Longer Days and Shorter Nights

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Spring has sprung on the farm. Our rain totals are at 11.30" for the month of March, bringing us to 25.90" year to date. There are a couple more systems forecast to roll through this week starting tomorrow morning after 11am. Hopefully, we'll have time to finish mowing the citrus slope before it begins.

We crossed quite a bit off the list this month. All of the fruit trees were fertilized and mulched. Our starts were potted up to bigger containers. Our seed potatoes are sprouting, and two varieties of onions are already in the ground.

We also sold quite a bit of citrus. 870#'s to be exact. The Encore Mandarins are still on the trees. They are super sweet at this point, and we plan to pick them this week.

Across the farm buds are breaking, trees are blossoming and the cover crop is in bloom. There are few sweeter scents of spring than fields of flowering bell beans. The tree frogs have returned to our pond and fill our nights with their joyous laughter. Yesterday the koi awoke from their winter slumber, their mouths breaking the surface of the pond in search of food, which we happily obliged them.

Our CSA is more than 1/3rd full already...
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Got Sorbet?

Above (L>R): cases of Meyer and Genoa Lemons

We are very pleased to have added a new corporate account today...
The Penny Ice Creamery cranks out Santa Cruz's finest ice creams and sorbets from scratch daily! We are excited and honored to be a part of their supply chain.

Below: Three members of Penny's Jr. Fanclub hard at work last Saturday

Meyers for Marmalade

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This winter continues to bless us with fruit-ripening weather. Last week we picked and packed 600#'s of Meyer Lemons for Farmers Al & Becky at Frog Hollow Farm for their Meyer Lemon Marmalade. With a bit of hustle, we managed to get the last of them safely indoors--and backfill the aforementioned irrigation trench--before a nice spell of rain moved through. (Our rain gauge now stands at 12.96" for the season).

Our kiwis and table grapes had their winter haircut last week as well, while the pomegranates are practically all leafed out already and the roses have yet to slow down. We've finished re-mulching the citrus and pomegranates with fresh wood chips, and a ton of fruit tree fertilizer is due to arrive tomorrow from Cal Organics to be tucked neatly beneath them.

In other news, the log pile that was taking up two parking spots in our driveway is now bucked, split and stacked, and our new (used) walk-in cooler is all hooked up and blowing cold.

Next up: "Genoa" Italian Lemons; "Encore" & "Gold Nugget" Mandarins!

Thrive & Pray for Rain

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Greetings to 2012! First of all, a long overdue thank you to our 2011 CSA members. We had a blast growing for you and are already gearing up for this year. Our seeds and seed potatoes are all ordered for the 2012 CSA, and both the depth and breadth of our offerings are greatly expanded over last season.

We've had an amazingly productive (and dry) winter so far.

The concerning news is that with only 5.83 inches of rain to date, our cover crop is just over a foot tall, and we continue to need to irrigate our trees. In addition, Cal Fire suspended our burn season until wetter times.

The rosier side of that equation is that our roses and winter greens are still absolutely cranking, and we have a fantastic citrus crop. We sold our first 140 pounds of mandarins to Farmer Al at Frog Hollow Farm last week. We're selling them our Meyer Lemon crop for their Meyer Lemon Marmalade in a few weeks.

In other news, we've accomplished an incredible amount of tree work and brush removal, opening up new areas for cultivation later this year. We also picked up a walk-in cooler earlier this week to help keep our greens crispy in the summer heat.

An expansion of our irrigation system is on the agenda for next week. Mmmmmmm...ditch witch. Hopefully the open trench will prove too tempting to the heavens, and we'll finally receive some of the precipitation Alaska keeps hoarding!

It Rarely Rains in Dreams...

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We've had a bit of a wet fall so far this year with over 2.5 inches of rain falling to date. As such, our tomato harvest was truncated somewhat by cracking fruit. The plants hadn't been watered in over 2 months, so they started moving water a bit fast for their own good when the rains came. We canned the fruit that cracked and are going to do another big round of our paste tomatoes tomorrow. Our peppers on the other hand were watered periodically throughout the summer and are still going strong. The last of the onions went into this Tuesday's CSA Box. We're switching to leeks starting Friday. Also in that box were our Yellow Bartlet pears and Russian Banana potatoes. All of our greens (kale, collards, tatsoi, cauliflower) have thoroughly appreciated the rain so far and are going stronger than ever.

That said, we now plan to end our CSA three weeks early this year (11/01 instead of 11/22) in the interest of keeping both quality and quantity high. To our CSA members reading this, growing for you this year was our pleasure, and we hope you enjoyed receiving your boxes as much as we enjoyed preparing them for you.