We’re off!

This entry marks the launch of our 2023 CSA basket deliveries!We’ve been busy over the last month, and what a month it has been! Four real frosts, some pretty chilly weather AND our first heat wave of the season…We did what we had to do, but it demanded an extraordinary expenditure of energy installing protective…

Going Full Tilt

One month since our last newsletter and the pace is really picking up. Seedling production is going full tilt, so much so that our seedling greenhouse extension is bursting at the seams. One of our big cold greenhouses is already full (with spinach, lettuce, beets and coriander…), the other two will be filled this week.…

Greenhouse Rituals

The opening of our seedling greenhouse is something of a ritual,a familiar routine that one cannot circumvent, a to-do list that one repeats year after year, albeit always with some apprehension: will the furnace fire up as it should – or not? Will there water flow – or not? Fortunately, the furnace started; but sure…

Another Year, Another Season

Although another winter chill is in the offing this weekend, it is high time for us to shift gears, to imagine for a moment that Spring is upon us, and to launch the 14th growing season at Arlington Gardens with great fanfare. We have already received most of our seeds (a source of endless delight),…

Race to the finish line

How does the season end at Arlington Gardens?Invariably in a race to the finish line…As I write these lines, though, the sun is shining, the breeze is refreshing and the light is exquisite. Although it rained hard last night, marching orders are to harvest any and every thing edible – the last root vegetables, leafy…

End-of-Season Vibe

There is a palpable end-of-season vibe at the farmwhich is manifest in our collective nostalgia for a summer that has truly ended, leaving way to an autumn that is now firmly ensconced. We smell it in the air we breathe in as we traipse through our empty fields and walk along the few remaining scattered…

When the end is nigh

It’s (kind of) like the (Stanley) Cup, to this farmer at least:the season’s almost over – only two to three weeks left to harvest our last vegetables, clean the warehouse and bid 2022 farewell. At this point, what has not grown will not grow, beds with no ground cover will remain uncovered and we will…

Potluck!

We could not have asked for a more magnificent day for our 2022 Potluck.A good numer of you came for a farm visit cum harvest celebration, sharing a medley of salads, side dishes, main courses and desserts, all tantalizing and delicious. That said, the jury is still out on whether mid-October is the best time to host…

Frozen

They were calling for a hard frost,and the forecast did not disappoint.While Thursday’s frost was light, just barely below zero, the frost that hit in the night between Sunday and Monday was bona fide hoarfrost, the feathery frost that forms on clear, cold nights, leaving plants covered with weird and wonderful crystalline spikes. Our nightshades were hit…

Frost Alert

To be taken with a grain of salt, always, but the latest forecast is calling fora first frost in our area this week– a mere -1ºC, not yet cold enough to slay the weeds in our fields, but nonetheless deadly enough to fell our current crop of nightshades (solanaceas). Decades of local statistics show an…