Compost, Water & Transplanting...oh, and an Adorable Calf!

This post is a bit later than intended. After the irrigation was turned on April 17, we were running all week -- finally have time to share all of this!

It is, shall we say, aromatic on the farm these days after the delivery of 30 tons of organic composted chicken manure. Half of the load was dropped at Golden Ears Farm, and the other half was delivered to our friends down the road: Martens Farm and Roots Up! Vegetable Farm. They are using it on hay fields and a market garden. The truck has a 'walking floor' to unload the compost -- fascinating!

With the very early, high temperatures, and little precipitation, I was starting to get worried about the crops that were seeded on April 11th. Lo and behold, I was pleasantly surprised to check up on the beets, spinach, and radishes and see that they were emerging. Here's a photo of spinach that germinated and emerged without external watering -- seeds are amazingly resilient and they remind me to have more faith in them!

Soon after the spinach photo was taken, we heard the glorious sound of the Chase irrigation system being turned on. Hallalujah -- I think you might have seen me and Tristan doing a happy dance! This meant it was time to shift into high gear and transplant alliums and kale, as well as direct seed 10 beds of veg.

Irrigation on the raspberries!

David and Chelsea transplanting onions...we're going to have so many onions this year, and shallots, and leeks. It's going to be awesome!

With all of the singulating that Chelsea and David have been doing, the start greenhouse is jam packed! Well, this was a week ago. Most of these trays are outside now, hardening up in preparation to be transplanted. We've got lots of corn that has emerged in the start greenhouse, which is exciting for us as we are trying this method for the first time this year.

Here is Tristan working his egg cauldron magic. He constructed an egg washer system that allows us to put a large basket of eggs into roiling water, mixed with egg sanitizer, where it sits for 2 - 3 minutes. Once finished, we pull the basket out and hang it to dry. This has cut down a lot on the time it takes to hand wash/dry/basket eggs. Thanks, Tristan!

Okay, you've been very patient. Here is little Astrid, born on April 15, with her mama Acorn, who is the daughter of April (can you see the naming trend here? Supposedly that's how you do it to be able to keep track of lineage). Astrid is a day old in this photo. You can't help but smile as you watch her get comfortable on her legs; wobbling around, then bursting out with a jump or a run here and there. She's something else!