Seeding, Irrigating, Micros & Chicks!

Mr. Smeems is super excited to be spending long days at the farm doing his favorite activities - barking, sniffing, digging, getting filthy while exploring...you know, dog stuff!  Bullet is never far behind, and is in fact usually leading the charge!  Last week we spent some time working on tilling the Haygrove beds with our BCS tiller, and getting them ready for seeding.  While Spencer did that manly job, I spent a lot of time re-organizing our irrigation and cobbling together what I think amounts to a really nice system.  Hopefully it works!  We'll turn it on this week and put it to the real test.  Digging trenches really puts the old muscles to work, but I'm happy to report that with all my gym-going activities, my recovery time after this super-physical activity was merely overnight - I woke up the next morning  surprisingly not remotely sore!  True testament to working out and doing strength training really paying off!  At any rate, Spencer seeded the first rounds of arugula, salad mix, radishes, dandelion greens, etc.  We'll be transplanting out the first round of lettuce heads this week in those same beds.  We're gearing up for the Downtown Farmers' Market, which starts this year on Saturday, May 9th.  Four weeks away!   Today, after meeting with my gym trainer, I received the phone call from the post office saying that there was a box of peeping chicks waiting to be picked up!  So, off I ran to collect some food for them from Guy's Farm & Yard out in Williston, do my grocery shopping, collect the peeping chicks from the post office, turn on the super cool new brooder box we ordered, and put them away in their toasty new environs.  All went smoothly, and we now have 26 cornish roaster chicks slowly getting meaty in our brooder!  They sure are cute at this stage!  They seem to like their new house and are happily peeping away - they are successfully finding their food and water, so all's well.  After getting those guys situated, I ran back down to the Intervale to harvest the first batch of microgreens of 2009!  They'll be sold to Healthy Living and should be on their shelves after 1pm on 4/14/09.   We'll be doing deliveries 2 times a week to them, on Tuesdays and Fridays.  Here's some pics of the chicks and microgreens!  We're anxiously awaiting our ducks and geese, which should be arriving tomorrow.

Here they are checking out their new digs.  The green gel stuff is 1st day vitamins for them.

Curious about the camera.

Doin' their chickeny business!

Micros!  Can you identify all 8 varieties in there?  Amaranth, Arugula, Mizuna, Red Bok Choy, Tatsoi, Hong Vit Radish, Giant Red Mustard and Russian Red Kale!

Close up micros.  Had some sashimi, pork dumplings, and rice over a salad of these tonight.  It was sublime!