April has arrived quickly at The Cloverleaf and the season is in full swing. Our farmstand will be open and our CSA up and running in just under eight weeks. The past few months have required extensive preparations to get the farm ready to actually do its job: grow food.
Here’s a snippet of what we’ve been up to in the past few months. In the field, we mowed cover crop; plowed last year’s beds to prepare beds for planting; added compost and limestone to make the soil healthier; planted (and weeded!) garlic, onions, strawberries and potatoes;and now we are beginning to plant the crops for our CSA and farmstand. We pruned hundreds of trees in the orchard, weeded and mowed, and watched patiently for fruit set.
At our home bases we have set up our CSA; done our due diligence to get the business up and running; created our crop plan, and read, read, read about how to become better farmers.
We are all very excited for the selling season to begin so we can share our work with you. And throughout the season, we’re hoping to share a bit of our story as well. On this site, we’ll write a bit about our work throughout the year, including some of the challenges we face and the learning that accompanies our hardest moments. We are quickly learning that what helps new farmers the most is shared knowledge. We’re receiving knowledge from skilled farmers everyday, and we’re hoping to pass our experiences along to others interested in the process of growing and selling food in California.
Please follow along. Click “follow us” on the right of the page to receive email updates, or add our blog to your google reader, RSS feed, or whatever tool you may use to stay on top of blogs and news you follow.
