Happy Leap Day everybody!

If there were ever a day that should be inserted into the calendar, it would be this one. Sheesh, I know I have a tendency to go on and on about the weather, but this is ridiculous. :)

I can see by the forecasts that we've got snow coming again, which is to be expected ... and in the case of the water table for spring, hoped for, which is great. But right now I'm watching thousands of little green shoots emerge, and that's what I'll focus on until the snow comes.

As I mentioned in previous posts, I put in a new bed of spinach (that makes 4 new ones!!!) the other day, as well as some radishes we hadn't tried before. Mom's really into experimenting this year, on top of our normal choices for growing. To get back on topic, said spinach and radishes are already up! Holy smokes! That's only a week ago! [Side note: This blog isn't just for you... I never would have guessed that!]

I guess this post is a little disjointed, but I'm on top of the world today. I know my dad is bummed to be missing all this while he's off on the east coast for his other business, but I think I'm enjoying it enough for the both of us.

Today started out with a darn lot of picking and I'm just now heading down to do some "real" work in the greenhouse, but I'm stoked because I'm prepping the beds for the broccoli, which is already over an inch tall. If I can get them dug in the next day or two, we'll be putting in the broccoli in about 2 weeks. Whoooo! (That was for you Kimberly and Ashish!)

Okeydoke, enough dawdling for me. I'm off to see if I can get my biceps REALLY ripped before spring comes for real (21 days and counting!!!)

Cheers!

Wow! I couldn't ask for a more beautiful day... It's always so very Colorado to walk out into warm sunshine and a blanket of snow. It's even better being able to walk from that snow into the warmth of the greenhouse. It's like magic, the way green and growing things continue to thrive in there. We've got a new bed of lettuce going in today, as well as a bunch of work going on with the web site. I've got a great idea that I'll be implementing with it in the next few days. I'd like to say that it will be done today, but I'm not going to waste too much time inside when I could be out under a blue sky! I think you'll enjoy this surprise though!

The great news from the land of spring is that all of my crops from earlier this month are up. We've got a blanket of radishes, beets, and spinach that have been rising up for several days and today I experienced the wonderful site of carrot tops and chard popping their heads up. Yay!

I guess I don't have much else to say at the moment, except that I'm going to head back out now and see if I can get any outside work done. Make hay (or strawberries!) while the sun shines, right?

Cheers!

Well, three more beds down, goodness knows how many more to go! :)

I did a lot of digging yesterday (and my goodness, do my arms feel it!) and I managed to plant two more rows of spinach as well as a row of a new type of radish. I'm not sure how the second will turn out, but I'm looking forward to it. They're a round, red radish and they're described as being "extremely crunchy" so I'm hoping for the best!

Today will be a day of more digging as well as some more planting. I'm planning on putting in sugar-snap peas for an early spring crop. Other than that, I'm preparing for a completely non-farm related event! I'm playing in a pool tournament this weekend in Loveland which may go into Sunday, so my mom will be in charge of the farm until Sunday afternoon.

This weekend is slated to be beautiful, with Sunday's high listed as around 60 degrees! This is great!

I hope you all enjoy it as much as I'm planning to!

Cheers!

My goodness, time flies when you're having fun!

Life has been good here on the farm! We spent last week watching the new spinach and beets come up and on Monday the radishes made their debut. I'm super excited to have root crops again, I really love radishes in particular. In the family we like to slice them and eat them on fresh bread. Yummy!

The lettuce and arugula are popping up their heads quickly as well, so we'll be having fresh crops of both in a very short while.

In the meantime, this sunny weather has led us to a nice period of outside work. For all that the greenhouse gives us the opportunity to keep things going throughout the winter, the majority of our growing space is behind it, in the two fields that we currently cultivate.

The major projects outside over the last two weeks have been to pull out the weeds and catnip that love to take over in the fall while we're busy with the pumpkin stand. We've gotten 10 rows cleaned out in the last week or so, which is awesome, because the peppers are popping up in the plant studio and we're putting in the tomatoes and eggplant soon.

My two favorite things that are being prepared for though are peas and strawberries. I'm a great lover of sugar-snap peas (the kind with the edible shells) and we're excited when we get a head-start on those so we can stagger their growing seasons. Peas have a very short period in which you can pick them, so if we can stagger them, we'll have them that much longer!

We cleaned out the strawberry beds on Friday and I'm stoked to say that they're already greening out. They're hardy enough survive a frost, so we can just watch them get bigger and bigger!

Anyhow, I've got to get down to the greenhouse and get some more digging done, but I'll be back outside in the afternoon to get the basil rows cleaned up. I'll leave you with a couple pictures of the greenhouse to enjoy.

Cheers!

Beets! So little, but they grow pretty darn fast.

Some of our great rainbow chard, 3 inches high now.

Lettuce, the red ones are already starting to change color!

Myzuna, already in dire need of thinning. :)

And last but not least, the green strawberry plants I mentioned!

Welcome to the best day ever!

Today has been fantastic! The weather is wonderful, the wind only slightly irritating, and it was 35 degrees when I went out to pick this morning! A pot of coffee later and I'm still dancing.

Things are going great in the greenhouse, I love it when I can go down and hang out in 70+ degree weather. I've also been watering the plants, so the humidity makes it feel more like Florida than Colorado.

We got a ton done yesterday, the dill is almost all gone from the onion beds, and that led to the great discovery that we have a LOT of great onions to be picked, so they've been added to the order section as well as the in-season section. They are nothing short of a pain to clean for sale, but they're so good, they're worth it.

Another great addition to the day is that I sent out my e-mail letting you guys know about the onions and our new "less plastic" idea. While I can't entirely remove plastic bags from the equation (it's kinda hard to just dump 12 ounces of salad mix into nothing) we are aiming to use a lot less of the "handle bags". The great news about this is that I've gotten four emails in the last few hours asking that I not bag their produce. I love Boulder!

I'm off to finish pulling the dill - the chickens shall eat well today! We're going to be working on the outside fields within the next few weeks, including thinning the strawberries. Yay strawberries!

Every day should be this fun! I hope you guys survive the cold tomorrow, but it's supposed to warm up again on Friday, just in time for the weekend!

Cheers! (oh, and happy Valentine's Day!)

Well, I've gotten my comeuppance.

I kvetch about how much I hate the wind, which was bad, but not awful, only to be woken up at 4:30 this morning to gale force winds. The best part of course is that weather.com currently lists the wind speed at gusting up to 37 miles per hour.

37 miles per hour does not blow small buildings over. Ever. Liars. *sigh* :)

I got to do my early morning trek through the farm to make sure that nothing had been destroyed by tree branches, the old goose shed (which weighs about 150 lbs), or a rock. You laugh, but I've seen wind like this pick up the most amazing things!

It's currently 6 a.m., which is about par for the course for normal up-and-a-tem, but there's no way you're getting me back out there until this slows down a little.

Okay, enough about all that! Here's what's going on here on the farm!

If I can ever leave the safety of my house again, I'll be down in the greenhouse to continue cleaning out the old onion beds. This is a VERY slow process as a forest of dill has arisen, some plants as tall as five feet. Lots of very thick stalks to be pulled. Once those are out, I'll be transplanting in our nasturtiums and then I'm off to dig a few rows for the broccoli.

The Broccoli plants are up, though only about a centimeter tall. That means that I've got a few weeks, tops, before I have to get them into the ground. Broccoli comes up super fast as seedlings, but then they need to sit in the ground for quite some time before they'll produce anything but leaves.

After that, I'll probably be in the carrot beds, willing them to arise from the soil. I've already got a wonderful carpet of green where my arugula and lettuce were planted, but I'm getting impatient with my carrots. Which is quite silly, as lettuce takes 50 days to mature and carrots at least 75.

My truly good news is that I saw my first beet top yesterday! This of course means nothing until I see at least ten, but hey, I'm excited any way. Beets, like carrots have a long time to maturity, but the hope that comes with that little green stalk is what matters.

Anywho, I think I'll go get a refill on my coffee. It's only 52 minutes until sunrise!

Cheers!

I have to admit, I hate the wind. Not a little bit, but a LOT. It makes me a little crazy and a lot grumpy which makes it very difficult to get anything at all done. :(

I did get the rest of the onions planted yesterday, which is great! I can't wait for the egyptian bunching onions, they're great in my scrambled eggs in the morning. That and a little bit of wilted spinach... I know what I'm eating for breakfast this morning!

That being said, after a hearty breakfast, I'm off to get some real work done in the greenhouse today. If I get right on it I should be able to clean out 3 more rows and dig them today, laying the groundwork for planting a couple more rows of arugula and lettuce.

Tomorrow of course is Saturday, which means that Mom won't be going to work. It also means that we'll be putting in our seedlings for tomatoes and eggplant I think. Colorado weather is always tricky. if you plant too early, you risk a cold freeze, but if you plant too late, you risk not getting a chance to enjoy the fruits of your labor at all.

Last year was particularly devastating for us on that level. We put out our eggplant right on time for a normal year, but as many of you may remember, there was a nasty hard frost very late in the spring. We were forced to re-plant the eggplant, zucchini, and many other plants.

I was able to baby a few of the eggplant until they had full-sized fruit, but that meant that farmers market was almost over. Mom made some great dishes with them, but getting 25 eggplant from 150 plants is just sad on so many levels. :(

This year we'll be diversifying our eggplant crop a bit, as Mom and I went a little crazy with the seed catalogs. Not to fear though, we're going to put in the tried and true European and Japanese eggplants as well!

In remembrance of the wonderful eggplants that might have been, I'm putting in a picture of my dad from a few years ago [update: 8 years ago!?!? where has the time gone?] that shows him in one of our best eggplant crops EVER!

Cheers!

It's gorgeous out today! A little bit windy but this kind of sunshine can only do good things for the crops. I'll be planting the rest of the onions today as well as cleaning out some of the beds for future planting. I got everything I wanted to do done yesterday, which is a rarity. *yay!* That means that we'll have radishes in about a month, just on time for the feeling of spring in Colorado!

As promised, here are some pictures of our new plants. They're getting bigger every day!

Our recently transplanted Egyptian Bunching Onions are thriving in their new beds!

Our Rainbow Chard seems to enjoy its new home as well!

So tiny! It's the little things that count in life. This smudge of green will be lettuce some day.

This is our first update to the blog, we hope you enjoy it! The snowy days are making it hard to get much done in the greenhouse, but the sun has started peeking through today, which is great. It's hard for me to get motivated when the sun doesn't shine.

I've spent the last few days planting beets, rainbow chard, arugala and lettuce. There's nothing quite like the feeling you get when you realize that you're putting something new into the ground. I have to admit that over the last few days I've gone down in the morning with the hope that I'll see some change in the long rows of dark soil. I know that soon enough we'll see the beauty of small green shoots emerging from the soil, which is probably the best gift that mother earth can give in the spring.

Today's goal is to get our easter egg and icicle radishes planted. Both are amazing varieties, but I have to admit a certain childish love for the easter eggs in particular. They're a beautiful, uniformly shaped radish, but the best part is that they grow in a mixed batch of red, white, and purple. You never know what color you'll pull out of the ground, which is awesome!

If I can get those done in any reasonable amount of time, I'm hoping to put in another batch of spinach. One of the most difficult parts of farming is crop rotation. We have to stay constantly on top of what plants are reaching maturity so that we can get new batches planted. This is especially true once the weather gets hotter, as arugala will bolt in less than 3 weeks once the weather reaches 80+ degrees. This means planting arugala beds every 3 weeks throughout the summer!

Anyhow, pictures to follow so you can experience the joy of watching shoots pop through the earth with us.

Cheers!

Copyright 2007-2008 Jay Hill Farm/Rowan Rozanski

Blue Jay photo provided by Bill Schmoker Photography