October 28, 2008
We are desperate for rain and the forecasters are predicting rain Friday through Tuesday. We are praying for it here at GRUB. I might even wash my car just to insure it! Besides the whole regional landscape being thirsty, our farm would really love it! The natural watering would help baby our onion transplants. It would allow us to break ground on our sunbaked acres. It would also enable us to plant our cover crops that will enrich our soil (more about that when we actually can plant them.)
REMINDER: those of you with kids who may want to tour our growing farm, come out at 5:30 this Wednesday.
We are desperate for rain and the forecasters are predicting rain Friday through Tuesday. We are praying for it here at GRUB. I might even wash my car just to insure it! Besides the whole regional landscape being thirsty, our farm would really love it! The natural watering would help baby our onion transplants. It would allow us to break ground on our sunbaked acres. It would also enable us to plant our cover crops that will enrich our soil (more about that when we actually can plant them.)
REMINDER: those of you with kids who may want to tour our growing farm, come out at 5:30 this Wednesday.
So this is the beginning of broccoli season; this week we're expecting to pick large heads for you! Soon to come will be cabbages, beets, carrots, cauliflower and peas. We experimented with an early variety of peas and we are amazed and thrilled that they are already blooming! We are certainly hoping that this is a good sign that we will be able to harvest peas this winter and not have to wait until spring as we did last year.
What else is happening at the farm you ask. Well, the onions are looking good. We started them by seed in August. We planted them densely so that we'd have tons to transplant once the summer crops could be pulled. This week we've been doing just that. Come May/June time we should be harvesting those along with garlic. Speaking of garlic, even though the onions and garlic are in the same family (alliums) the garlic is rarely planted by seed. You just take the peeled clove and plant it. If you want to try this I would recommend an organic source or at the farmers' market as some conventional markets may gas them to prevent growth and well, you would just get a rotten clove buried in the soil. We buy in our cloves from a grower that insures that theirs is disease free.
Two Fridays from now we will be hosting 4 Japanese Agriculture students who are on tour of California farm life. We are excited to meet them and show them around our farms and to share our warm home with them. We also look forward to being able to hear about their experiences and farming practices. Their visit will coincide with the Sustainability Conference at Chico State which should enhance their visit.
Also this Friday, October 31 we will be defending our grant proposal in its final stage. Stephanie has been working really hard on this and if it gets the go ahead we will get to add 10 preschools to our garden education program! The schools are so excited about the prospect and so are we. Please throw out some good thoughts our way 10am-12pm on Friday.
Have a Happy Halloween and don't throw out those pumpkin seeds. Roast them with some salt and oil and mmm what a tasty snack!
See you tomorrow!
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