What do farmers do in the winter?

Winter time is a unique time on the farm because all of our crops are finished. We did sow some winter rye on parts of the field as a cover crop and it is bright green if you can believe it. We have also been working this winter on building our infrastructure on the field and planning for the upcoming season. Our winter projects have included field clean-up, fence moving, and drainage improvement. We have been removing row covers and taking down trellises from last year's season. We are also expanding into the entire 8 acre field so we are moving our deer fence to accommodate more growing space. Some of the new space will not be in production until the fall or even next spring, but we want to begin working the soil and growing cover crops so we can improve soil structure, nutrient content and suppress weeds. We have been tearing out an old beaver dam that has clogged some of our field drainage. We have also ordered a tractor implement called a "disc bedder" that will mound up our growing beds so that plant roots can have more space and better drainage. We do have one crop growing in the field: GARLIC! We planted about 700 row feet of garlic for harvest in early summer. The next crops we will plant are onions and leeks, followed by spring peas and carrots! We are getting very excited for our 2010 season and have already ordered and received MOST of our spring and summer seeds! We will begin starting plants indoors as early as this week. We plan to have a larger variety of herbs and vegetables this year, along with a larger quantity. See our next entry (above) for information about how to purchase vegetables from us this season.