Dear Friends and Customers of Many Hands Organic Farm,

Yes, indeed. Friday had to be perfect. At lunch under the flowering crab apple (full of Cathleen’s bees) sported perfect weather.

I must talk about perennials today, especially the small fruits and tree fruits. They are all moving in or out of bloom right now and look to be in resplendent health. If you grow fruit trees or berries/grapes I encourage you to move into phase two of bringing these amazing plants into fruition. Noted at the bottom of this letter are a handful of sprays and drenches that we are using right now. Truly, I don’t work for Advancing EcoAgriculture, but we did spend some decades with poor to non-existent fruit before we starting making these fertility enhancements.

Education from the outside world

Don’t miss this podcast from Graeme Sait – The Mycorrhizal Marvel – The Gains From Reclaiming AMF

I also learned more about autophagy – intermittent fasting, and other fine tidbits about health, wellness, a great joke, and more reasons why not to till. Graeme’s podcasts are always packed with highly referenced material from scientific studies.

CSA Update – Last chance to subscribe for the entire season – Deadline May 18 at midnight
On Tuesday May 18^th at Midnight, we will be closing orders for the first week of the CSA (May 24^th). If you are dropping an order in the mail, call me at 978-257-1192 or email me at Julie@mhof.net by the end of Tuesday to let me know it is on its way. I will need all of your stats so that we can get your bag labels made.

We are not closing the CSA down yet. You can still order to pick up the second week (June 1^st) and weeks later along as long as we have openings.

If you are a CSA customer, check your email this Wednesday for all details for your CSA pick-up! Bonus points if you read it twice 🙂

Farm doins
We finished those onions and then went to the thousands of leeks, finished Tuesday. After more bed prep and tarp removal, we planted parsley and kohlrabi. The end of the week found us preparing for another large planting of the broccoli, cabbage, kale, collard family. We made steady progress with our blueberries, now all pruned and mulched (until we ran out of cardboard). Heinrich and his weed whacker are doing great damage to the bindweed and bishops weed. And we dried nettles, burdock and comfrey this week. Our first batch of young layers did not do well after their too long in transit arrival last Friday. Murray McMurray graciously sent us replacements and I ordered 25 more. I hope to have some juvenile layers available for sale in 2 months or so. I end each day right now elated at how great our progress is every week at and how much fun we had again.

Baby chicks and comfrey (top), what is under the tarps – the green stuff is rock dust (middle left), planting the thousands of leeks (middle right), drying comfrey (bottom left), Anthony with cart in progress (bottom right)

Think of Jack on Thursday
He is going in for a long awaited knee replacement on the 20^th. Your positive thoughts for his swift recovery will be very much appreciated!

Cat update
There are now 21 cats in residence in our bedroom. Stripes threw in the towel and brought her four babies up to join the others. Quite a menagerie. And yes, we will have cats for adoption by the third week in June. They will cost $50 each. Email to place your order.

Products available now at the farm

• Eggs – $8/dozen
• Comfrey salve – $8/2 oz.
• Hemp salve – $10/2 oz.
• Lavender soap – $6/5 oz. bar
• Peppermint soap – $6/5 oz. bar
• Frozen applesauce – $6/quart
• Canned (jarred) tomatoes) – $7/1 quart

Make arrangements to pick up at the farm or we can ship some things to you. Call at 978-355-3853 or email Julie@mhof.net

Staff Update
Stetson rejoined us on Monday – Dustin, Candido and Logan. Also, Alicia and Shantel are joining us on Saturday mornings to help with animal chores.