Everything is planted here on our farm, and now we’re just waiting for things to grow.

Unfortunately, we’ve already suffered a lot of weather-related heartbreak here. The winter we sustained was the harshest in many years and one of the harshest ever on record, with almost the entire month of January locked in a deeply subzero state. I am not certain of the coldest that it got but we had some nights of -20 Fs with windchills bottoming out in the low -40s. Our chickens were given 2 sources of supplemental heat and made it out OK. However, we lost all of our varieties of mint, all of our blueberry bushes, half of our grape vines, a few blackberries/raspberries, and most of our strawberries. We also had a young nectarine, a plum, and our sweet cherries succumb, and a few of our more exposed ‘Stillwater Valley’ peaches had some dieback that had to be pruned fairly aggressively.

We also endured a devastating flood in late May as well as some flooding last night. For example, the earlier flooding wiped out our entire first planting of corn, our beans, washed out our onions, and stripped our tomatoes of soil and left them laying in pools of water. This was in addition to great topsoil loss as well as the loss of fertilizer and manure we had spread. The onions and tomatoes were replaced as soon as possible and have since recovered somewhat. We had to replant the other two.

Sadly, last night’s washout destroyed a large percentage of our rare corn we had received from GRIN. I don’t know if they will send me any more to replace it but if not I will have to work with more ‘common’ types I guess. 🙁 This was the least ‘costly’ but the most painful of all the losses, I think.

We are currently selling eggs, maple syrup, and seed potatoes, and will expand this as crops come ready. We’ve tried to get involved in a few different markets offsite but it seems it’s just not going to work this year with our costs and difficulties higher than usual. That said, if you are a restaurant, caterer, market, etc. and are interested in selling our corn or other produce or products made from them, please contact us. We would be happy to discuss options with you.

Things are very busy around here again so I don’t know how much time I will have to update. Haying season will be starting before we know it, and we will be weeding and then harvesting like crazy for the rest of the season. Hopefully we will not have to contend with a great deal of squash bugs, late blight, or the other disasters we had last year (although at this point I’d almost be happy to exchange the D1 drought for all of this rain).

I suppose if you are not ready to be tested, you should not farm!