March News; Hot Dogs, Bacon, Ham Available!

March 8, 2018

Dear Many Hands Farm Friends,

I write this in the aftermath of another of our wonderful Noreasters where we received a foot or so of snow. March seems to be that way these days. Enjoy the poor person’s fertilizer! We were happy to accomplish the pruning of all of our 100 or so fruit trees already and are on to the grapes – then to the berries to have that wonderfully fun winter task completed – hopefully by the end of the month. We have a little bit of lettuce ready in the hoop houses, that wintered over, despite some bitter cold. We did, however, lose a lot of our fall plantings. And seedlings are started in the attached greenhouse, so spring is for sure on the way, and with it the promise of some great food.

For those of you who are always interested in improving your agricultural education, I refer you to the website of Advancing Eco Agriculture and its CEO – John Kempf – who has been a regular presenter for us at NOFA on all things relating to fertility and plant health. We were particularly impressed by his webinar on stone fruit production – https://www.advancingecoag.com/webinars , but he has a number of webinars on the site that will be thought provoking and educational. Brent, with Jack’s help, completed our Johnson –Su composter and we are expectantly awaiting a year from now when we can harvest some super fungal compost. Look it up on line.

 

Hot dogs, ham and bacon available at the farm.

We just got our 2017 processed pork back from Noack’s in CT – http://www.noacks.com/Products/Products.htm – where they do a nice job with nitrite free pork products, in our case made from our certified organic pork. Hams are about 4 lbs. and bacon is by the pound. These products cost $14.25/lb.  And new this year, our hot dogs, are $12/lb. These products are quite tasty.

 

 

CSA open!

It starts the first week in June and goes through late October unless you want to also add a fall share, which will take you the full 26 weeks (one half year) of fantastic vegetables and fruit from MHOF. Our cows have been carefully fertilizing many of our vegetable fields all winter, and that along with our no till practices promises to bring even better tasting food than you have recently experienced here. Sign  up here – https://mhof.net/2017-csa-share-options/.

Circle of Song Looking for members

We rehearse here on Thursday nights and sing a wonderfully eclectic mix of songs all in 4 part harmony. Give me a call if you are interested.

Join NOFA – support organic farming and learn with like-minded people

Find out more at https://www.nofamass.org/

Spring will be here soon – only 13 days, according to the calendar!                        Julie