[slideshow id=174]

Hey All,

My apologies for being a flaky blogger farmer.  I’m trying to reform my ways.  I guess the long and the short of it this spring is the same as a lot of people - it’s pretty rainy and planting has been slow.  The rain is a blessing however.  It’s just hard to realize that when your greenhouse seedlings are outgrowing their containers and the field has standing water in it.  So far we’ve got successions of lettuce, squash, broccoli, kale, peas, corn etc etc in the ground and we’re hoping for much much more coming up here very soon.  The spring, despite the near-constant rain, has been ever-so pleasant.  The onions and garlic are growing like crazy and we’re looking at our best crop of those for sure, ever.  We’re selling all the hardneck garlic right back to Peaceful Valley, so look for the Capathian and Dujanski hardneck varieties.  They are purple-striped types and so beautiful.

On the intern and employee front, all is well here at Four Frog.  We have our best crew ever assembled and we’re enjoying learning about farming and one another.  For our worker blog, go to

http://www.fourfroginternblog.wordpress.com/

Matt, Leda and Stephanie are creative, fun people who will change small-scale farming in their own ways - our job right now is to help them learn what they need to know, and then help them get their farms underway.

Chickens have arrived.  Check out the slideshow at the top of the post.

For longer detail, go to our farm journal at http://www.fourfrogfarm.com

Also, for very up-to-date info, become a fan of the farm on Facebook.

Enjoy the rain,

Andrew

Four Frog

Sara here! we have two weeks of farmers markets under our belt for this season so far! The Poulsbo market has pretty much doubled since last year, and it’s a whole new market! I’m now a raw goat milk convert, and can’t wait to try some locally made pasta! So far we’ve only had our overwintered kale, duck and chicken eggs and plant starts to offer, but it’s getting me super excited for the new season! The arugula and bok choi is looking good, we have some lettuce and… Read the rest of this article »

I never knew farming would involve so many trips to the hardware store. Our first purchase was a table saw. Matt and I moved down to Penn Valley in the middle of January at the beginning of a 10 day rain storm. Coming from Portland, OR we decided that the joke was on us. Luckily, we had plenty of planning, reading, and painting to do to get our new home ready. The minute the sunshine peeked through the storm clouds, we headed outside for some bare root planting. The property that we are farming on… Read the rest of this article »

I find it extremely helpful to make a plan for all of the sowings and plantings for the coming season, and then to rigorously stick to that plan.  With most vegetable farms, having an extended harvest of various crops is important, but with CSA this need is amplified.  For CSA, you’ll likely be growing more types of crops and you’ll be needing a very regular supply of harvests. I start out by deciding what crops I want to grow over the course of the year (not yet getting down to varieties). … Read the rest of this article »

My favorite part of winter farm work is the part that happens indoors… planning for the year to come.  For me, this involves the following steps: 1. A crop by crop review to determine what changes should be made in the year to come. 2. Updating the harvest plan - when and how often to I want to harvest X crop for X market? 3. Updating the planting plan - to achieve the above harvest, when do I need to plant each crop, and how much should I plant each time? 4. Taking a seed inventory - How… Read the rest of this article »

Triumph. We hit our first milestone of the year today.  All of the seeds for 2009 are ordered, paid for, done.  Check that off the list. We order from Peaceful Valley (of course), and also from a handful of other companies. The grand total was…a lot…let’s not talk about that now. While planning for seeds, Logan and I made a detailed planting schedule to figure out the quantities we will need.  The last step in this chain is to place all of these successions on field maps - once… Read the rest of this article »

WooHoo!  We got done planting next year’s garlic today, just before the rain resumed.  The patch is 4800 row feet (or twelve 100’ beds with 4 rows per bed) with 5-inch in row spacing, and is the largest patch I’ve yet grown.  The beds were well prepared and well fertilized, and I’m feeling hopeful for an abundant harvest 8-9 months down the road. The beds had been rained on before planting, so we were scratching off the first flush of baby weeds while planting.  In the… Read the rest of this article »

What a great time of year!  There’s so much to harvest in the garden right now, I’m having to decide what not to put in the weekly CSA shares!  This season has already offered so many lessons for the future, and some of these lessons involve how much of what to plant when. This past winter when I made my planting plan, I really didn’t have anything concrete to base it on.  I estimated the number of CSA members I was hoping to sign up, added some more crops for farmer’s… Read the rest of this article »

We had our first CSA pick up yesterday which was very exciting and a bit anxiety producing…. But all in all it went really well.  We only have ten members, which feels like the perfect amount at the moment.  Our first box contained little gem romaine lettuce, pac choi, lacinato and red russian kale, easter egg radishes, salad mix, a bundle of bergamont mint, a garden bouquet of daisies and geraniums, and a pair of beeswax candles that we make through the winter.  It was wonderful to have… Read the rest of this article »