Monday, March 16, 2015

March News

Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!

There will be no buying club deliveries again this week.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  We are dealing with some family health issues and need another week to get things back on track.  The plan is to resume deliveries next week (March 28 and 29).

On farm we are moving into mud season.  Our snow is slowly melting away, with more and more bare ground becoming visible each day.  Much of our farm is on a northern slope, so unfortunately we will have areas of snow for quite awhile yet.  We are still in a bit of a holding pattern with planting.  Farmer Don started some scallions in seed trays last week and he has plans to direct seed some radishes and greens in the greenhouse beds this week.  By next week, I am thinking our seed house will be beginning to fill with early transplants.  With St Patrick's Day tomorrow, we obviously will not be getting our peas planted tomorrow!  We are still holding out for April 1st, but that may even be a bit of a stretch.  We need the snow to melt and the soil to dry a bit before we be able to prepare the fields for planting.

The melted snow has our chickens happily foraging anywhere bare ground is visible.  It is nice to see them scattered around the yard and farm again.  This year's snow pack has had them stuck in the barn for way too many days.  Our eggs are always delicious, but as the chickens spend more time foraging, the yolks will become more and more orange.  Next week we will be getting another flock of chickens.  The prolonged winter is again challenging us with these new chickens.  The ground is still too wet and cool for them to be moved directly onto pasture, so we will need to make a temporary home for them in the barn.

Last night we had pork chops with sauerkraut for supper.  The sauerkraut was made here on farm and put in the crock to ferment about a month ago.  We jarred the remaining kraut and it is now continuing to ferment in the walk in cooler.  We do not can our sauerkraut.  The heat involved in canning kills all the beneficial lacto bacteria.

It is hard to believe that this Friday the 20th is the Spring Equinox, or the first day of spring.  The forecast for Friday is 1 to 3 inches of snow!  Spring, I guess not quite yet.....

Until next week.....

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