It’s May!
Thank you so much for joining our community this season! We’d like to get some feedback about your family’s preferences. Please complete our Membership Questionnaire and continue scrolling for updates on our progress this spring.
Being our first spring scaling up so significantly, we knew to anticipate a challenge. We’re not necessarily surprised by the difficulties and lessons we’ve faced thus far, but it’s been a dance.
We converted our guest room into an indoor nursery- filling it up with tables and grow lights to get our seedlings a good, controlled start. From there, when the weather is cooperating, these babies move out to the hoop house and wait to be transplanted into an adequately-prepared garden row.
Only about a third of our land has been previously gardened, so there is a lot of soil amendment and construction going on. When there is time and energy, we like to prepare the soil for tilling with a manual broad fork, settler style. We’ve found that this process allows us to really observe and understand the soil we are working with and its condition. It has the added benefit of getting us into great shape! After ground is broken, we add compost for texture and soil food, some organic granular fertilizer to help feed the crops, and lime to help balance our acidic soil’s pH.
In the field, we’ve used metal hoops and floating row cover to protect our crops from extra cold nights. This will come in handy at the end of the summer as well.
We’ve successfully germinated, nursed, & transplanted the following cool season crops, with which will will be filling CSA boxes and our table at farmers markets in May and June:
Onions, Parsley, Thyme, Cabbage Varieties, Broccoli Varieties, Potato Varieties, Beets, Peas, Radishes, Oregano, Bok Choy, Kale, Spring Lettuce Mix, Baby Kale Mix, Spinach, Head Lettuces, and Carrots.
Some of these crops have created more challenges than others, but they are all alive and thriving in the first Spring garden block. We can’t wait to start providing for your family!
We strongly believe in the principles of regenerative agriculture. When we started raising sheep a few years ago, we wanted to do it the right way- on pasture in tight groups, without supplemental grain feed, moving often to keep from overgrazing (a la Joel Salatin). This is the first year that we are seeing the true fruits of our labor and discipline. We’ve had more biodiversity in our pastures, taller, richer grasses and legumes, and clearly happier, healthier sheep. We’ve incorporated some composted barn litter from our sheep and chickens into our first garden beds and the crops have thrived on the natural fertilizer.
We started with three pregnant ewes a few years back and today we have a vibrant flock of 22 ewes and lambs. Our rule of thumb is six ewes and their lambs per acre. With roughly two acres of pasture available, we are sitting right at our capacity.
While our rooster population is getting ornery, our hens are loving the spring weather and are starting to increase their egg production. We have a mobile coop of laying hens trailing the sheep pastures and a group of free-ranging birds with the barn as their home base. As the farm’s biodiversity awakens, the diversity of the hens’ diet increases as well- making happy birds and healthy, deep-colored yolks.
Expect weekly blogs and updates from the farm moving forward this season. We’re looking forward to getting your feedback and getting to know your families. If you haven’t already, please follow our account on Instagram @morckelmeadows, where we are most actively communicating and sharing. We are so thrilled that this community has come together!
Erin & David