventures have continued; a long ski into Zealand hut, many skis and hikes here including two up and over Hosac on xc skis due to perfect fluffy snow conditions.  One slightly too-epic trip on skis near the Kancamagus pass up the Livermore trail and out Greeley ponds. It was a bigger outing than anticipated luckily made a bit easier by the incredibly mild February weather.  Not to mention a few kid xc ski outings and many sledding gatherings, the most recent being down what Kyle described as a bobsledding luge up on Devils Den while I worked a shift at Kristas.  

Sigh.  Time left for a few more as we wait for the snow to melt and the real work to begin.  We are truly looking forward to another farming season here and hope to see some of you at our CSA pickups and markets.  

SUMMER 2026 FARM/CSA INFO
EARLY SIGN UPs HELP US PLAN OUR SEASON

  • Pickup at Hosac Farm Thursdays 3-6 pm 

  • Full Share Cost: $525.00 for 14 weeks Late June-October

  • Summer Share Cost $325.00 for 8 weeks July-September

  • We are considering an Earle Farm Pickup again but will need at least 10 people to sign up,  Details on the website.  

  • Sign up Online @ www.hosacfarm.com/csa

  • We are on instagram!? visit us there...https://www.instagram.com/hosacfarm/

  • We will be at the Bridgton Farmers Market June-November behind Reny’s

  • We will be at the Kennebunk Farmers Market June-October

  • Foothill Farm Alliance winter CSA operates every year from November-January, this is a cooperative share, and an amazing value, check it out www.thefoothillfarmallaince.com 

Week 14 September 25th

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We spent the last two Sundays and Mondays harvesting our cooperative winter squash and sweet potatoes up at the Albany Town Forest. It was an amazing haul of food, we figure about 7,000lbs of sweet potatoes (split between 3 farms), and probably that or more in squash. Kyle had help on the Sundays from our neighbor, and I joined him Mondays when the kids were in school/daycare. The other farms brought a mix of volunteers and paid crew, so it was a fun large group of people working on harvesting and cleaning up over the course of those days. Now all the food is curing in our Seedhouse, staying hot for a few weeks so the skin hardens, and the flesh sweetens. Next, we will move it to various locations around our house and garage loft, and Ill miss how our mudroom feels spacious without boxes of food.

Thank you all for joining us this summer, we appreciate your support and hope to see you again next year. If youll miss fresh food too much until then:

Check out our winter CSA www.thefoothillfarmalliance.com

In the share: Please take 8 items

  • Spaghetti Squash

  • Delicata Squash

  • Honey Nut Squash

  • Potatoes

  • Yellow Onions

  • Red Onions

  • Carrots

  • Radishes

  • Arugula

  • Sungold Tomatoes

  • Eggplant

  • Sweet Peppers

Week 12 September 11th

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Excited to be entering our 11th or 12th or 13th season of the Foothill Farm Alliance Winter CSA? Kyle and I are in disagreement about dates. We were part of the start of the FFA when we were interns way back at the Earle Farm in 2013 and 2014. Tom generously included us in the original planning sessions with himself, Old Wells Farm, Hancock Farm, and Pork Hill farm, all of whom have since become invaluable working partners and good friends. The FFA continues this year, consider signing up! www.thefoothillfarmalliance.com

Please take 8 items and pick your own basil, husk cherries, and zinnias

  • Yellow Onions

  • Red Onions

  • Leeks

  • Spaghetti Squash

  • Potatoes

  • Kale

  • Chard

  • Carrots

  • Sweet Peppers

  • Eggplant

  • Jalapenos

  • Green Tomatoes

  • Buttercup Squash

Week 10 August 26th

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The ground is dry; I disced in the finished areas of the garden and clouds of dust formed in the tractors wake. I bought oats to seed in as a cover crop, but yesterday’s rain prediction slowly disappeared throughout the day. The oats will have to wait, there is not enough moisture in the soil right now for them to germinate, and although they would sit patiently buried in dirt waiting for water, the crows like to walk around picking out the seeds as a snack. We direct seeded some fall greens where the onions came out next to the greenhouse and watered them in with a sprinkler. Joni and Joyce helped me, and we were all covered in a fine layer of brown dirt when we were done. Once they are up, they will be irrigated on drip tape like everything else. Fall greens in trays are looking strong, and likely we will have to begin pulling some tomatoes out to make room. I’m never quite ready to pull the tomatoes, but the greens need enough time growing in the ground before the light disappears and everything freezes.

Please choose 8 items

  • Green Cabbage

  • Kale

  • Carrots

  • Red Onions

  • Squash/Zucchini

  • Cukes

  • Celery

  • Head lettuce

  • Yellow Potatoes

  • Sungolds

  • Heirloom Tomatoes

  • Fennel

  • Eggplant

  • Sweet Peppers

  • Jalapeños

Week 9 August 21st

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We watched the weather change from the screened porch last night, puffy clouds glowing orange and pink backlit by the setting sun. The change started in the afternoon while we were outside with the kids unpacking from markets and jumping on the trampoline. Wind blowing in from the west slowly pushed out the hot humid air and threatened to rain on and off for hours. The rain never came, although we wished it would, but the cool air was welcomed with a big sigh of relief. The dogs felt the change too, running around chasing each other, re-energized by the drops in humidity and temperature. It’s a funny thing to wish for rain after all I did was hope for it to stop this spring, and I thought about this for a good time today. The weather is fickle, and I am always trying to learn to trust the farm and the plants and their ability to keep growing.

In the share please take 8 items

  • Heirloom Tomatoes

  • Sungold Cherry Tomatoes

  • Kale

  • Parsley

  • Celery

  • Cabbage

  • Red Blush Lettuce

  • Sweet Peppers

  • Eggplant

  • Jalapenos

  • Squash/Zucchini

  • Cucumbers

  • Green Cabbage - lots! plan on making sauerkraut

  • Yellow Potatoes

Week 8 August 14th

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Onions started coming in yesterday. We pull them and arrange them in the seedhouse to dry bottoms up. The seedhouse has a ventilation system that kicks on automatically at 75 degrees, but on these hot days it will stay over 100 degrees in there for the bulk of the day, and with the fans running allows for good curing. In a few weeks we will start slowly trimming off their stems and selling them at the farmers markets and offering them in the CSA. When the inside of the stems no longer have any moisture left we will trim up the rest for winter storage. Now starts the slow process of gathering all the food out of the fields and stockpiling for winter, while also still harvesting summer crops that are in full swing.

Please take 8 items and pick your own basil and husk cherries

  • Yellow potatoes

  • Sungold tomatoes

  • Heirloom tomatoes

  • Green Cabbage

  • Red Blush Lettuce

  • Sweet Peppers

  • Jalapeños

  • Eggplant

  • Carrots

  • Squash

  • Cucumbers

  • Beans

  • Kale

  • Beans

  • Celery

Week 7 August 7th

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In the age of internet oversharing, I've become resistant to doing what feel like cheesy gratitude posts. I even jokingly thought perhaps I should balance out all the rosy Instagram farm and homesteading content by doing a farm fail page. It would be all too easy and realistic, with some shots of the kids being uncooperative or screaming thrown in. Someone has probably already thought of this, I haven’t bothered to check. Having said that, last week we had such an overwhelming outpouring of unsolicited volunteer and friend help it feels necessary and with genuine gratitude that I share about it here. Joyce has been volunteering with us since Joni was born, and she is typically here with us twice a week for anywhere from 2-4 hours at a time helping with anything and everything we are doing. She was here Monday and Wednesday last week weeding holes and picking beans. Jay was here Monday as well and helped Kyle harvest all of our cabbage that now sits happily in our walk-in cooler. Jay used to participate in our CSA at the Earle farm, and for the last few years has driven all the way here to Cornish to help us, as well as at our Conway field. My friend Jane asked to and took Joni swimming for a number of hours Tuesday which left me free to do emailing and cleaning. Ruby showed up with 4 of her Pine Root Farm interns on Thursday and got all of our early potatoes that were planted here bagged and into storage. Friday, Jay, his wife Kim, and their daughter Paisley and a friend came back for the morning. Kim and Jay weeded carrots and beets, and Paisley and friend gave my two girls the endless amount of undivided attention they crave, which left me free to do random small farm tasks that never seem to get done. Ashlee was here twice doing her flower arranging and always surprises me by weeding perennial flower beds randomly. It was a week that made me feel very proud of the farm and all that we’ve created here, and it all demonstrated the support that is essential for keeping us going. Even after my first draft of writing this, more volunteer support is pouring in for this coming week in various ways from current csa members and friends. People often ask us how we do it all, and the answer is its hard and with a lot of help. We are so grateful. Thank you.

In the share: Please take 8 items and PYO Basil

  • Sungold tomatoes

  • Squash

  • Carrots

  • Yellow Onions

  • Heirloom Tomatoes

  • Kale

  • Beans

  • Cukes

  • Sweet Peppers

  • Jalapeno Peppers

  • Eggplant

  • Celery

  • Summer Crisp Red Leaf Lettuce

  • Green Cabbage

  • Kohlrabi

  • maybe husk cherries if we can get them picked

Week 6 July 31st

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Its the season of hot mornings out early harvesting before the sun is up and wilts the plants. Afternoons are catching up on weeding and weed whacking, our hands and clothes now permanently stained with grass and dirt. The cherry tomatoes have almost reached the 6-foot-high lower metal bars spanning the greenhouse, and we tied them to their trellis string for the last time. From here on out they will grow a bit taller and then flop over heavy with the weight of their fruit. We will push through them to pick, a tangled jungle of vines and sweet orange treats. The first round of squash is done in the tunnel and in the next week we will seed those beds to winter carrots. Kyle harvested all of the cabbage with a volunteer this week, and it now sits in 8 huge bins in our walk-in, and that section of the garden will soon be turned into a green cover of oats for the fall. Early potatoes are next to be pulled. If we are lucky on time these hot evenings we’ve been bailing early on the farm and heading over to long pond. Although it’s hard to stop working, the transition from busy day to night is sometimes tricky and seems to be made easier for us all with a short swim.

Please choose 8 items and PYO Basil

  • Celery

  • Cabbage

  • Parsley

  • Sungold Cherry Tomatoes

  • Sweet Green Peppers

  • Eggplant

  • Squash/Zucchini

  • Green Beans

  • Butter Crisp Lettuce

  • Kale

  • Carrots

  • Beets

  • Yellow green onions

  • Kohlrabi

  • Fennel

  • Maybe Cukes?! These are being slow.

Week 5 July 24th

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Kyle stayed on the farm yesterday and with the help from our volunteer Joyce tackled some early in the week harvesting and then weeding in what I call the “first garden”. Joni and I took off after dropping Ryah at Little Farm School and met up with Ruby who owns Pine Root Farm and her daughter Juni. Both of us are feeling hard July farmer burnout and needed some mountain scenery to re-ground. We carpooled up into Evans notch and spent the morning hiking the White Cairn Trail off the Stone House Road. It was a slow hike, lots of stopping for snacks and collecting items for fairy houses, and we kept re-motivating with the promise of chocolate chips at the designated turn around spot. We looked at fallen logs half rotten by rain and time, thick beech stands, funny rocks, and streams gone dry just to a trickle. We left some fairy objects in an old stump that might be home to a gnome and brought a few found trinkets home in a bag for later construction. Moon frolicked in the woods running back and forth amongst the kids and I absorbed his obvious joy of being in a new place taking in the peace of the weather and being off the farm. We didn’t make it as far as my original hope, but the kids ended happy and spent the whole car ride home chatting and giggling, a sure sign of a successful outing. Evan’s notch has always been a favorite spot of mine, having spent weeks working on the East Royce Trail during my trail work summers, as well as patrolling all the various loops and ridges the Appalachian Mountain Club maintains. The Baldface circle trail is a hike I try to do every year, something magical and appealing abouts its long open rock ledges and views. Last year my friend and I completed it on a perfect November day via the Slippery Brook Trail avoiding the steepest ledges so I could bring the dog, seeing no other humans for the entire 10mile loop. Today was a child sized hike but satisfying in its own way, a readjustment in expectations, the simple pleasure of sharing the mountains with friend, dog and children.

Please take 8 items and PYO Basil. If you took cucumbers last week please leave those for someone else as they are still not in full production yet.

  • Green Beans

  • Fennel

  • Cucumbers

  • Summer Squash/Zucchini

  • Beets

  • Carrots

  • Sweet Green Peppers

  • Green Yellow Onions

  • Green Red Onions

  • Parsley

  • Kohlrabi

  • Crisp Head Lettuce

  • Kale

  • Chard

  • Sungold Tomatoes

  • Red Radishes

July 17th week 4

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Mid July is the peak of it all. The few weeks where we feel like everything needs our attention all at once, and priorities must be made. Fall brassicas go in the ground, weeds are exploding, harvesting is increasing with many plants like tomatoes and squash needing to be picked twice a week, and the field and pasture is due for its once yearly mow. We are chipping away at it all, almost done today making a thorough sweep of weeds through the whole garden after some early morning harvesting. The field is mowed but the pasture will have to wait. In a week or two the weeds will slow down and as hot season crops like peppers, onions, and eggplant start producing we will be pulling done broccoli, cabbages, kohlrabi, slowly shrinking our garden maintenance back down.

Please choose 8 items and pick your own basil. Please ask us to show you where. If you are an Earle member who wants basil in addition to the 8 items please indicate this in your email.

  • Carrots

  • Bok Choi

  • Beets

  • Red Onions

  • Yellow Onions

  • Parsley

  • Kale

  • Chard

  • Kohlrabi

  • Buttter Lettuce

  • Fennel

  • Cucumbers

  • Red Radishes

  • Summer Squash/Zucchini

Peppers, eggplant, and cherry tomatoes are likely just a week away.

July 10th week 3

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We all spent last Friday up at our cooperative sweet Potatoe and squash field in the Albany New Hampshire Town Forest. It’s always a tossup bringing the kids, but it was a beautiful day, breezy, clear, cool. We spent about 5 hours up there which I consider to be wildly successful. Joni has been more energized about “helping to farm” this summer now that she is off from school and she had a very concentrated stretch of weeding with my farmer friend Jennie while Kyle and I did some good weeding and Ryah wandered about and moved clods of dirt. At some point the kid’s concentration faded, and I removed them to the nearby river where we threw rocks, had snacks, and the dog frolicked in the water. The town forest field usually has a fair amount of pedestrian traffic as there are public walking trails around the fields to the river and into the woods. Friday was July 4th, and the fields were as empty as Ive ever seen them, we had the whole place to ourselves which lent a magical quality along with the near perfect and constant breeze. We headed home around 2pm, heading south away from the incoming Conway weekend traffic and both kids passed out immediately for the length of the drive home.

Please take 8 items:

  • Sugar Snap Peas

  • Bok Choi

  • Beets

  • Red Scallions

  • Parsley

  • Kale

  • Rainbow Chard

  • Butter Lettuce

  • Broccoli

  • Kohlrabi

  • Fennel

  • Basil

July 3rd Week 2

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We went for dinner and a tour at Hancock Family Farm last night. We met Geof back when we were interns at Earle Family Farm in 2012/2013. He was part of the original Foothill Farm Alliance Winter CSA group we are still a part of. He has been a big inspiration and wealth of knowledge and support for us here on our farm in Cornish. Geof originally farmed up on Devils Den in Porter along with a field on Spec Pond Road under the name Alma Farm but has since moved to Casco and changed his operation to be primarily Farm Stand Focused. His growing field is about 10 acres, half of it in corn. Where we cram as much food as possible in our little rocky space here, Geof has big wide aisles large enough for tractor cultivation. It was a beautiful evening with the corn just tasseling and blowing in the breeze, we walked the field, heard about what was working and not working, and then shared a potluck dinner with other farmers and interns. It’s always refreshing to get together with other farmers, as it can feel like you're out alone on a ship stranded in the middle of the ocean sometimes facing all the struggles that farms face. I’ve come to realize farming is absurd, the weather, the bugs, the animals, the broken equipment, and then if it all works ok, we’ve got to go out and sell what we’ve grown. But we all keep doing it, a true labor of love.

Please take up to 8 items

  • Sugar Snap Peas (hooray!!! first time we’ve grown these post kids)

  • Summer Squash/Zucchini

  • Baby Beets and Greens

  • Scallions

  • Garlic Scapes

  • Parsley

  • Curly kale

  • Rainbow Chard

  • Red Radishes

  • Kohlrabi

  • Baby Basil

  • Romaine

  • Muir Head Lettuce

June 26th Week 1

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It looks like a farm again here. I have breathed a deep sigh of relief. Even after 10 years of gardening, May and June are hard months for me. The energy input required to get the garden from barren flat brown to dynamically green is overwhelming and exhausting. Kyle says I underestimate the tiny plants, and their incredible will power to live, he is probably right. There is a point in time around now when all the plants have reached a visual size and shape where I know they will make it, and I can sit back and just gently tend them. A little weeding here or there, trellising for support, or pruning to encourage a healthy habitat. Now we sit back a bit and watch the garden explode.

More choice in the coming weeks, as we are just really starting to get food in. Peas are just around the corner.

Please choose 7 items this week.

  • Baby Beets and Greens

  • Lettuce Mix

  • Romaine Lettuce

  • Rainbow Swiss Chard

  • Baby Summer Squash

  • Garlic Scapes

  • Parsley

  • Curly Kale

  • Red Scallions

April News

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Summer C.S.A. Sign-ups http://www.hosacfarm.com/csa

  • Full or Summer Share options with pickup @ Hosac Farm

  • Modified Share with pickup @ Earle Family Farm

  • Flower Share add on

Go to the website to get more details and sign up.  The earlier the better for our season planning.  Thank you to everyone who has already signed up.  

April News
 

Welcome to Spring!

Dear Friends and Supporters,

As the days grow longer and the temperatures rise, we are excited to welcome the vibrant season of spring here at Hosac Farm. This is a time of renewal, growth, and new beginnings, and we have plenty of updates and events to share with you!

The above paragraph came from the search engine DuckDuck Go's AI assist chat bot.  I had been telling Kyle I was having trouble starting a newsletter and he jokingly offered to have chat GPT write one.  He later typed in "Farm Spring Newsletter 300 words", and it spit out the above and much more.  We laughed.  It was both good, and generic, using all those catch phrases of spring and gardening.  It was depressing how quickly it generated the newsletter, with all the proper talking points like ground prep and summer share sign-ups.  I mentioned the AI experiment at a farm dinner gathering we had this last weekend with our winter cooperative farms, and it got some laughs, and another farmer admitted to using it for a promotional piece he just couldn't get motivated to write independently.  For now, I continue to not have much interest in AI beyond mild disgust at humanities never ending quest for automation.  I will let you know if somewhere along the way I change my mind.  

The ice on the pond broke with the warm spell a few weeks ago.  At first just a single large hole opened in the middle, the spot that gets the most sun all day. The ducks and geese that had already returned, crowded into the limited open water. I wished the geese ill thoughts in my head, willing them to stay out of our garden.  Then a few days after that, the sun broke the rest of the ice, and with the snow melt and rain, the pond rose back up to above the rock we watch by the dock, our most reliable indicator of the ponds water levels.  I'm fascinated yearly by these shy ducks that live on the pond and am always trying to get a closer look that might help identify them.  They spook easily. Any detectable movement by human or dog and they exit the water in blurry mass of flapping wings and soft quacks, moving themselves farther away.  The body of the males look white from a distance, but it's impossible to tell if it's just a reflection of light on their feathers. Binoculars haven't given me a clear shot. One spring my mom and I spotted them across the pond and went off on an hour or so walk around, thinking we could get a better look from the other side.  As soon as we approached, but still too far to see them clearly, they were off, and instantly closer to the farm side while we were now all the way on the other.  Their sudden spook when I'm out walking often alerts me to their otherwise unnoticed presence. Joni and I walked around the pond a few weeks ago and somehow approached these ducks without spooking them.  It was the closest I've ever gotten to them, especially impressive considering we had with us a loose dog running wild through the woods, and Joni keeps up a constat stream of chatter even when hiking.  We were up on a high point overlooking the pond, at a neighbor's small cabin, and perhaps the height difference blocked our noise and the bird's sightline.  We were still further away than I would have liked to get a firm ID, but we were close enough to see distinctive white on the chest and a very obvious drooping black crest on the head of the male.  Joni was able to hold in conversation for a short period and I tried unsuccessfully to take pictures of the ducks thinking I could zoom in later, but they quickly became wise to our presence and flew away.  

Farm Happenings
We applied for a Resilient Food Infrastructure Grant last fall targeted at strengthening Maine's middle of the supply chain (post-harvest activities like packing and transporting).  We asked for a Ford Cargo Van.  We have severely outgrown our truck and Subaru, often limited on what we can bring to markets and other deliveries, leaving produce behind and making multiple trips especially in the winter.  We were notified last week that we have been recommended by the state of Maine to receive this grant.  We are awaiting a contract, and it is not official until that is signed in hand.  We are cautiously excited, and without any unforeseen hold ups in funds being released by the USDA we hope to have this in use for this farming season.  The state has indicated that they will be sending out contracts in the next few weeks.  Maine indicated that they had a high number of applications, so we are very grateful to have been selected.  We received help in various ways with our application, including many 'letters of support" from members, neighbors, and local businesses. If this all goes through it will be a huge boost to our business giving us a farm specific vehicle, allowing us to transport more produce.  It also alleviates the fear of needing to make a new vehicle purchase in the next few years, an impossibly expensive purchase.  

We have decided to take a pause on the solar project.  Although we were awarded this grant, the funds initially got held up with the administration change, and there is still some lack of clarity if they will be released.  For this project we would have had to front all of money and then been relying on a reimbursement along with a tax credit. At this point in time, we are not comfortable with that arrangement and feel it would be too financially risky without enough benefit for the farm.  Perhaps we will revisit this later.  

We decided to go for the deer fence.  This will be a huge project for us, requiring a small loan, but think it will be worth the peace of mind and reduction in labor hours long term.  We have hired a company out of southern New Hampshire to professionally install this, and it is projected to be started and completed in about 5 days during the end of June.  We will still have to set up our temporary system this year, but I will take pleasure in telling myself as I am doing it, that it's for the last time.   

We have struggled for years in designing a logo for our farm.  This is what we have come up with, a tribute to our seasonal yearly resident Killdeer.