Winter Update-- CSA Shares Still Available!

After a cold, iced-in winter the season has begun to change, and your farmers are happy to be back at work on Dover Farm. You probably noticed that a snowfall filled the air with heavy flakes throughout the first day of spring. They wet the roads and lay without melting on the trees and unpaved ground. It was a lovely last sight of winter, and lovelier for the fact that all had melted by the following day. Our thoughts are now turned fully toward spring and the warmer months to follow, which for us means preparation for another season of hands-on vegetable production. We're excited.

On March 1st we sowed the first seeds of the season; since then we have filled the greenhouse and heated it with the wood stove and watched the first inklings of plants germinate in swaths across each table of plastic trays. On that first day of March our fields were still under more than a foot of snow, and our trips from the driveway to the greenhouse with trash-barrels of potting soil were as comically close to antiquated arctic exploration as I've ever been on a farm. (Sled ponies would have made the task less cumbersome, but we don't have those.) The snow across the surface of our fields, which was a pristine, blinding white when the sun shone and which remained unbroken by footprint or vehicle track, melted fast as the month progressed and now there is no trace of it except the moisture in the soil. The seedlings are growing and the soil is drying, and we anticipate putting our first plants in the ground early in April.

We're easing into the season now, gradually working more hours as the days warm and lengthen, anticipating long and satisfying days ahead. If you'd like to join us for the 2011 growing season as a member of our CSA, there is still time. We offer 22 weeks (June-October) of vegetables from our farm, harvested the day you pick them up. Please scroll down to the preceding entry for enrollment information. We hope to hear from you!