Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!
We want to take a moment to update everyone on farm
happenings and also to announce our buying club will be opening this Tuesday
(4/22), with deliveries Friday (4/25) and Saturday (4/26). If you would like to order, go to our website
and purchase a free winter buying club membership (http://www.dancinghenfarm.com/purchase.html)
. Please know, we at the farm, need time
to activate your account before you can order, so register as soon as
possible. Also this buying club is
separate from the buying club offered to our CSA members, so members who have
signed up for a CSA buying club will need to also purchase the free winter
buying club so they can order products outside of our CSA delivery dates.
We think spring has finally sprung! We still are not out of danger of frost and
freezing overnight temperatures, but the really cold temperatures and the snow
should be done for the season.
So what does this mean for us here at the farm? It means our seed houses are filling up with
trays and trays of seedlings, our fields are getting tilled in preparation of
planting, farmers markets are starting up, and our chickens are laying lots and
lots of eggs!
We finally have peas and potatoes in the ground. Our early pea harvest will be a bit later
than recent years, but we are planning on a good harvest of snow, sugar snap
and shelling peas for our second or third week of CSA deliveries. We have a small planting of potatoes in one
of our unheated greenhouses. These will
be harvested young as tender new potatoes.
This will the first time we have tried potatoes in the greenhouse, so
stay tuned for how these turn out. We
generally plant quite a few potatoes out in the field and we have about a
quarter to a third of our potatoes in the ground with more to follow in the
next few weeks.
We have also started our root crop rotation of field
plantings, with beets, carrots, turnips and radishes all being planted last
week. The radishes should germinate
quickly and we anticipate radishes in the first weeks CSA boxes. Scallions are onions will be planted this
week, with scallions the first of these crops to be harvested.
The seed houses are filled with trays of cooking and salad
greens. These seedlings will be planted
in the field shortly. Look for kale,
swiss chard, Asian greens and salad greens as early items for the CSA. We have started seeding our warmer season
plants, including tomatoes. Our
challenge now is finding enough space for our seedlings before they get planted
out. The tender plants still need
protection from chilly overnight temperatures and we never seem to have enough
greenhouse space this time of year.
Our laying hens are really enjoying the warmer temperatures
and greening up of the farm. It is so
nice to see happy chickens foraging for weeds and insects! The longer day length means they are once
again starting to lay lots and lots of eggs.
We will be getting more laying hens towards the end of May. Our first batch of meat chickens arrive this
week
.
The CSA is filling up nicely. We are allowing for a few more memberships
this season, so we do still have memberships available. We are now a Choice CSA, so all members can
choose from a list of seasonal items each week.
Part Share members choose 6 items each week and Full Share members
choose 10 items each week. Egg shares
are also available to CSA members. If
you have questions about how our Choice CSA operates or our delivery locations,
please contact us.
As mentioned above, we are starting our buying club up this
week. Ordering will open Tuesday at 5 am
and close Thursday at 11 pm. All
ordering is done online, so to place an order, you will need to register with
our website and purchase a FREE winter buying club share. We will deliver Friday night to Bloomsburg
and Saturday morning to Dallas and Forty Fort.
This may be one of our only buying club dates for the spring and all product
will be limited. Please sign up and
place your orders early, product is available first come first serve!
We are featuring eggs this week! Our chickens have free access to our
organically managed fields and a their diet is supplemented with organic soy
free local grains. On farm, we eat lots
and lots of eggs. A favorite is what we
call green eggs. Sauted greens mixed in
with scrambled eggs as they cook. We
often make extra greens for dinner, so we can add them to our breakfast or
lunchtime eggs. Here are some websites
with some good ideas and recipes for pastured eggs:
http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/11161-10-fun-easy-ways-to-cook-eggs.html
http://www.incredibleegg.org/recipes
Our farm calendar for the next few weeks includes Farmers
Markets at Bloomsburg University on Friday 4/25 and 5/2 from 8:30 to noon. We are having a vegetable growers open house
and potluck on farm on Saturday 5/3, from 10 am to 1 pm. This is a PASA (Pennsylvania Association of
Agriculture) sponsored event and all are welcome to stop by, see the farm and
enjoy some conversation. On Saturday May
10, we will be at Forks Farm for their first market of the 2014 season. The Hopkins Family, at Forks Farm run a great
market, well worth the trip!
(www.forksfarmmarket.com)
A quick comment on our website. We are still working at cleaning up the
financial aspect of the site. We will be
working on it tonight. But some of your
accounts may still show a previous balance owed, even though you know your
account does not have a balance. Please
know we are keeping track of payments the old fashioned way (pen and paper!)
and will hopefully get the website up to date shortly. Thank you for your patience with this. If you have questions or concerns about your
account status or balance, please do not hesitate to contact us.
As always, thank you for your continued support of our farm
and local agriculture!
Farmer Don and Joan
Dancing Hen Farm
www.dancinghenfarm.com
570-925-0263
Dancing Hen Farm
www.dancinghenfarm.com
570-925-0263
