1st week of April 2009
After several days of warm spring weather, we now are back to snow flurries. Hopefully this will be the last of the white stuff till November. On one of the warm days, I planted a bed of onion sets and shallots but ran out of time to transplant two flats of lettuce plants. That was probably for the good since the wind and snow would have given the poor things a rough start. As I continue to transplant tomatoes, peppers, basil and the like into packs I'm running out of shelf space and will be glad for warm weather to move more things outdoors. In addition to the abundant spinach and greens we are also enjoying several forage foods like water cress from the stream, dandelion and stinging nettles which when steamed make a nutritious "spring tonic." Here is a batch of young nettles I'm gathering for supper (notice the snow!) I used to be frustrated by all our nettle patches but now I am thankful for them because of their wonderful nutritional qualities and have a few customers buying them for tea plus friends asking for nettle starts to grow their own patches.
This is also the season where we are pruning everything - grapes, raspberries (hasn't been done for two years - ouch!), and fruit trees. The fruit tree pruning is my dad's job and this year he is working with our son to get the job done. It's nice to see the next generation learning some of the farm skills. After Olin disked the main garden all of our children were out staking out their claims with posts for their garden plots. The two oldest (age 10 and 13) want sizable sections so they can grow some crops that I will need to buy from them to make the weekly veggie baskets. If they can truly handle taking care of that much on their own, then it's time for me to start turning over some of my tasks to the next generation too. We are also hoping to set up some of the crops so that our son can cultivate them with his Farmall Cub tractor. This would save me piles of time plus wear and tear on my body.
Whenever we have visitors, they are curious to see what is growing in the greenhouse and we take nibbling tours to try out the edible flowers and the array of flavors that April gives us - salad burnet, lemony sorrel, chervil, arugula, claytonia and more. This past week there have been 5 different families who showed up to take a look and I am truly humbled by all the wonderful folks who stop by to learn from our garden and share around our table. Some of these people have offered to come help in the garden to learn more so I need to be preparing some good work activities to take advantage of great offers like this. Sharing my knowledge is becoming a good way to lighten my load of physical labor.
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