Last week we had the pleasure of hosting Rachel Myers, an organic inspector. She came to survey our land, review our practices, and look through all of our records. She was amazing! Kind, informative, and very thorough. We are pursuing Organic Certification through the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association.

Oh weather.. the constant farmer obsession. Perhaps ill advised, I'm trying all of the tricks to push and cajole the weather into cooperating. It's not really working, but I haven't given up yet!

It's officially market season! We had our first two farm stands and farm share pick-ups this week. It was great! So fun to meet all of the people I have been emailing with and seeing on social media these past few weeks. I love putting faces to names and finally getting to make the person-to-food connection that makes this work so worthwhile.

On the farm this past week we celebrated my birthday, my brother's birthday and the birth date of my brand new nephew (John "Jack" Rutherfoord Thornton is a happy, healthy beautiful addition to the family!). It was also a birthday of sorts for our broccoli, cauliflower, kale, swiss chard, and scallions. All of whom were introduced to the great outdoors last week! 

I am a much happier person this week. Yesterday was a perfect, bright, beautiful spring day. I planted our second succession of lettuce and spinach in the hoop house, we were able to get started on the latest building project, and I delivered our first bouquet of the season.

Shovel...shovel...shovel and plan...plan...plan and then shovel...shovel...shovel repeat.

I have a new baby niece! She's absolutely perfect. My other niece (who is also perfect : ) rode her bike all by herself to the park with me. We finally fixed (no really.. it's actually fixed this time!) our greenhouse heater. AND we got our first set of farm share costumers!!!

Who knew growing vegetables for our community would come with so many small (and sometimes big!), everyday start-up challenges??

It's construction time around Thornfield Farm. In preparation for our 2015 growing season we built two new greenhouses. It was a major undertaking, but we got it done. Huge thanks to my Six River Farm mentor, Andy Wingard, for teaching me everything I know about tunnels, and to my dad for putting in the hours with me to get them built.