March Snows Bring Warm Aprils?

Hopefully!  (With 10 to 18" coming down, our fingers are crossed that this will come true!) Either way, spring is on it's way at SOME point this month, and thus, seed starting (and Growing Season 2014's official start!) are underway!  We'll get going back on our normal blog posts now (we didn't have much going on during our much needed winter break) since summer is gearing up around the farm FAST!

This week's news includes seed starting, greenhouse prep, CSA shares, and translating chicken...

First the fun news!  Seed starting is under way--onions, early leeks, shallots, scallions, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and some flowers are in their flats and getting ready to germinate!  As you can see from the picture below (and our cramped seed starting pics on Facebook), we have them in the house on vast numbers of tables now set up in the living room and kitchen.  It's funny, 2 years ago we swore we wouldn't have this many seed flats in the house ever again after we upgraded our greenhouse heating system.  We are eating those words so quickly for two reasons--first, we wanted to start getting away from buying in all our onion plants and try out some new varieties from seed (and onions need to start a few weeks before we want to fire up our greenhouse).  Second, we were oblivious to propane supplies and prices early in winter and all of a sudden, cohabitation with ten thousand seedlings for a few weeks seemed like a quite reasonable prospect!

The greenhouse is also looking good--we'll have details and pics on that in our next post.  We have fired it up a little bit (though we are waiting until this weekend for the official heater start day), have it mostly cleaned out, and are working on this season's upgrades (new floor and watering system!).  It's been wonderful working to prepare the house this week--even without the heater running, things get toasty during the day!

We do still have CSA shares available--Tuesday in Fayetteville, Liverpool, and Syracuse, and Friday in Fenner!  Give us an email or call if you want to learn more about the CSA or signup online.

And we promised you some chicken translation... Well, we are pretty sure we made out some F-bombs to the chickens clucking this morning.  The poor ladies were relishing the sun and warm temperatures as they managed to excavate some actual grass and dirt in their dooryard this week.  However, they are extremely under-impressed with this big snow and have been squawking to make their displeasure known (though the good girls keep on laying!).  We have promised them grass (and possibly a new house?) sometime in the next four weeks!  The farmers are also under-impressed with this storm, which is the first one blowing from due north, so it deposited a thigh high drift in the yard between us and the hen house.  Spring is coming, isn't it?  Our next blog will be set in the spring-like greenhouse at least!!!