Back!

So, if you were wondering why there hasn’t been a post in a while, it’s because I have been off farm for the last 5 days. I went down to DC to do some marketing, you see. I spent two days making sausage, pate and slow smoked pork shoulder, as well as packing up really nice pork chops and canning lard. We wanted to send down a very nice sample package so that any potential buyers could try as many parts of the pig as possible so they could get a really good idea of what our pigs are all about. 

I had appointments at seven different places across DC. Some were small, local spots and others were huge restaurants that are part of large restaurant groups. The majority of them seemed very excited about the product and the story behind it, so hopefully we will get some business out of it. If nothing else, we now have an outlet for all of our eggs, so that’s pretty fantastic.

I spent the rest of my time away in Riner Virginia at my friends square dance workshop weekend, which was more fun than should be allowed. It will energize me for months to come.

When I got back to the farm sunday afternoon, I could immediately tell that things had changed quite a bit. The potatoes have sent up their greens, and once they are all a bit larger, we will start mounding the dirt up and over the greens. Potatoes grow upwards, so we want to mound the soil over the emerging plants to give them ample room to grow those tasty tubers. 

The peas, chard, spinach and beets have all germinated and are looking great in their neat little rows. Dan and Ed also spent a day planting sweet potatoes. These grow in the opposite direction of regular potatoes, and are therefore planted in raised beds so that they have extra room to grow down. If all goes well, this planting could potentially yield a thousand pounds of sweet potatoes. Sweet potato pie anyone?

The onions and garlic are also looking great, and with the rain we are currently getting and the warm sunny days that are forecasted for later this week, hopefully we’ll have our first garlic scapes very soon. Once we do, I’ll let you know all about these tasty treats...

The piglets look great! They all grew a lot, especially out little runt, Tiny. His color has changed and he looks like he’ll catch up with his bigger siblings pretty quickly. They all came running over when I went to see them and I would like to think that they missed me, but in reality they probably just thought that I had food for them, and once they realized I didn’t, they proceeded to eat my shoelaces, as they are want to do....