Planting tomatoes, pruning apple trees, and visiting ducklings

Apple blossoms

We were thankful to have a lovely spring morning here today, especially after the crazy weather we had this weekend!  The crew is nearly finished pruning the apple trees, and the orchard looks so beautiful and vibrant.

Farmers David & Matt readying the greenhouse for planting tomatoes

I'm super excited to say that we'll be planting tomatoes this afternoon!  In the morning, Farmers David and Matt worked on preparing the first greenhouse for planting.  As the tomato plants grow, they'll be pruned to encourage vertical growth; the orange twine hanging from the ceiling of the greenhouse will be let down for support of the plants as they get taller.

Farmer Micah practices petting ducklings with one finger (with help from Farmer Wendy!)

The ducklings are still doing well and are so cute...  When kiddos visit with the small, fragile animals, we always teach them to pet with only their pointer fingers.

Ducklings

Ducklings have hatched!

The last farm babies appeared this weekend - our ducklings hatched!  These fuzzballs are the offspring of our Indian Runner ducks that patrol the side of our propagation house for slugs - they're very effective slug-hunters.

Unlike most ducks, Indian Runners stand upright and quickly scuttle rather than waddle - they're so much fun to watch. :)  The ducklings' mother is Sensei, a shy, brown duck; Sensei is accompanied by three drakes, or male ducks.

Pruning in the apple orchard

On Friday morning, before the rain hit us, we managed to make some more progress in the apple orchard.  Pruning the trees takes a lot of time, and, as you can see by looking at the pruned trees on the right side of this photo, we take quite a bit of growth off.  This will help the trees to produce a greater amount of fruit later in the season.

Snow & seeding

We were surprised to wake up this morning to see snow falling (and sticking to the ground) - I definitely had to stop for a moment and think about what month we were in!  Most of the snow melted away when the sun came out in the late morning.  The ducks didn't seem to mind the weird weather too much (and Micah loved tromping around in the slush & snow, of course).

Mornings like this provide good opportunities to get some seeding done.  Farmers David & Kelsey worked on seeding bok choy and spinach:

Sometimes we use a vacuum seeder to help the process along - it uses suction to arrange the seeds for planting in a 72-cell tray, and it's especially helpful with small seeds.

Farmers Wendy & Kelsey with the vacuum seeder

After the trays have spent some time in our warm room in the barn, they'll move into the propagation house.  Lots of little seedlings are growing in there, and some have already been transplanted into larger trays - it's so exciting to see all of the bounty that the summer will bring!

Rosemary