Chickens in da house

Just wanted to let you know that the first batch of the meat chickens have arrived and the incredible edibles will be ready for the grill or freezer by mid June.  We will do a second batch this year to be ready in early September.  The all natural, free range birds can be purchased here or send us an email for delivery.  The cost this year should be around $2.99 per pound.

Spring Planting

It's been almost a month since the last update, I'll try to do better.  It's been very busy around the farm.  Most of the spring crops are in the ground and we'll be adding to them as we go through the next few weeks as we try to stagger plantings so every thing doesn't come all at once.  Beets, radishes, snow and sugar snap peas, onions, leeks, potatoes, spinach, salad greens, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, bok choy, cabbage, broccloi raab, kohlrabi, strawberries and, I'm sure I'm forgetting something, are all in.  The strawberries, that we planted last fall are growing gangbusters.  The blueberries, grapes and asparagus are all doing well too.  Ah, the asparagus....the asparagus is shooting up like crazy.  I don't think I have ever had asparagus cooked up fresh five minutes after picking.  Oh...my ..God  incredible!!!  Even bulkier shoots are tender as velvet. (I'm not sure how tender velvet actually is, but you get the picture)  It's the first year, by asparagus law that we are allowed to pick some, so I don't want to go to crazy, but it's really good.  A large area of crimson clover I planted last fall as a cover crop is growing well.  We can't wait to see the red blooms covering the field.  We hope the bees are appreciative.  Speaking of the bees,  all the colonies survived the winter and have been working hard these warm spring days.  Even when nothing was blooming on the farm, they were bringing pollen back from somewhere.  Standing by the hives you can see the saddlebags on their hind legs loaded with different colors.

Steve

Steve

Boy, it's wet!

Well, there's good news and bad news....first the good news, all the snow is finally gone.  Now the bad news, it's rained over two inches today into a ground that just absorbed four feet of melting snow.  Yea, it's saturated.  We do have many plants started inside, that's good news!  I should be direct seeding a few things in a few days, don't see it happening, that's the bad news.  So we work inside.  Worked on a new chicken coop in the new barn so I can split up the flock.  The purpose is to give them more ground to range on.  Built a small area in the old barn for the broilers.  They'll be coming April 7. 

Noticed some erosion happening in one of the fields today with all the rain.  Guess what, it was the one field I didn't get a cover crop on last fall.  That won't happen again.

I have a friend who always plants his potatoes on St. Patrick's Day.  I've always waited a little longer to get them in the ground, but I was thinking maybe this year I would try a few that early.  I'm  not sure that's going to be possible.  A good sign that it's wet and muddy is when you're walking along and the next thing you know, you took a step, but your boot stayed in the mud behind you.  I'm glad no one was taking any video of that dance.

Rousedale Farm in Baltimore Magazine!

We have an incredible article in the March issue of Baltimore Magazine. You can read it in the magazine, complete with a few photos or check it out on line, minus the photos, at baltimoremagazine.net. A few months ago writer Jane Marion spent an afternoon with us talking a little about my past radio life, but mostly about the farm. You never know what to expect when someone shows up at your front door to write about you, but Jane is an incredible person and we enjoyed having her and loved the article. We had a great time with Cory Donovan too, who came a few days after Jane to take some photos. (hundreds of photos) I'm sure Cory's highlight was holding a frame full of bees I had pulled out of the hive so he could feel the weight of it filled with honey. It's funny, we never heard from him again.

Through that article we've received many emails asking about our CSA among other things. It really helped in getting the word out about what's going on here.

Thank you Jane!

Rousedale Farm eggs now at Savory Deli!

Starting today you can purchase our eggs at Savory Deli in Fallston at Upper Crossraods on the corner of Baldwin Mill Road and 152 (Fallston Rd.) The eggs at Savory will be our brown eggs. Vicky and I discussed whether or not to include some white and green/turquoise eggs with them, like we do with our delivery customers. I felt people may intially be surprised and put off a bit when they opened up their dozen and had a turquoise egg staring them in the face. I mean, the egg itself is no different than any other egg, except the shell color, but if you've never seen one before..well... She thought it would be different and unique, I thought it would be scary. You're not going to beleive this, but I won! I still am in a bit of shock. I think that's the first discussion we've had that I actually got my way. What I'm expecting to happen is no one will by any eggs until we put a turquoise one in each dozen.

Thanks to Scott and the gang at Savory.

I think I smelled Spring!

Oh man, Vicky and I went for a walk today and as we were walking up the road I told her I thought I smelled Spring.  What a wonderful aroma that is.  An earthy fragrance, that if it could be duplicated, could make an incredible room freshener.  It seems so good to have the weather slowly getting warmer.  I don't remember a winter like this ever and we STILL have snow on the ground in a lot of the garden areas.  I was hoping to get a few early veggies in the ground soon under our row covers, but I may have to shovel snow to get them in!  Up on the hill, where the blueberries are it's much better, drier and most of the snow is gone from the south facing slope.  The strawberries?  Still covered with snow.  Happy to say that all three bee hives survived the winter.  Now is a very important time to feed them some sugar water just to make sure they have enough to eat as the queen is starting to lay eggs and all the new brood will be hatching soon.  The bees really need to be looked after this time of year. A lot of times you think you got them through the winter, but now is the time they will start eating the honey reserves in the hive more then during the colder months as they begin to come to life and start getting ready for Spring and if they eat up all the reserve and you aren't feeding them anything and there is certainly nothing blooming right now for them..it's bye bye bees.

We have such a great variety of veggies we're planting this year, we can't wait.  Many heirloom varieties of vegetables will be grown.  We have become a country that is so force-fed by the industrial food complex, that we have almost forgotten what a real tomato or carrot tastes like.  If you haven't experienced trying some of the multitude of heirloom or different varieties, instead of the one or two you find in the supermarket, you're in for a treat when you do!

We have ordered our first batch of meat chickens.  We'll start with 100 on April 7.  They should be ready for the table by the first or second week of June.  When they're done we'll start another 100. Hopefully we'll have plenty for sale from June through the end of the year.

Vicky's got many of our early vegetables already growing inside.  I'm excited to get stuff in the ground!!

Steve

Winter Wonderland/Oily Food

26 inches of snow here at the farm! Twenty six!! So that's two incredible snow falls this Winter so far. Baltimore, which were near, is close or may have surpassed the record snowfall for a winter season. While we've been snowed in, I've started to read Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." I wanted to share her insert in the book entitled "oily food". She writes, "Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We're consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen-about 17 percent of our nation's energy use-for agriculture, a close second to vehicular use. Tractors, combines, harvesters, irrigation, sprayers, tillers, balers, and other equipment all use petroleum. Even bigger gas guzzlers on the farm are not the machines, but the so-called inputs. Synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides use oil and natural gas as their starting materials, and in their manufacturing. More than a quarter of all farming energy goes into synthetic fertilizers. But getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of the total oil used for our food. The lion's share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate. Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles! If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons, but barrels. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast."

Another great book I've read this winter is "The Omnivore's Dilemma"

Seeds and plants are ordered for this season, more on what's going in the ground at Rousedale in the next blog.

Message to all....find a farmer!

Steve