News
2022 Year in Review
It is the time of the year that we reflect on what we have achieved last year and what we will be doing in the coming year.
As always, we want to take this opportunity to thank everyone including our customers, helpers, and friends… everyone who helped make our 2022 season successful!
We began the year with constant, severe deer damage. We lost 4 strawberry beds, 2 carrot beds, a garlic bed and they also ravished our cover crop fields (including the ones in our fenced-off area!). We constantly had to repair the fences where the deer forced their way through. I kept having to run out of the house to chase them away!
So we finally decided to get a dog (we should have done that long time ago). By chance, I came across Teddy on a farm trip to the Amish country. We brought him home on April 19 when he was 9 weeks old. He has grown into an excellent deer deterrent. We have not lost a single crop to deer since he completed his training! We expect that Teddy will continues to do an excellent job to protect our crops. Did we mention he’s also very playful and lovable too? 😊
It’s been very challenging to get qualified and consistent farm helpers, and thus, we were able to only offer spring farm shares, pre-order pickups, and provide products to a few restaurants. We cultivated only a small fraction of our field and invested most of our helpers’ availability in weed control in our asparagus field (they were poorly managed in 2020 season). As a result, we expect to have a much greater harvest this May.
We ran a trial with tulips to see how they would turn out and they have been fair. We were able to harvest 50 tulips despite deer damage. I bet they were tasty ☹. No additional tulips were planted. Hopefully, we get to harvest some this spring. We will try some sunflowers this season.
So, in all, we considered 2022 season to be a great season.
Through the Farm to School Program (a USDA program), we will be providing fruits and vegetables to our local North Royalton schools!
Other things to expect from us in 2023
Offering patrons a paid experience where they can cut their own sunflowers, offering CSA shares (perhaps with make and take it salad!)
We will continue to do our best to produce delicious, high quality fruits and produce while at the same time respecting our earth 🌱
