The spring weather we had for the last two weeks gave us an opportunity to get a lot done around the farm, especially knowing that storms were coming. To be honest, farming in the winter during a drought is a bit of a grind. But a forecast of rain in the future gives us a deadline, a finish line, a goalpost.
We normally plant our first tomatoes around the 7th of March. But the warm sunny weather this winter kicked them into overdrive. We started planting on Monday and finished yesterday at sunset. We also got some potatoes and a handful of other things planted.
The warm weather also resuscitated a few crops that we had mostly written off after the freeze — the small heads of Escarole in your boxes being one. There may be a few more surprises out there to be found, but not for much longer.
I feel like it’s important to remind everyone once again about the freeze back in December. March and early April are always months of scarcity on our farm as our overwintered crops fade away. This year we are lacking two of our late winter mainstays — Broccoli and Cauliflower — that were completely destroyed by the cold.
Meanwhile, we are spending money like drunken sailors on crops that won’t show up in your boxes for at least two months. We weeded and cleaned up our strawberry and onion fields last week, for example — a task that took 25 people three full work days. We finished pruning the peach and apricot orchards and began pruning our table grapes.
During this time of year we rely on our subscribers to keep our cash flow coming in to help pay for all this work, even in a normal year. This is not a normal year. While we make it very easy for anyone to put their subscription on hold for a few weeks or a month, I would ask everyone this year not to this spring.
We will keep your boxes full during this period. For the next month you will see lots of asparagus, cabbage, and beets. But sometime in the not-to-distant future we’ll start harvesting strawberries, peas and eventually cherries. And this could be our earliest tomato year ever. But we need your help to get there.
Thanks for subscribing,
Pablito