Spring is in the Air

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After what will hopefully be the last snow of the season, signs of Spring are everywhere. The Crocuses have come and gone, and just in time for Easter, the Daffodils are blooming....next are the Tulips.

The last of the Crocuses....

...and the first of the Daffodils.

This means its time to get back to work on the farm...and there is certainly a lot of work to do.

For us it was time to get back to the greenhouse dome and every year. when we get back to the dome, we get a few surprises. This year, we found that a few stray seeds took hold and we were pleased to find a couple of Borage plants blooming successfully....somehow they managed to get enough water to survive all this time.

A couple of stray seeds and a minor amount of water and voila! Borage.

As we cleaned the dome, we also found a rather strange dead fern. Surprisingly, it turned out to be Asparagus. How do we know: we have nice white shoots. The lack of sunlight under our growing shelves turned the Asparagus white. How they got there is simply beyond us.

Dead Asparagus fern from inside the dome.

White Asparagus shoots.

The cleaning of the Dome was essential since it is now the second week in April and it is high time for seeding.

Our core group of vegetables are based upon your typical Mediterranean diet: Tomatoes, Zucchinis, Peppers and Eggplant, and of course Basil.

We always enjoy the Tomatoes and have been growing a few heirloom varieties every season. This year we decided to greatly expand on this with a new selection.

Our seeds are planted.

For those looking for a local source of heirloom seeds we recommend: The Cottage Gardener. Over the past four years, we have been ordering some of our seeds on line and they have always provided us with speedy delivery and quality seeds. Their selection of plants is also fascinating.

Although the dome has had some limited use in the past year (with our Aquaponics set-up taken apart). We actually have a coupe of exciting ideas for it...so watch this space! We hope to make some announcement in a couple of weeks.

Now that the Tea Room is up and running, we've also decided to make some additional investment in our operation. 

We usually make our jams in very small batches (8 to 12 jars at a time). The limitation is really due to our stove-top equipment. The result is that we always run out of jam for our market shelves.

This year, we invested in a steam jacket kettle. This will now allow us to make batches 6 times the size!

Our new steam jacket kettle...just needs to be wired.

This is it for now, but stay tuned for the "dome announcement"!