Weather The recent cold snap was a wonderful dose of
‘real winter.’ When the temperatures
fall as low as they did last week, experts say that the invasive emerald ash
borer mortality rate is as high as 90%.
I like when Mother Nature brings things back into balance without humans
needing to resort to pesticides, traps and tax dollars to fix a problem we
created. On our farm, these cold temp’s
may kill off pests like cucumber beetles and squash bugs, making it easier for
us to produce quality vegetable crops this year.
Our four laying hens have a super-cool, lime-green
mobile chicken pen that we move every week during the summer, allowing them
fresh ‘pasture’ bugs and greens, and providing us with amazing eggs. The mobile unit has an enclosed area for
roosting and egg boxes, but we were concerned about how the hens would handle
the negative temperatures, day after day.
Although they are amazingly resilient and tough (and they are not laying
eggs this month – not enough daylight), we decided to bring them onto our porch. This involved a large dog crate, a space
heater and some re-arranging of the porch ‘junk.’ The hens were very happy to be warm for a few
days, however. They ate and drank more
than usual and seemed very perky. When
it warmed above zero they were quickly re-introduced to their outdoor coop –
chick manure is smelly in a confined space!
Tomatoes
Johnny’s Selected Seeds, a Maine-based seed company
that we patronize, is offering a new strain of cherry tomatoes this year. As if we don’t already attempt to grow 10
different cherry tomato varieties and 15 heirloom and slicing tomatoes! But, these beauties need to be trialed on our
farm (I’m a sucker for tomato trials).
There are seven separate varieties, all striped. They vary in shape, coloring and size, making
an amazing mixed-container combination that is touted to be as tasty as it is
pretty. I’m ready for a fresh tomato,
how about you?
Website One of our projects this month is to update
our website (patchworkgreen.com). We
have some wonderful new pictures to upload, recipes to add to the menu page and
better page layout to implement. You’ll
be happy to know that we are keeping CSA prices the same this year and our
Traditional Share and Market Share CSA options are largely unchanged from
2013. The updated website will be ready
for viewing by February 1, and you will be able to purchase 2014 CSA shares at
that time.
After a big expansion in our CSA member numbers last
year, we hope to maintain and improve rather than grow our member base this
year. That means there won’t be too many
new memberships available, so sign up early!
Many thanks to our web gurus, Kate and John!!
Maren Stumme-Diers is promising that the Luther College Sustainability Center
will have its’ website updated by Feb 1 as well, with explanation of the CSA
reimbursement program for 2014 outlined.
For those of you who participated in this great cost-sharing option last
year, your excited feedback has encouraged Maren and Luther to offer even more
member reimbursements this year! Spread
the word!
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