May 10th 2018

Farm News May 10:

Bees arrived at our farm earlier this week.  Our neighbors down the hill proposed the idea of keeping bees with us this winter and we readily agreed.  They used to keep bees at a previous property, and now find theirs too wooded.  We are eager to have the bees around, without the burden of needing to master the art of beekeeping.  It seems like a beneficial relationship many farms/beekeepers enjoy.  Things are slowly blooming in fast succession now, daffodils, tulips, violets, pear trees…  There is a steady hum of activity near the hives during the daylight hours, and I have seen the bees tending to the violets around the greenhouse. 

Early tomatoes went into the greenhouse on Friday morning of last week, they were starting to get too big for their trays in the seedhouse.  Another row of heirloom tomatoes and cherries will join them in a few days.  We are going to try trellising tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse using “tomahooks” this year instead of stakes.  We strung fencing wire along the rafters of the tunnel and each plant will grow vertically along a string attached to its own tomahook that hangs on the wire.  We have been watching a lot of YouTube videos about trellising, talked to a few friends about it, and are excited to try something new. 

The first of the snap peas are up, and a second planting went in yesterday morning.  The health and quantity of a pea harvest depends heavily on cool soil temperatures during seed germination, so we were anxious to get them in the ground before it warms up. 

Our field was tilled by a pretty large tractor this year for the first time.  Up until now we have been relying on our walk behind tiller, but our garden space has really outpaced what the walk behind can reasonably keep up with, and we had a fair amount of new ground turned under, which is a pretty jarring experience to do by hand.  It was amazing what the tractor accomplished in just a few hours.  It was also exciting to see the difference in soil texture and quality in the areas that we have worked before versus the new plot.  We are now totally occupied by prepping beds and planting, more later….

Kyle and Natalie

Sign-up for the summer share:

www.hosacfarm.com/csa

April News

Dear Farm Community Members,

As April is nearing its end, we are beginning to really gear up for the farming season.  We have been lucky to participate in a weekly reading group this winter hosted by the Earle Family Farm.  The focus of the group was Biodynamic Farming.  We read and discussed Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Lectures given in June of 1924 at Koberwitz ( which prior to 1945 belonged to Germany).  Biodynamics in a most basic explanation, is a whole farm system, that acknowledges the importance of elemental and cosmic influences on plant and animal life.  The winter felt like a very appropriate time to be visiting and contemplating Steiner’s ideas and thinking about how we can incorporate more of them into our farming practices this season.  During the two years working at the Earle Farm we were exposed to some Biodynamic principles, but this winter allowed us to delve deeper into the philosophy behind the practices.  On the whole it is very humbling to think about all that goes on in the nature world that is beyond what we can see at first glance. 

Another exciting winter development is an event we are planning called “Community Supported Agriculture Through the Arts”.  We have seven farms and seven artists who have agreed to participate.  We have paired each artist with a farm, and they will visit and paint at the farms throughout the upcoming summer and fall season.  The Snowvillage Inn in Eaton, NH has wholeheartedly agreed to host this event for us.  At the close of the season, there will be an Art reception at the Inn on Saturday November 3rd, where all the farmers and artists will be present.  Following the reception, the Inn will be putting on a family style farm-to-table dinner with ingredients sourced from the participating farms.  We are pretty excited to bring together the farm and art communities with this event.  The stronger and more involved our local community is, the stronger our farms and food systems will be. 

That’s all for now.  We are tending to our seedlings in preparation for planting out in the next couple of weeks.  Please help us get more people involved in local agriculture. 

Our 2018 Summer C.S.A. membership is open.  We are doing our usual pickup at the Earle Family Farm Stand on Wednesdays from 4-6pm.  We have also added a new pickup at our farm in Cornish, ME on Thursdays from 4-6pm.  Visit our website to sign up or call or email!  www.hosacfarm.com/csa

Got to get back to the plants and painting!

-Natalie and Kyle (at Hosac Farm)

Entering April

We are slowly leaving winter behind and entering our fourth season here at Hosac Farm, although it still feels like we only just got here.  This time of year always has us feeling a bit antsy.  The weather is warming and there is much to do on the horizon, but for a little while longer we are still limited by the weather and the remaining snow on the ground.  Around this time I am always reminded of the first April Fool's day we had here on our farm, when I went into the barn and found 2 unplanned newborn lambs.  It's a bit of a long story, but we had a loose ram get in with the Ewes for no more than an hour a few months prior to that April morning,  and we had since blissfully put the consequences out of our minds...  When I ran back to the house to alert Kyle of the newborns in the barn, he was sure I was joking.

We completed the construction of our seedling house in late February of this year.  The building allows us to start our own seedlings for the first time.  Past seasons we have bought in seedlings and traded work with the Earle Farm for starts. The project took almost two years to complete, start to finish, in very sporadic busts.  Kyle and his dad spent many hours digging the foundation, and making the building a reality over the course of those two years.   There was a lot of prep. and site work done that is now buried!  Time spent working on the seedling house was limited by winter, dismantling two older out-building near the work site,  spring mud, and other more pressing summer/fall farm work priorities.  Various stages of the building process left us with what I called "the pit" in the middle of the yard, and the neighbors were quite convinced we were putting in a swimming pool.  It is now a beautiful functional space, and relieving some of our early spring restlessness with the tiny green plants that it holds inside. 

Happy Spring.