Spring!

Spring is finally here and the farm is rolling into action with more planting, soil preparation and fence expansion. In the past two weeks, we have planted approximately 800 broccoli plants, 1600 cabbage plants, 200 collard plants, 1600 cauliflower plants, and tomorrow we will plant another 1,000 onions and 400 bok choi. We are also beginning our weeding regimen, beginning with our garlic rows, and moving on to the onions next week. We are also happy to report that many of our english peas we planted before the 4 inch rain are popping up out of the ground! We are so thrilled to begin our 2010 season and are enjoying the hard work in the great outdoors. Our 24 hens are also beginning to lay and we are receiving over a dozen eggs a day at this point. We are pursuing our license to sell eggs at the farmers market, but we can still sell them from the farm, so if you live near Rockmart, give us a call or an email and we will tell you where to come pick up a dozen brown eggs from us for $3. We now have egg cartons too. Our chickens will provide a vital source of soil nutrients as we rotate them around our field in fallow areas throughout the year. We are also happy to report that our first CSA session is now FULL! We will have another session beginning in mid/late July and running for 10 weeks- this session will include a large portion of summer crops and then some early fall crops towards the end. Email us if you would like more information. Turtle Bend Farm is now in full swing and beginning in mid-May we will be attending both the Marietta Farmers' Market on Saturday mornings in historic downtown Marietta, and the Decatur Farmers' Market on Wednesday afternoons (4-7). You can find the websites for these markets here: http://www.mariettasquarefarmersmarket.net/ and here: http://decaturfarmersmarket.com/wordpress/

Next week we will also begin planting our 1800 kale plants, the rest of our bok choi, and seeding other crops like carrots, turnips, radishes and greens. Stay tuned! Pictures to come!

First Spring Planting!

What gorgeous weather we have had the past several days! We took advantage of it out here at Turtle Bend Farm and made our first spring planting. In the far right of the photograph you can see our 4,000 onion plants, including red, yellow and white onions, and 1,200 leek plants as well. This could not have been possible in one day without the help of our friends who were passing through, Maisie and Eric. Thanks ya'll!! Then, yesterday we seeded a large amount of sugar snap peas, snow peas, english shell peas, carrots, spinach and turnips. That's Adam on my dad's old ford tractor with our 5 foot tiller hooked up and running to make a good seed bed. Today, Adam went back and planted collards, more shell peas, more carrots and arugula! We were so excited and satisfied to have some seeds in the ground, and now we hope for a good amount of rain to water these seeds in the ground. Adam is now fertilizing the onions and our garlic (that we planted last fall) with fish emulsion fertlizer. We will be working on developing our trellis system for the climbing peas as well, and next week we will seed more spring vegetables. Later this week we will begin starting our tomato and pepper plants indoors. We are starting over 20 varieties of heirloom and hybrid tomato plants of all shapes, sizes and colors!! Get ready for some yummy vegetables this year from Turtle Bend Farm!!!