April has been moving right along, and here we are just a couple weeks away from our first CSA dropoff and the first week of farmers markets. Everything is growing nicely, some things are taking a little longer than usual, I suspect the cold temperatures at night are not helping.

Some updates on actual vegetable production: We have two high tunnels that are filled with spinach! Our garlic is looking amazing! We planted scallions about 2 or 3 weeks ago and they will be ready to harvest by the time markets begin. Ginger is still growing great as well, they are still in our “germination station” AKA our walk-in cooler, but with a heater that keeps it a constant 80-90 degrees…we have had them in there since February. We also began putting our seedlings in there and have had excellent germination within 1-3 days, which would normally take a week or longer.

Back to the ginger….once the temperatures remains a little more constant, we will be transplanting the ginger into our high tunnel!

All of our tomato plants are looking healthy and happy! Officially we should wait to plant them until May 15th, or right around Mothers Day for our area, this is the average last frost date for Maryland. We decided to play it a little risky this year and went ahead and planted a few hundred tomato and squash plants in the field today, but we will wait until Mid May to plant the majority of everything.  We will be selling some of our tomato plants at the market this year, and they are being nurtured not only by us but also by our Love Dove Potting Mix!

We recently planted another set of asparagus, making the total 2000 this spring. We also planted 100 rhubarb roots and opened up some more ground to continue to expand. We are really excited to be doing some additional fruits and veggies this year, including sweet corn, watermelons, cantaloupes, and so much more! I think we are beginning to figure out what works best and how best to manage so many different veggies! Every year brings more challenges and with those challenges comes opportunity! Lets do this!

It looks like it has been a while since I published a Blog, so I am going to be sure to keep up on it this year....If I drop the ball, just let me know and Ill be sure to write some updates! 

Well, its been a slow starting spring, very cold and very wet! It wasn't until the beginning of April that we were able to plant anything in the fields, 

so what have we planted so far:

We planted 180 bunches of Onion plants: Each bunch contains between 50-100 plants...Not sure exactly how many we did, but between 9,000 and 18,000 would be a good estimate! Pretty good range! In 2013 we planted 60 bunches, so we have amped up our onion plants. We also made a cool template that helped with efficiency and sped things up a lot! 

Our Garlic was planted in the fall, and it did very well even through the rough and cold winter! It actually looks amazing! Really looking forward to having a bunch of that as well! For amount perspective: My first year we planted 40 lbs, 2nd year: 80 lbs, 3rd year: around 100 lbs.....This Fall we planted about 250 lbs of garlic, and about 50 lbs of softneck garlic.

In terms of seeds: We have direct seeded:
2 types of Kale, collards, Arugula, 3 types of radishes, turnips, lots of spinach, 2 types of carrots, 2 types of beets, mizuna, tat soi, bok choy, and sugar snap peas. We also transplanted some lettuce, and planted some scallions as well. Our potatoes have been interesting. With such a cold wet spring, our seed potatoes which come from the northern states were delayed for 2 weeks. Then the shipping company had a mix up and our potatoes ended up getting delayed over the weekend. We planted some of the smaller potatoes, and cut the larger ones down to size. Now we have to wait for them to harden on the cuts to reduce risk of rotting in the ground. We hope to be planting them by the end of the week. In terms of scale: Last year we planted 3 varieties and about 500 lbs. This year we are doing 4 types and are going to plant around 1200 lbs. 

New and Exciting products at Love Dove Farms
We have inoculated mushroom spores into some hardwood logs over the winter. As long as all goes well, we can hope to have some mushrooms fruiting by the end of the year, or at least by next season. We are attempting Ginger this year, and it is pre-sprouting great! I have a lot of faith that it will do well this year! We have EGGS!! We have 100 chickens and will be selling fresh brown eggs! We are going to give Sweet Corn a shot this year too! We hope to plant a good amount and have plenty to sell, (whatever the deer don't get too)

New Construction
We built our 3rd high tunnel this winter, this is excellent because now we have a great rotation potential. This also gave us an opportunity to start a lot more seeds, by using one of our high tunnels as a make-shift greenhouse. We actually built a small frame inside the high tunnel, this gives us double insulation and also helps contain the heat in a smaller area, so we have lots and lots of little plants growing great! 

Our CSA signup is still active
We are still accepting applications for our CSA membership. We are expanding our CSA a bit this year, and we may offer an additional drop off location or a different time to help accommodate those interested in joining a CSA, but the details still need to be worked through.  We will be expanding on our website as well, and offer some recipe ideas and hopefully help people with new ideas on how to use their veggies! Maybe even create a way for our members to share how they used their veggies and give some fresh ideas!

All in all, this is going to be a great year ahead! Thank you for supporting Love Dove Farms!

It has been an interesting spring so far! WIth lows in the 20's just a couple weeks ago, to 80 degree days a week ago! It has been a challenge being able to plant outside until just recently. We have planted close to 500 lbs of potatoes, 3600 onion plants, 1/2 of our leeks, which is approximately 1800. We direct seeded Kale, beets, radishes, turnips, spinach, arugula, bok choy, tat soi and more! We have transplanted lots of lettuce to the field, along with swiss chard, and planning to transplant some cilantro tomorrow. We planted 15 lbs of sugar snap peas, 5 of which have germinated and are growing great! Tomatoes!!! We have transplanted Thousands of tomato plants from smaller containers to larger ones. We hope to plant some in the high tunnel within the next few days, but will wait on most of the field tomatoes for another 2-3 weeks, until this unstable weather becomes more stable. All of our other plants are growing great in our greenhouse/high tunnel. We are keeping baby squash plants, zucchini, okra, rosemary, basil, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers and more safe and sound until it is nice and warm outside consistently. 

We have been busy with planting and maintenance, but we have also been working on a few other projects. We are in the final stages of building our chicken wagon, we hooked up our irrigation to the feed, so we now have irrigation in our fields. We have almost completely finished with our second high tunnel. We were able to get the plastic on a few weeks ago, then had to frame out the ends for added stabilization and to allow us to add polycarbonate as well as just poly on the ends. Pictures to come! Getting things together for the markets and our CSA! Recenly purchased some nice coolers that will keep our CSA shares nice and cool while we wait at our dropoff location. 

So Spring is moving right along! We have been working mostly 12 hour days already, and its only going to get more busy and more exciting! Gotta Love what you do! And we Love, Love Dove Farms!

Our Second High Tunnel frame is almost done! We just have to put on the plastic....More pictures to come when that happens. In the meantime, I thought I would explain how we built this thing! We started out by orienting the 4 posts to where we feel was mostly level and would allow plenty of sunlight along with nice airflow. This high tunnel measures 24' x 120'. So now to use some of that all important geometry that we learned so very long ago...hypotenuse anyone? How about Pythagorean Theory? We measure one end, and be sure it is 24'. Then we measure out 120' from one post. This angle must be a 90 degree angle in order for the layout of the frame to be square. After some calculations and multiple measures, we ended up with four posts that were the right "square". We then made a template that would give us exact spacing of 4' between each ground stake. After putting a string the length of the 120' for a straight line, we drove the stakes at least 30" down, on both sides. It is important to be sure that all of the stakes are level, since your arches will be sitting on these stakes. Next we assembled arches and raised them up and sat them on the ground stakes..30 arches later, we were done. Now it is starting to look like something. We connect a purlin starting from one end all the way to the other, we utilize that same template that we used on the ground...this ensures that the top spacing of the arches match the bottom stakes. After the center purlin, we connect both side purlins as well. Next we add the cross braces, which connect to both sides of the arches. Once that is done, it is time to add the sideboards for the plastic to attach to, they simply are screwed into the arches. These run the length of the high tunnel and have grooves in them to snap in a zig zag wire to hold the plastic tight. On to the baseboards, these run along the length and they add strength and stability to the structure. A carriage bolt is drilled through the wood and a clamp holds the ground stake to the baseboard. WInd Braces are attached at all four ends, they run at an angle from the top of the end ground stake in a downward angle to about the 5th (or 20 ft) arch. These four braces are vital for the strength of the structure. We are almost done...Next we will be building ends, so we use a clamp that goes around the arch and connects to a clip that will attach to a 4" wide piece of wood. We have to be sure that it is spaced out appropriately along the end arches for reasonable framing out of the end walls. Once the clamps and the clip are in place, we run a piece of hardware or a track that goes over the entire end arch. This will be the track that we will use zig zag wire and hold the plastic tight. Our frame is now up and we just have to wait for a very calm day to put some poly on! We are really looking forward to having TWO high tunnels to grow some early veggies in, and keep some veggies going longer into the season! Happy Spring TIme!

Our Cold Box is complete! This will be where we store our fresh produce after we harvest it in the field, before we take it to the farmers markets, CSA dropoff  or deliver to local restaurants. We constructed this cold box out of 4" insulation panels, encapsulated in aluminum sheeting. I bought them as a set of various lengths, and had to figure out how I wanted to build the box to utilize the panels and make a nice sized box. After setting up a base using 4x6 and 6x6 wood, we added some additional 2x6 boards and then topped with plywood as a floor. We then attached corners to the base to hold the panels in place. The panels snapped together and are very rigid. Putting the panels on the roof helped hold everything together. We then put panels on the plywood inside the cold box to add additional strength to the floor and added insulation. We are anticipating that we will not need to add any form of AC unit, we built this box on the north side of our barn, and it will get very little sunshine and it stays very chilly inside! After all is said and done, it is roughly 13'W x12'L x9'H.

As we continue to improve our farm operation, it was imperative that we invest into irrigation equipment for the growing season. Using drip irrigation from well water, we are able to monitor our usage and conserve our water, a very valuable resource.

In order to bury our irrigation pipe, we needed to dig a trench at a minimum of 36-42" deep, below the frost line. We created a "Hub" in which all valves are located as a way to easily turn on and off the water flow to the various pipes. We ran two 500' pieces of well pipe into the middle of our field and installed two frost proof hydrants. Since the hydrants are at the very top of the hill, we will be able to easily run a header hose down to the bottom of the hill, while still keeping a significant amount of pressure for our drip tape. We also ran an irrigation line into our high tunnel, and installed a frost proof hydrant. This is especially necessary as we consider a longer growing season, we can now access water inside the high tunnel throughout the winter. 

Come spring time, we will connect a "header hose" to each hydrant and run it the length of the field, approximately 500'. We will then connect small valves to the header hose at each vegetable row and then attach the drip tape to the valves and run it along the row next to our vegetables. We are going to use black plastic mulch as a way to reduce weed pressure and it will also conserve water. The plastic retains the moisture underneath the plastic and reduces the need for excessive watering. So what exactly is drip tape? It is a flat tube with small pin holes about every 8-12". Once the water is turned on and the drip tape is filled with water, it drips water slowly out, nourishing our thirsty vegetables. 

Onto the next project.....

Happy Holidays Everyone! We have been making plans for a more productive 2013, expanding our growth from 2-3 acres to 4-5 acres. 2012 was a great season, we really appreciate all of our customers and their support throughout the year. We successfully had 2 CSA seasons, a summertime CSA, as well as a Fall CSA. We are working on the details for Love Dove Farms 2013 CSA Membership-So be sure to check back with us! 

Our High Tunnel has been holding up great through all the wind and weather, thanks to excellent construction and help from friends! We are hoping to build an additional high tunnel in early 2013 as a way to extend our growing season even further. 

We have recently purchased some farm equipment that will hopefully allow us to increase our efficiency and productivity, so we can provide you and your families with healthy, local, all naturally grown veggies!

Happy New year, see you in 2013!