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| A stunning sky high above Katchkie Farm |
Dear Katchkie Farm CSA Members,
We made it! Happy Spring!
It would appear that warmer temperatures are here to stay, despite the piles of snow that have yet to melt and the still-present chill at night. CSAs give us hope: we wouldn't be filling trays with soil and starting to seed if we weren't positive that the season will soon present its bounty. We're gearing up for our eighth year as a NOFA-certified organic farm, and we couldn't be more excited for the coming season!
Farmer Bob has been incredibly busy getting prepared, spending the winter ordering new seeds, creating this year's intricate crop plan, and crafting new inventions in his shop.
Field Notes from Farmer Bob:
"Our seed order this year totals to 1,469,169, with everything from Astro Arugula to Tigress Zucchini. Seed varieties are so interesting with names like Blue Wind Broccoli, Purplesnax Carrots, Pandora Leeks, and Mountain Magic Tomatoes. I have three new crops that I'm especially excited about for the 2015 season:
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| KN-Bravo's internal color ranges from pale purple to white with purple streaks. These beautiful radishes should make great slices of color added to salads. |
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| Celtuce is also called Chinese lettuce or Chinese stem celtuce. You can use it like bok choy. I've never tried this but thought it looked fun, so let's hope it works out! |
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We are always looking for new colors of tomatoes, and this one had some great reviews. It's a cherry-type fruit that turns red when ripe and has a great complex and sweet tomato flavor.
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Every winter, a few wacky steel things usually emerge from the shop. This year it's a motorized row cover reel. Row covers are the white, gauze-like fabric used to cover crops to protect them from insects and frost. These covers can be 40 feet wide and 1,000 feet long (!), but most of ours are 40 by a mere 450 feet long. Laying them out and removing them has been a nightmare -- there's a contraption made in Holland that could do the trick, but it's very expensive and doesn't work the way I wanted so, SHOP TIME! I made my own contraption to roll up or roll out the row cover. The frame is versatile, and can be hooked to the front or the back of my tractor.
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| Here's the frame of the row cover reel |
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| And here's the row cover doing its job! |
Unfortunately, the cold weather and snow of this winter has set back some planned infrastructure improvements. We still haven't been able to finish the ceiling on our packing room, the cover for the new compost bunker, or the cement floor of our office. We're waiting for warmer weather to complete these tasks.
However, all of our 2015 seed have been ordered, and we are starting to seed in our greenhouses!"
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| Kristy harvesting spinach for Great Performances |
Meantime in our New York City office, we're proud to announce that our new website is up and running at
KatchkieFarm.com. We have lots of fresh new content, as well as a behemoth resources page - with plenty more recipes to come!
Links We love
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| Redwing onion seeds ready to go |
