Delivering the Harvest; Calves, Bees, Chicks and More

Blessing Falls Farm News - April 2015

We're in our second week of delivering the Spring harvest to our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members. Thanks again to so many of you who have joined with us. Your early memberships gave us the funds to prepare and plant. It is a true blessing to now gather generous harvests and share them with you! We have enough produce to add several more members so please consider joining if you don't already have a reliable source for local healthy produce. Check out the website for details on the first two weeks of harvest. In addition to the current harvest, members can look forward to receiving these soon: Head Lettuce, Spinach, Chinese Cabbage, Cauliflower, Turnips, Carrots, Dill, Rosemary, and Mustard Greens. Remember we will deliver right to your front door even when you're away and can't receive your order personally. We can also meet you at several pick-up locations. If you know someone who loves fresh vegetables but can't get to the farmers market regularly, please let them know about our delivery option.

Spring is also calving season for us. So far 7 healthy calves have been born with 4 more expected soon. We're grateful there have been no problems with the calves or mother cows. We're experimenting with incubating and hatching eggs. Our first set of chicken eggs just hatched. Our youngest farmers helped move the chicks to the brooder where they'll be warm and safe the next several weeks. We're now collecting eggs from our mature heritage turkeys for incubation later in April. If we get a successful hatch, these turkeys should be ready for the holiday season. We'll keep you posted on their progress.

The orchard, grapes, and blackberries are off to their best start ever this year. Another year of root growth and the abundant winter rains have really helped. Thousands of blooms covered our blackberries and the grape vines have tiny clusters of grapes forming. The nectarine and peach trees are setting small fruit. These trees are young so we likely won't have many to share but the blackberries look very promising. If the grapes continue healthy, we may have some of these to share also.

Finally, we're building more coops for another large flock of laying hens and adding another bee hive. See the link below for more about the bees.

If you'd like to come out and see the farm, let us know. We especially welcome our CSA members. It's been great to have several of you stop by recently. You can contact us by replying to this email. Or through our website or Facebook page. Hope you're enjoying this beautiful Spring and we'll be back in touch soon.

New Bee Hives

We're expanding in all areas this spring - bigger garden, more calves, more berries, another flock of laying hens. And we're adding a new bee hive. Our experienced beekeeper Sam now has his brother Noah as an apprentice. Here's what they been up to... As extraction proceeds later this season, we'll let the Blessing Falls CSA members know how they can add this local, …