Availability for March 13

This was the first weekend I really had a chance to get out and work in the garden, so I tried to make the most of it. We’re rotating our beds over to a section we haven’t grown on in four years. Three years ago, it was the chickens’ pasture. We lost all of our hens that year to a large and well-fed red fox, and I hadn’t touched that area since then. It had gotten completely overgrown with a mix of fescue grass, ragweed, brambles, and other weeds. They’d grown into the poultry netting that was supposed to keep the fox out. They overgrew the drip tape I’d left in the beds. It took a lot of muscle to rip all that out, but now the beds are ready to use again for growing.

Freshly inspired by the Georgia Organics conference of last week, I’ve decided to get back to my roots somewhat. I’ve been growing vegetables all my adult life, and never were my gardens so productive and easy to manage as when I strictly followed the square foot method. When I made the leap from large garden to growing for market, I tried to apply the techniques to the larger scale I thought was needed for growing for market. It was overall a success the years I kept with it, but it wasn’t as productive and frankly not as fun as when I had my 4 foot by 4 foot boxes. Now that I see that other farms much larger than mine do all of their growing in those 4×4 boxes, I’m going back to them.

So, yesterday I got the lumber needed for the first 35 and started putting them together today. It’ll take a couple weeks to get them all in, but that’ll be just the beginning. I calculated that there’s room for 500 of those boxes in the areas I’ve been growing in the past five years. It’ll take time (and resources) to put all those in, but Im looking forward to it.

But enough about my gardens! The veggie list looks pretty much exactly the same as last week. There’s still one or two growers that haven’t checked in, but their stuff should be listed shortly. We’re running out to Milky Way and Split Creek dairies this week, so you’ll find both of their full ranges of products listed.

Don’t forget that Easter is early this year, just two weeks from today. This is one year where everyone’s math gave different results, so Passover and Orthodox Easter isn’t until next month. But, if you celebrate western Easter, you may want to stock up on eggs now to make them a bit easier to peel next week—older eggs don’t cling to the shells as hard as fresh ones do.

Thanks for all of your support! We’ll see you on Thursday from 4:30 to 8pm at Gosford Wine.