Spring has arrived. Birds are up early signing along the fenceline, grass and fields are beginning to green up, the longer days are refreshing and most evenings a beautiful sunset will stop us in our tracks!
With the arrival of Spring we're slowly seeding all the things! The tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are beginning to fill out their trays and will be ready for repotting here shortly. The first round of lettuces are up and we filled the propagation house with newly seeded trays on Saturday afternoon. We seeded trays of kale, collards, chard, cabbages, kohlrabi, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuces, parsley, basil and fennel.
This Spring has a very different feeling than last year, partly because it doesn't feel like we had a Winter? We are planning and seeding mainly for our CSA Community this season and scaling back our wholesale production considerably, due to the incredibly dry Fall and Winter and knowing our irrigation season is going to be short. This is a big change for us and our farm as wholesale production has been our main focus for years.
We are looking at the bright side, knowing that less production means more down time this summer. So we should have more time for friends and family, and be able to prepare dinner at a reasonable hour and maybe spend the weekends hiking and BBQing rather than working in the field.
Mike and several other farmers in Southwest Colorado were recently interviewed by Luke Runyon with KUNC 91.5fm about drought, conservation and resilience in the Colorado River Basin. Drought is viewed as a temporary situation but what do we call a condition of permanent water impermanence and a need to be constantly resilient? When Drought Lasts 18 Years, Does it Need a New Name? As Brad Udall was quoted saying, "If you have the wrong words in your thoughts, you might actually come up with the wrong solutions."
Farm Updates! Beets and carrots are really starting to take off in the moveable tunnel, the onion starts are beginning to bulk up and the first peas and turnips are up in the greenhouse! Grow lovelies, grow!
This will be our first season with the moveable tunnels up and running for a whole year... this gives us the opportunity to seed roots (such as carrots and beets) early and come May we will pull the tunnels to their 'Summer Plots' where we will plant crops like tomatoes, peppers and basil that will benefit from the additional heat during the summer months. At the same time, those early carrots and beets should be able to handle the Spring weather and temps and hopefully be ready for our first CSA Harvests! Having moveable tunnels and being able to use them like this has been a dream of mine for years as crop rotation in greenhouses and high tunnels can be challenging. Being able to move these tunnels onto three different plots throughout the seasons will provide many more crop rotation options without pulling expensive 'greenhouse real estate' out of production.
We are experimenting with a couple things this year.. We experiment every season but this season just has a different focus... a drought focus. One of our experiments is with potatoes. We're going to follow advice from some of our mentors in the area and try an acre of dry land potato. Yep, you read that right. We are not sure how the potatoes will do or what kind of yield we'll have, but we'll report back as the season progresses. Always learning.
Mike has been processing Hubbard squash seed! We love this variety for so many reasons... it's diversity in shape, color and size, it's sweet rich flavor, drought tolerance and it's ability to store well for 8+ months. We appreciate the many farmers and their seed saving work on this variety for the past few hundred years. We have these farmers/seed savers to thank for a squash that is resilient and truly adapted to our region.
CSA Registration is OPEN! We would love to have you join us and our farm this season, for 18 weeks of freshly harvested produce grown right here on this beautiful piece of land we call home.
Let's do this! So how do I sign up for the CSA?
- First, review the Summer CSA details and options.
- Second, go to the CSA Sign-Up page and select a payment option.
- Third, mail a check or Pay Online to reserve your CSA Share for 2018
- If Paying by Check: Complete and submit the CSA Sign-Up Form online. Then make your check out to Mountain Roots Produce and mail to 41095 Road G, Mancos, CO 81328.
- Online Payments: Go to the farm store, select the CSA Share you would like to purchase and proceed to checkout. When you add a CSA Share to your cart, a CSA Sign-Up Form will pop up and need to be completed. **Please note, a 3% processing fee is added for online payments. If you wish to avoid this fee you can pay by check.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Have a beautiful day!