Winter’s End

Dear Farm Friends,

Here we stand in the predictable cycle of the seasons, much closer now to the spring equinox than to the winter solstice. Days are slowly lengthening, and all sorts of critters are wriggling around in the woods. Unlike last winter, though, we are not standing on a gigantic pile of snow! Until seven inches fell last week, February felt like anything but winter. Our excursions from farm office to barns to greenhouses required only a light jacket, rather than the full snow gear and excavating shovels of last year. Now that winter has finally appeared, we’re ready to heat that greenhouse for our spring starts! Go figure! Today is the day, with five of us ready to roll with the onions, scallions, celeriac, leeks, shallots, early tomatoes and herbs. That list will take us all week, at least. Yahoo, here we go!

Bruce, Susie and I have enjoyed these weeks of planning for our growing for the 2012 season. With five years under our belts now, our level of planning has become more in-depth, and also more fun. Not as much scurrying to get it all done in the day, and more thoughtful reflection and study. In particular, our greenhouse tomato production will get a boost this year, as we expand to our two old hoophouses and learn a new trellising method. Due to popular demand, we’ll aim for earlier summer squash, and more organic sweet corn. We’re trialing a handful of “greens” varieties to bulk up the June harvests, and we’ll continue on our quixotic quest for a respectable rutabaga harvest. Thanks to all of you who have offered feedback and suggestions for the coming grow-out. Email me if you have more to say!

Picadilly Farm was recently honored as the 2011 “Cooperator of the Year” by the Cheshire County Conservation District and the Natural Resource Conservation Service. You can read about it here, in the Keene Sentinel: http://www.sentinelsource.com/features/environment/environment-briefs/article_8f040897-45ac-5b86-9d8a-81475d2470ba.html

Most of our farm shares sell by word-of-mouth, so thanks for spreading the word! About half of our 2012 shares are claimed now, and we’d be tickled to be “all full” by mid-spring.

Please join us for an: OPEN (GREEN) HOUSE on the first day of Spring. Tuesday, March 20 3:30-5:30pm. Pop in the warm greenhouse, and welcome the first tender shoots along with the first day of spring. We’ll have warm cider, farm seeds to plant, and pots of seeds and seedling to take home for your own garden. All ages and abilities are welcome.

 Picadilly Farm will be at the: WINCHESTER HEALTH AND WELLNESS FAIR on Saturday, March 17, 9-noon at the Winchester Elementary School.

 That’s the news for today!

Jenny (for Bruce & Susie)

New Picadilly Video!

Follow the bounty of Picadilly Farm from field to plate in this beautifully shot video by shareholder Ben Pender-Cudlip.

Click this link for the video http://vimeo.com/30028281

Wrapping up 2011

Farm crew 2011! From the back left: Elizabeth, Jose, Antonio. Biz, Jess, Chris, Jenny, little Jesse, Bruce. Susie. Adelina, Jodie, Iver, Laura, Alejandro.

Whew – we made it!  This growing season presented more weather-related difficulties than we can remember from more than a decade of farming. We look back fondly on about ten weeks of nice summer sun – a time where we actually ran our irrigation equipment. But bracketing those summer heydays were weeks of relentless rain. Countless rain storms, constant drizzle, hurricane Irene, and eighteen of Halloween snow to top it all off. And though our farm was spared dramatic damage, the hurricane cast a sober shadow over the autumn as we learned about other growers and friends who suffered devastating losses. Picadilly Farm’s location about half mile away from the Connecticut River, combined with our relatively sandy soils, both served us well this year.  But we wonder, like everyone, is this wacky weather the new normal? And how then will we fare?

With your support, we fare well.  Farming during this perfect storm era of wacky weather, sky-high land values, and subsidized Agribusiness, presents daunting risks for any one farmer or farm family to shoulder. Community Supported Agriculture makes so much good sense.  We saw a funny seed catalog cover yesterday, from a Maine cooperative called FEDCO, that rang true for our times. The cover showed a Victory Garden-era person, amidst a heap of home-canned tomatoes, with the slogan, “TOGETHER WE CAN!”  What a nice spin on the “everything local” buzz alongside the political primary season.  Remember as well a few more of the reasons to feel good about Picadilly foodstuffs: it is all grown right here; and more than 60 cents of every dollar of the share price goes to pay the farmers and farm crew directly. Much of the remainder is spent locally, with businesses run by our neighbors and to seed coops like FEDCO.

So here we are. Even with relentless rain, hurricane, blizzard, we still eat. We all have plenty, even more than we need. For this, we remember to be grateful. When we eat the onions, we can remember back to March, when they were seeded in our greenhouses, and we had no inkling of the future (that is now the past). When we roast the butternuts, we are awed that any harvest could have been pulled from a wet September field, then cured in a too-humid greenhouse, and then still be here for eating today! When we slice a carrot, we recall a July summer day, any one, which could have been the day that these were planted in hot, sandy soil. And when we pack out our last December shares, we are grateful for all of our eaters, the final link in the chain from seed to soil to harvest to table to good health.

So, accept our gratitude at the end of this crazy year. Thanks for eating local and for supporting young family farms. May you thrive in the New Year.

Warmly,

Jenny & Bruce (and our crew)