Sunny Days Abound
Greetings!
We’ve enjoyed a beautiful, sunny week on the farm. Thanks to the sunny, warm days, the flowers we’ve spent the past few weeks patiently awaiting finally decided to open up. We’re absolutely swimming in colorful, fragrant blooms. Both of our walk-in coolers are packed to the brim with flowers this week! It’s quite lovely to have a new set of blooms to work with, and each day a new surprise awaits us in the field. Each morning our harvests seem to take a little longer than the last, with more to cut every day. Still, we’re working hard to get the harvest out of the way so we can work on bouquet making and wedding design, transplanting, and crop maintenance. This time of year is so busy! We’re looking forward to slowing down a bit in June and July.
Not the most glamorous photo, but this is what the floor of one of our coolers looked like on Monday afternoon! The shelves surrounding it were overflowing, too. I had jury duty on Friday and the weekend off, so I was shocked to return Monday to such sudden abundance. Prior to this week, we were pretty limited to tulips, ranunculus and butterfly ranunculus; this week we added about ten more crops to the list! The harvest is ever-expanding and changing from this point on in the season. Tulips are done for the season, and we’ll likely bid farewell to the ranunculus next week, but there are many wonderful blooms on the horizon.
All of us on the farm feel grateful to work outdoors, constantly surrounded by the natural world. As much as we wish we could control certain aspects of nature (ie. put a stop to the impending heat wave), we love the wonderment and excitement that comes along with working in tandem with nature. On Wednesday while we were harvesting Karen found a tree frog hiding in the snapdragons! We see quite a few frogs and toads around the farm, but tree frogs are more of a rare sight for us, so we were thrilled to find this pal hanging out.
We also have a new bird family on the farm this week. A sparrow built a nest underneath of a dock plant that we never pulled out in one of our high tunnels. I think it’s the most well-hidden nest I’ve found on the farm! Concealed underneath large dock leaves that are nestled into a patch of anemones, there is a sweet nest filled with newly hatched sparrows.
A treefrog, hiding in the snapdragons.
Gray, the original farm cat, our sweetest friend.
Spooky, who recently chose the farm as his home.
Our bouquet making assembly line.
We’re back at the JFX market on Sunday from 7:00-12:00.
This is likely the last week we’ll bring seedlings to the market! We still have a nice selection of herbs, tomatoes, peppers, and squash.
It is also likely the last week of ranunculus! We’ll have some straight bunches of ranunculus available, and all bouquets will feature them.
This week’s market stand will feature bouquets, peony bunches, ranunculus bunches, vegetable, herb, and flower seedlings, radishes, and turnips.
Take care,
Amelia and the rest of the Two Boots crew
A small bee, nestled in a ranunculus bloom.
Snapdragons! It was a thrill to harvest hundreds of these this week.