We are joining the Downtown Waterville Farmers’ Market this year! 🌱🎉 First outdoor market is this Thursday from 2-6 PM at a NEW location: Head of Falls off Front Street. We are really appreciative of the opportunity to join this great downtown market. Hope to see you there! #downtownwaterville #waterville #watervillemaine

#mudroom

Storage carrot update: they still look good and taste great! We’ll be at the last winter @bangorfarmersmarket inside @seadogbrewingbangor this Sunday from 11-1.

It’s not every day that I’m flipping through a book about something else (Renewing America’s Food Traditions, in this case) and discover a mention of...here! (I know eel harvesting is still a thing in this region, but does anyone still do it on the Kenduskeag?) #kenduskeag #penobscot #foodways

Pruned earlier this week. Hopefully the 🐿 don’t get all of them this year!

So many gray boxes!⚡️⚡️We hired a great local electrician to do some upgrades that have been on our wish list for a long time. We’ve been running basically the whole farm off a tired old 30 amp fuse box in our garage, with frequent overloads. Now we have 200 amp service to the house, a transfer switch and generator so we can access water and backup heat/refrigeration in a power outage, 100 amp service to the garage and all the stuff that runs off it, and a circuit running underground to our high tunnels so we can run blowers and fans and thermostats and who knows what else to make our plants happier and healthier!! 🌱

Step 2 for our seedlings on their “no heated greenhouse” journey: T8 shop lights (cheapest ones at Home Depot) on 4’x18” wire shelves with timers. Each shelf unit can hold 16 1020 trays. These aren’t special grow lights, so plants aren’t getting the full light spectrum, but they seem to grow fine for 4+ weeks. Most of our house is cooler than 70, but the lights throw a lot of heat right around the plants. I water each tray using the spray nozzle at the kitchen sink a few steps away, bottom watering whenever possible. To prevent plants from getting leggy, I like to hang the lights suuuuper close to the trays at first and then adjust the chains up as the plants grow. I flattened the edges of the shop lights a bit to distribute light more evenly when they are hanging low. I start onions this way in early March and then kick them out when nightshades germinate in early April. Brassicas and lettuces stretch more than I would like under the lights, so I only put them here when absolutely necessary (although the shelves did make a handy mid-season ICU for bok choy trays last year when flea beetles attacked them in the hoop house). When I do move trays outside from here, I try to do it during a cloudy stretch or transition them in partial shade, since they can get sunburned while they adapt.