Mid-Winter Break

Spring is on the way!

As I sit here, there is a bubbling pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove, made from home-canned tomatoes and basil from last summer, one of the last of the onions and garlic from last year (and some of the Italian sausage we made yesterday at the butcher). The last of my stash of Acorn Squashes is in the oven to go with it.

(If you would like some of this lean sausage, in either Italian or Bratwurst, come and get some this weekend. Just email me if you are interested, shelley@whistlingtrainfarm.com. $6.00 per pound)

Between stirs I’m also refining the outline for our Gardening and the Path to Self-Sufficiency workshop that starts March 9. I’m getting really excited about it and I’m aiming for it to be very helpful for anyone who wants to produce their own food, whether it’s in a backyard, a p-patch, or in containers on a balcony. It’s really amazing how much one person can grow on their own. And it’s just so satisfying to eat what you’ve grown and preserved in the winter months.

This is what I want to share. Because growing your own just feels good. We start in two weeks. Click here for the Application , and join me! 

Much is happening now, in this calm before the storm of farming. We’ve got chickens rounded up and housed, and the eggs are beginning to flow. We’re up to nearly three dozen a day, so let me know if you’d like to pick some up. If you have an Egg Punch Card from last year, come and stock up. If you need one, I can get you one for $55. That will get you 10 dozen eggs. We also have a new flock of baby layers arriving next week—this group will start laying in September, hopefully as the old ladies are winding down for the year. I’m hoping to avoid the annual egg shortage of fall.

Hard-working honeybees.

The greenhouses are being planted in the next day or so with salad greens and carrots for the Spring CSA. Next up will be the first planting of Sugar Snap and Shelling Peas for June harvest. Onion plants and seed potatoes are on their way, and will get planted as soon as they arrive. The garlic planted last fall is up and well on its way. The bees are starting to forage and bring home pollen, getting their larders ready to feed the babies.

Spring is on the way!