A Brief History

For many years it’s been a dream of ours to organically grow fruit, vegetables and flowers on a scale large enough to sell them. Most vegetables and flowers are easy to grow organically but apples can be very challenging. Our first apple trees were planted back in 1982 and are now bearing abundantly. We cleared an acre of forest for our market garden 1999 and when we put our new tractor and plow to work we discovered an incredible quantity of rocks, which are still putting our backs to the test. Our first year of selling was in 2004. We are building a large 80ft x 25ft solar greenhouse, which we hope to have on line next year for early tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squash.

2006

We had a mild winter this year, although it lasted much too long, (three inches of snow on April 15^th). Tender fruit like peaches should bloom and bear. Last year was very good for our peaches. We harvested over 1000 pounds from about 20 trees. Our apples were thin as we battled a green bud worn in the spring that destroyed many blossoms. Our first big production of tomatoes, peppers and cukes from the greenhouse was very successful and this year the plants are looking good growing in pure 100% compost. The bumblebees we ordered are busy in the tomato blossoms and we hope to harvest the first tomatoes by early June. Field crops looked good last year but we ran out of potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions and garlic. We hope to produce more this year so that we can provide our CSA customers with big bags of storage veggies in the fall. Our Saturday CSA still has room for a few more customers.

2007

There has been lots of buzz in the media this past year on eating well and eating local. Hopefully it has turned more people on to the benefits of local, organic and fresh produce. We became a vendor at the Northfield farmers Market last year and had a lot of fun. We will there
again this year every Thursday starting June 7^th. Just the strawberries start coming in. Have a great year. Eat well and eat local.

2008

We used the greenhouse for winter production of lettuce and spinach for the first time this winter and were very happy with the results. We had timed our harvest for the Feb.2 Ground Hog Day Winter Farmers’ Market in
Greenfield. That event was wildly successful; we sold out of all our produce in a couple of hours. Next year we would like to grow for the Winter Farmers’ Market again and we want to supply our CSA customers
with greens throughout the winter on an “as needed basis”. A new crop we’re planning this year is celeriac, an ugly root that tastes like celery and stores all winter. Its’ great in soups and stir-fries and with roast chicken. Of course we’ve added a few new melons to try for a total of 21 varieties.

We put up a solar shed this winter in a corner of our flower garden. It has 20 solar voltaic panels on the roof and will produce 75% of our electricity even in the summer when we’re running the greenhouse fan and the air conditioner in our cold room. As an added bonus, the solar shed serves as garage for our tractor. We have pictures of the solar shed and more in the 2006 gallery.