Food Club 2010 and Spring Thoughts...

Here we go! Half Pint Farm Food Club Application is live! Print it out and secure your spot in the best 20-week eating experience of your life! Some great changes to the Food Club for 2010, be sure to check it out! The past several weeks have been an intense flurry of meeting with our chefs, planning our farm season, ordering seeds, receiving seeds, drawing up our field maps, greenhouse seeding plans and putting the final touches on our Food Club application. It is so nice to be able to say that we are ready for Spring! With a couple of gorgeous spring-like days under our belts, nothing could feel better - I actually got a little color in my face from sun worshipping on Sunday - in MARCH! Hard to believe, but we are so excited to be getting much needed sun. I am even more excited to see on my daily runs over the bridge into Colchester that the gradually warmer temps have that ice in the Winooski and Lake Champlain almost entirely melted! That means that the likelihood of our field flooding this Spring is rapidly becoming zero. That means that we'll be able to get in the ground as soon as we feel like it - which, incidentally could be in the next week or so! We will be making our annual pilgrimage to Richmond to pick up our NOFA bulk order of organic fertilizers this Saturday, and bringing it all back to our field. Once it's out there, we'll be able to asses the condition of the soil (just how thawed out it is), and see if we can't get a tractor out to the field next week and get that Haygrove skinned! The 10-day forecast calls for some pretty nice overnight temperatures... surely enough to germinate some mâche, arugula, spinach and fava beans! We're sure to take a bunch of pictures as we get started in the greenhouse next week and start our farm season. Keep posted!

Since we have been ruminating on 2009 a lot lately, we thought we'd share some of the things we think about, and in particular some data that we like to share when we give our talks at farming conferences. First up, our top tens grossing crops for 2009:

HPF Top Ten Crops of 2009

1. Tomatoes, heirlooms and cherry toms
2. Salad
3. Carrots, colorful and baby
4. Microgreens
5. Squash/Blossoms
6. Onions
7. Potatoes
8. Head Lettuce
9. Radishes
10. Sweet Peppers

It's always interesting to look at crops in terms of numbers, and it really is a representative list. We had a ton of tomatoes, and sold out everything we harvested - true testament to the Haygrove being so useful in such a wet year... We finally feel like we have a handle on how to grow salad consistently, and well. Glad to see it represented in the list! Of particular interest to us was seeing the radishes finally make the list - they certainly pull their weight making the farmstand

look luscious, but rarely make an appearance on the top ten list. So glad they are finally there! Sweet peppers, too - they look so good on the stand and we grow them so well, but they rarely make the top ten. Also interesting to note is that everything on the list except potatoes and onions were grown in the Haygrove. That thing is a true workhorse, and we couldn't be happier about its performance. Glaringly NOT on the list is, of course, the geese, ducks, quail, and chickens. Alas, not our temperament to grow, and NOT our golden ticket, either. In 2010, we vow to stick with what we know and do it even better! Ready to join us? Spring, we are all systems "Go"!