Hey Folks:
Welcome to those of you who are signing on for your first season with Whitsend Market Garden. I am looking forward to a great season of growing and eating!
2012 is shaping up to be an exciting year, with plenty of crops to introduce, new parts of the field to bring into production, and expanding the nursery.
We are starting so far ahead of where we were last year. Last March, I was just starting work on the fields. No beds, no compost piles, not much of an electric fence, and then a long delay as the rain kept the tractor out of the field for its initial turning over.
This year, I start with almost 2000 feet of beds already tilled, a permanent electric fence, a barn with a new door ready to move into, and even garlic slowly growing in one of the beds (expect garlic in your CSA basket this fall!).
I am especially excited about the many new crops we are growing. My search for alternative salad greens was rewarded when I found a great seed house in Vermont (High Mowing Organic Seeds) that has an excellent variety of organic seed stock. With Whitsend's great soil and small-scale maintenance, we should produce some remarkable salad greens like Cress and Mache this year.
Work now is confined to the nursery, but purchases for this year’s production are starting to add to the workload. Trips to Kemptville for electric fence line and other supplies, Coe Hill (pick up my order of seed potatoes), and Berwick (pick up my order of cover crop seeds) are in the works.
I still have a couple of spots open for new customers. If you know of anyone in your neighbourhood who might be interested in locally grown, certified organic, edible fun, share the blog site with him or her and invite them to call.
Feel free to forward any questions you have about your food, and we will gladly answer them.
One final note about the blog site. I am trying to figure out how to get links from one part of the page to another (save you some effort with all that page scrolling). I should be able to work on that over the next couple of weeks.
One final note about the blog site. I am trying to figure out how to get links from one part of the page to another (save you some effort with all that page scrolling). I should be able to work on that over the next couple of weeks.
Talk to you soon,
B