Animals
Our boar Buttons and our sows, Penny, Patty, Myrtle, Altouise, and Astrid primarily live in the old goat barn. We do separate the sows to their own pen when they are about to farrow (give birth). The gestation period for a pig is 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days, or about 114 days. We hope to have some piglets running around the farm in the next few weeks!
The three donkeys, Milton (dad), Summer (mom), and Buckwheat (son), are all in their 20’s and enjoy their time on the farm, sunning, sharing space with our 5 goats, and saying hello to visitors when they aren’t feeling so shy.
When you walk out to the blueberries, you can visit the goats and donkeys in the back pasture we call Bobby’s World after our original goat buck. These 5 goats are what is left of the herd from a few years ago. Even though we no longer milk goats and make cheese, they are an important part of the farm maintaining pastures, saying hello to visitors and keeping the donkeys company.
The cows move between 3 different pastures and until recently the males and the females were in separate locations to avoid having calves born in the cold of winter. With a gestation period of 283 days, just a few days longer than a human, becoming pregnant now will result in a calf born at the end of April which is far better than a calf born in a February snow storm.
To maintain our high number of chickens we purchase a new batch of 9 week old pullets every May. This May things fell through at the last minute and the hens we had ordered never came. As a result we only have last years batch of hens on the farm and don’t have the additional 800 birds we had anticipated. An indirect result of the bird flu. We are looking into raising day old chicks again for 2026, we will see!
Garlic
Garlic going in the ground October 20, 2024 for a July 2025 harvest.
About 13,000 heads of garlic came out of the ground over the last few days. A big effort by the team went into making this happen efficiently, speedily, and thoughtfully. We treat garlic similar to how you would an apple: gentle so it does not bruise. With such a large volume coming out of the ground, adequate space and systems to dry and cure the garlic were refined. Rather than curing the garlic in GH1 as we have done in previous years, the garlic has settled onto stacked tables under the shed roof off the back of the pole barn. In the shade and open provides a good breezy environment for the garlic to cure for storage. If you want to learn more about the garlic growing process, check out our CSA newsletter on garlic from last summer.
What a week
A few weeks ago you may recall watching the time lapse video of cover crop getting crimped. We have found crimping does not always adequately terminate a cover crop. After years of thinking about it, the farm just purchased a flail mower. A flail mower is an excellent tool for managing cover crops, at it chops the plants into fine pieces that break down quickly, returning nutrients to the soil while preserving ground cover and structure. Unlike rotary mowers, it handles thick biomass and uneven terrain with ease, making it ideal for no-till or reduced-till systems. The resulting mulch helps suppress weeds and retain moisture, setting the stage for the next crop. The inaugral mow on another section of G7 was a huge success.
Cherry tomatoes are now in 4 different greenhouses
GH4 Cherry tomatoes
Jester’s Lettuce Mix
Colin with some Lacinato Kale
Basil
Evrald harvested the first slicing tomatoes of the season last week.
Oxbow Team Meeting checking out G4 and the very diverse cover crop mix growing. 5% of this mix is sunflowers.
Tim basket weeding carrots
General maintaining and harvesting have been on the docket most days right now, however we did take a team field trip over to the Oxbow to see the progress.
Pickup
Come anytime between 3 pm and 6 pm to choose your share on the day you chose when you signed up, so either Monday or Thursday.
Please bring your own bags or box to gather your choices.
If you signed up for an add-on, don’t forget to pickup your Flowers, Eggs, and Pork sausage.
Remember to contact us in advance if you will be unable to pick up on Thursday, so that we can store your share in our walk-in refrigerator to keep it fresh. You can email or call us to let us know. Thank you to all of those who have already arranged another time to pickup!
Here's what you will find in this weeks share:
Full shares receive an 12 choices and
Small shares receive 8 choices.
Please use the tally sheets to keep track of the number of choices you are taking at pickup. We want to make sure you receive all 8 choices if you are a small share and 12 choices if you are a large share!
Want some recipe ideas?
CHECK OUT THE CSA RECIPE PAGE!
Your Farmer, Sam (For Tim, Mikaela, Jeannie, Jim, Evrald, Shawn, Jav, Jeb, Colin, Jaime, Wyatt, Ani, Sophie, and Jess)
