I’m going to work on finding a few new stand locations during March.  I’m looking in the Dover/Shiloh area, the Jefferson/Hanover area, and the Abbottstown area.  The locations need to be along main roads with a good pull-over space or wide driveway.  If you know of someone that might be interested, let me know.  The stand would be up from June to October.

I started all of the engines on the farm yesterday and today to keep things humming for Spring.  I emptied out the wood chips from the dust collector in the wood shop in preparation for a short project to make an elevating surface for one of the events in a robotics competition at school.  The chips will be used for the pig’s “litter box”.

Henry and I went for a walk today to look for a sweet spot to grow sweet corn and sweet potatoes.  (And to throw rocks in the stream, of course.)  Over 50% of the farm is currently in a conservation program, so we can’t use it for farming.  That ends this fall, but for now it’s a job to find enough flat space to put everything in.  We found a good spot, and also found a blue jay, cardinal and some daffodils.  The birds were singing and it really felt like early Spring all morning.  In fact, the nice day lasted right up until I got ready to go for my run.  Then the clouds rolled in along with some arctic wind.

While the cold weather has been hanging around, I’ve been spending a few evening hours in the wood shop making a set of shelves for Ella’s room.  I’ll be finishing this week.  Here’s a detail of the inlay tulip.  The tulip is apple wood from the tree that Tara used to swing in at her grandma’s house.  The rest of the shelves are oak from a tree at our first house.

I placed the order for growing supplies from a distributor in Lancaster.  They offer a percent off for early ordering, so it was getting to be time.  I’m excited to be trying organic plastic mulch this year that will rot up naturally at the end of the growing season.

Right after I placed the order I remembered that we’re going to try some sweet corn this year.   Looking through the stats on these different sweet corn varieties is like trying to put together a fantasy football team.  It seems like the overall theme is a trade-off between earliness and quality.  Since we don’t plan to rush it out to the stands, but rather use it for ourselves, I plan to error on the side of quality.  Probably an 82 or 84 day variety with lots of sugar content!

I got back from a run and found that David had dropped of a supply of expired produce for the pigs.  Thanks!  Walking back to the house I looked down across the field and got to hoping for Spring.  Here’s a picture of the produce patch, waiting for warmer weather.

The pigs are here!  They were pretty cold and shy from their truck ride, but they thawed out and got right to work turning scrap food into bacon.  Ella loves feeding them sweet potatoes. The move in went very smoothly.