Welcome to the The Dirt – our farm newsletter that brings you all the juicy details of life on the farm.

Here, we’ll discuss specialty crops, go into detail about farming tools and practices, highlight our team members, share favorite recipes and really, just bring you into our farmer world – giving you all the dirt on who we are and why and how we do what we do here at Titusville Farm.

Farm Stand Here at Last!

The clear winner of Springtime at the farm has been the opening of our farmstand. We had our soft-opening last weekend for Mother’s Day!

We were visited by many of our neighbors and community members and were met with tons of support of excitement and as anticipated – a lot of curiosity! We are so fully aware of the unpresent presence we’ve had here on Titusville Road over the past 3 years and have been heartbroken with each passing season we weren’t able to welcome folks and share our bounty on site. We’re ecstatic to no longer be directing stopper-byes to our weekly farmer’s markets and will continue to be open every Saturday and Sunday until we fully launch into weekday hours once the spring abundance arrives – stay tuned for the progress on that!

In the meantime, stop by on the weekend and pick up some eggs – ask all the questions you might have! Our awesome farm stand manager (HC) will be there with some answers for you! They have been working extra hard to build this experience for the community and if you have any suggestions, they would love to hear them!

Spring Things: Good…

With Spring comes so many exciting things – the sun is shining again, tulips pop up and remind us all that the world of plants and abundance are well on their way to returning to our lives and tables! But it’s a tricky time of year and so many things must fall into place to get the farm on track for a successful season. We’ve a hired a handful of awesome new crew members that all must be on-boarded, systems and supplies are being revised, refined and reordered (in a timely manner!), we’re entering new markets and establishing new rhythms….this on top of the truly unpredictable nature of weather, pests and diseases! All of this manifests in a sometimes chaotic but always exciting, jazzy little Springtime dance on the farm!

The list of Spring magic on the farm is an easy and endless inventory that truly speaks for itself:

• Flowers bringing everyone (farmer and customer alike) joy!
• French Breakfast Radishes on butter toast
• Crispy Bok Choy!
• Watching the high tunnels fill up with gorgeous heirloom tomato plants…(daydreaming about that first sandwhich…)
• The cutest and most affordable pullet eggs our sassy little teenage hens have to offer
• New flocks getting their first ever taste of fresh pasture
• Springtime farm critters: our resident bald eagle mates, innumerable toads, grumpy snappers looking to nest!
• The arrival and planting of 400 new baby apple trees
• Watching the orchard blossom out
• Seeing the strawberry patch blossom out….anticipating the u-pick opening for the END OF MAY! (I can taste the pies already..)
• New faces and friendships on the farm crews!!
• Seedling sales and the excitement of customers planning their at home gardens
• New picnic tables for our farm stand that the crew has gotten to enjoy during lunch breaks
• Catching back up with our market shoppers as the full-season markets get underway
• The list…goes…on!

… and Bad (maybe not bad though, maybe just challenging and stressful and real!)

When you stop by the farmstand or any of our markets – you might notice the veggie offerings are somewhat dwindling these days. We are in the midst of what we recognize as a “hunger gap” here in the farm world. It’s the time when our winter reserves have been nearly depleted and we haven’t quite gotten a flush of spring field crops yet. Each year we are learning more about how we can bridge these seasons! One thing we learned this year is that while cover cropping is an incredible and important regenerative practice that we will always employ here, the mix of crops in your planting will have an impact on your fields in the spring. We tried out and awesome summer cover crop last season with a hugely diverse array of species in it that grew robustly and produced huge amounts of biomass (mowed plant debris that once tilled in builds the organic matter and fertility of your soil.) The amount of biomass was so robust in fact, that the amount of time it took to break down this spring impeded our ability to plant early crops into our fields! Great for our soils, but we’re feeling the impact in some of our delayed spring crops.

The weather has been another stressful matter! We came into the spring in a drought – which was really great for early field work . It’s necessary for the ground and soil to be dry enough so the tractor can drive in and do work without getting mucked up or stuck. We got our fields planted and started watering – things were feeling great. As we all have experienced, the last few weeks have welcomed a torrential amount of rain and cloudy days – causing plants to slow down, dampen off, and hold us back from field work. Rain and wetness also readily welcomes pests and diseases which we do out best to stay on top of using IPM (integrated pest management) and spraying organically approved applications. However, when it rains…all of those applications are washed away and/or are ineffective. Spraying alternatives include covering plants with row cover (a lightweight blanket of sorts) but the high winds we’ve experienced constantly thwart our efforts by ripping the covers away! So, despite our best efforts, you’re likely to see some pest damage on some of your spring produce. Mostly tiny little holes made by our arch nemesis the flea beetle! The holes are harmless, and let us assure you it’s all still tasting top-notch! Just imagine it’s a swiss cheese hybrid 🙂

Orchards are also most susceptible to disease this time of year – when the flowers are in blooming. Our orchardist has been busy keeping the trees healthy and protected. Our orchardist also happens to be our market’s manager -Max. He’s a busy guy these days, so if you see him around at market give him a little extra appreciation for wearing multiple hats this season, finding time to care for our trees, market crews and always putting our market customers at the top of his list!

Rain also ushers in the season-long parade of weeds all of our enterprises battle (save for chickens who mow down all greenery and would make a welcome addition to any weeding team if they only had the brains …or willpower maybe (?) to discern weeds from crops!) Our veg team mostly manages their weeds by way of tractor cultivation. They have a cool little tractor designed to cultivate precisely between the rows of planted crops and shanks that drag along the outsides to keep weeds from the bed edges and walkways from getting out of hand. Our flower team operates on a no-till scale. This means they are largely using their bodies and hand-scale equipment to manage crops. This week they spent many hours digging up perennial weeds and hoeing bed tops then loading wood chips into wheel barrows and laying them in the pathways to keep weed pressure down for the next two seasons to come. No-till farming avoids disturbing the soil, which preserves the biological life (fertility factory) of the the ground but also aims to leave the weed seed bank undisturbed – preventing future weeds from being brought to the surface and germinating. This style of farming can really tax the body out of the gate – but is motivated by the long-term benefit of building soil health and ecology and one day after a few years of this gritty work… having a farm with little to no weed pressure.

Okay, okay that was a LOT! But we feel it’s so important to clue the consumer into the work and worry behind each process! We have a farily seasoned farm team and somehow, even after a decade of being growers, the stressful and unpredictable nature of this work sneaks up and continues to surprise us. I think we must develop some sort of amnesia each winter… Despite and inspite of it all, we’re here and pumped up for another springtime adventure together and we’re glad to rope you into the magic for all that the season ahead has to offer.

Follow along through our Farmily Digest emails to get the weekly round-up of farm tea and hear all about market offerings and specials. We’ll also plug our subsequent newsletters in there too so you can continue to get all The Dirt on the farm, all season long!

Yours truly,

The Farm Team