Dear Friends,

Happy winter!! Here we are in early February and we have so much to tell you. Probably the most exciting news is that Meghan and I are in striking distance of closing on the new 12 acres of land we were farming last year as well as the house that is right across the road from the share room. We are all moved into to our new place and are excitedly setting up shop in the house and barns to make our operation run a little smoother. We are very pleased to have taken our commute down from 2 miles to 0 miles. It’s funny how far those 2 miles can seem when you are worried about the weather that’s coming in or the greenhouse temperature dropping too low.

We just sold the last of our storage crops at the hugely successful Winter Fare Farmer’s Market in Greenfield yesterday. Those of you who made it were among the over 400 attendees. We were very impressed with the number of people who were interested in local food in February and also the array of farm products available at the event. On Thursday Meghan and I spent a portion of the day shoveling snow from some mulched sections of the field digging the carrots and parsnips we had stored in the ground. This is not the best storage technique because of the potential of the roots freezing but it sure is a cool winter activity to get all suited up and pull some food out of the ground. We were astonished by how much insect life we saw in the soil in the dead of winter. We were wishing we had our camera out there that day… I think that would have made for some nice pictures for our website.

Speaking of the website… we are currently having it updated by a friend of ours who will make it possible for us to post the newsletter, recipes, and other important farm updates weekly to better keep you all in the loop. This will also enable us to email you the newsletter and potentially save a bunch of paper every week. In the first week of the share we’ll have a list for you to check off if you’d like to receive the newsletter by email only.

In other farm news… we finished the crop plan, seed order, crop rotation, and organic certification in record time this year! We have a few new tricks up our sleeve in terms of getting certain crops to mature earlier that will hopefully bring you a bounty of untold proportions on the first share week. We are also trying a few new and exciting pest control strategies. One of these is in partnership with the UMASS extension service and will be part of the NOFA Conference (Northeast Organic Farming Assoc.) this coming August. It involves the release of parasitic wasps called Trichogramma into our corn fields that will actually prevent the hatch of ECB (European Corn Borer) eggs bringing you entirely worm free corn!

Can you tell we’re excited about the upcoming season?? For the next month we’ll be hitting the equipment repair/building improvement task list hard as we lead up to starting up our greenhouse in early March! Another great season is upon us and we are so glad to be sharing it with you. Until then pull your socks up and enjoy the snow!!

Your Farmers,

Rob and Meghan