Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Gardens are beginning to take shape. Cold crops are coming along. Something new this year is a a couple of 4 x 8 foot boxes that Mike made to start radishes and lettuce early. We anticipated that it would be wet this year and we would need to be able to start some plants before the soil dried enough for tilling. We were wrong---it has been very dry! Hopefully, we will get some rain tomorrow so we can quit watering every evening. We have our first CSA customer who is our 'test case' so that we can decide if we want to go into it in a big way next year. For this year, most of our market will be at the Attica Farmer's Market and the vegetable/fruit customers at my workplace. Looks like the blossoms on our fruit trees did not get frosted, so hopefully we will have peaches and cherries. I think our apple trees are still too young to give us any apples this year. The new blackberries made it through the winter ok, as well as the strawberries we planted last year. The deer seem to enjoy eating the tender tops from the new plum trees so we will have to address that. We are looking forward to watching the Saskatoon Blueberries get taller. Dad says that Saskatoons are actually June Berries, but they are so much like Blueberries that you can't tell the difference. Sounds good to me.
Really excited about making 'yarns' from recycled clothing--cutting cloth into thin strips and knitting with them. What a great way to recycle! I can think of some great silky scarves, some denim rugs, t-shirt dish cloths, and on and on, but of course I will have to put that off for fall and winter. Right now we still have a great deal of planting to do.