Spring Planting, Opening Harvest, Shares Available

this is also on the Blog at: http://goodwillathomefieldsfarm.blogspot.com/

Hello from the farm, 

Well, the beautiful heads of lettuce were transplanted by the thousands yesterday as were the scallions, which were on the heels of 10,000 onion plants.  It's a lively time at the farm, and we're all pleased to see these crops going into the ground and getting a great start.  The drying wind has given way to some showers and we are grateful for the moisture.  

 

Opening Weekend is the First full week of June:  June 7, 8 and 9

Hours are:  Thurs: 3-7  Friday 11-7 and Sat 9-1

Shares available: yes, we have shares available for this season.  Go to www.yourgoodwill.org/farm to sign up online.  Spread the word.   

If you would like to pick up a fruit share from North Star Orchard, go to www.northstarorchard.com to sign up and for more info. 

Other happenings around the farm: it's never dull here, we had the first run of the organic fertilizer hopper, which ran like a charm, have been working on a potato digger rig for the July potato crop, a harvest rack for holding bins of produce, mending broken and misaligned tools and equipment to name a few, in addition to the weeding and mulching which are mainstays of our farming :-) 

Your farmers

Hello Friends of the Farm!

We have come to look at these wonderful sunny days as another "bad weather" day. The sun, warm temps and windy conditions have been drying out our fields and we are grateful to finally see an April shower. The upside is that the dry weather has made great conditions for transplanting and preparing our soil for seeds. Carrots, cilantro, beets, lettuce and more should be sprouting up any day now.

Renaissance Farmer Scott has been fixing up leaky hydrants and has completed his first solo welding project. Way to go Scott! These days he can be spotted out in the fields driving Big Orange and pulling the transplanter behind him.

There has been a makeover in our blackberry and raspberry patch thanks to Del, Pat, Brian, Matt, John, Eric and Law Reh, who have been stripping back pesky weeds and dressing the beds up with fresh wood chips.

Ready, Set, Fertilize!

Bob McClure has been putting in lots of extra hours building a custom designed fertilizer dispenser that works with our mulch layer. Yesterday we had our first test run and it passed with flying colors. This allows us to add organic fertilizer to our fields at the same time as we lay down drip irrigation and plastic mulch. Thank you Bob for sharing your skill, your time and your ingenuity!!! We will soon be putting this to good use as we prepare to plant thousands of onion plants.

Bob displays the new Fertilizer Box



Getting a Farm Education

Shareholder and Millersville Professor Kendra Saunders brought the members of her "Food for Thought" class out for a tour of the farm this week. They are studying the impact of the American diet and got their hands dirty planting broccoli and cabbage plants into the field. We appreciated their fresh perspective on farm work and their fun energy. Thank you Kendra and team.

Thanks to Brandon and Abbby of Susquehanna Farm School for kicking off the season with a great workshop on Tuesday night. From worm composting to perennial greens to mushrooms, these farmers have great techniques that can work in your home garden or on a larger scale. Thank you for sharing your time and knowledge with us.

Could Goodwill help your small business?

If you are interested in learning more about how Goodwill works with local businesses to provide services like shredding, collating, labeling and hand packaging, please contact Phil Metzler at pmetzler@yourgoodwill.org or 717-232-1831.

Opening Harvest Coming Soon

Looking forward to seeing everyone back at the farm for our first harvest on June 7, 8 and 9! It will be here before we know it.


Your Farmers,
Scott, Kim, Law Reh and Elizabeth      

Hello Friends of the Farm!

 Another week goes quickly by at the farm, but your farmers are stepping quickly, planting over 6,000 feet of potatoes, 4,000 pepper plants, chipping brush, mulching the berries, putting up stakes and trellis for snow peas and much more.Never a dull moment, as we also had some plumbing repairs, worked on a possible potato digger conversion,  making an organic fertilizer precision dropper, a harvest rack for the tractor, concrete work, sawmill and wood splitting operation, field tillage, major landscaping work, and chased an escaped herd of zebras runing though the farm (ok, one of those is inaccurate and pertains to the day of April. ) 

Shares available for the 2012 season  If you know anyone who is interested in our food from the fields, here is a link where they can sign up for a share:http://goodwillathomefieldsfarm.csasignup.com/members

Fruit Shares from North Star Orchard:

If you haven't heard, we will be a pick up site for a fruit share from North Star Orchard. Ike and Lisa are long-time fruit growers and know their stuff, and often appear in regional and national publications. If you'd like to receive their tree fruit starting in mid-summer, go to http://www.northstarorchard.com/csa.php to sign up or learn more about their outstanding peaches, apples, Asian pears, plums and other tree fruit.  

Looking forward to our first harvest, only a few short months away. Thank you for supporting our farm!Your Farmers

Notes from the Farm: Spring planting

You can also view this newsletter at our blog
 http://goodwillathomefieldsfarm.blogspot.com/
 

Hello Friends of the Farm!
 
Happy Spring!  We are taking advantage of this glorious spring weather and have been able to get a head start on the season, as everyone else in Lancaster county has been, too.    We are so excited to be growing vegetables for you and your family! 

Scott planted the peas on Tuedsay and today's team project for the trainees is putting in the potatoes.  What a change from the cold, wet spring we had last year.  We are loving the warm weather and being able to get into the fields so early.  Even though it feels like May, we are keeping in mind that we are still in March and there could be another freeze in our future.  
Farmer Scott uses Big Orange to prepare the fields for spring planting with the chisel plow

 

While most of the farm team was off site for the winter, Scott was busy planning for the new season.  He worked with our Development Team, Butch Bixler and Bob McClure, engineering ways to make our work  more effective and efficient.  We have a new hydrant serving the fields, new spouting near the distribution area to redirect rain fall, a fertilization system to work with our mulch layer and a harvest platform in the works.  Thank you Scott, Bob and Butch.  Everything is working great!!!    

The greenhouse is coming back to life with seedlings and in the field the garlic is bursting out of the ground with vigor.   We are pleased to have 10 Farmer Trainees returning for another season, and look forward to having some new folks out at the farm this year, too.  Mike, Cameron and Del have been working hard getting wood chips ready and Brad and Scott C are busy planting potatoes.  


Workshop at the Farm   Thanks to Kim Stoltzfus for coordinating this!

 Introduction to Beyond Organic: Methods of Susquehanna Farm School. Brandon and Abby, of Susquehanna Farm School, will share their experience homesteading along the banks of the Little Conestoga while specifically focusing in on their small scale and sustainable agricultural practices.    Presented by Brandon and Abby of Susquehanna Farm School Tuesday, April 17th, 6 - 8pm  Goodwill at Homefields Farm, Millersville  Class is free, donations accepted    www.SusquehannaFarmSchool.org
 
Shares available for the 2012 season  If you know anyone who might me interested, here is a link where they can sign up for a share:http://goodwillathomefieldsfarm.csasignup.com/members

Looking forward to our first harvest, only a few short months away. Thank you for supporting our farm!

Your Farmers, 
Scott, Kim, Law Reh and Elizabeth  

Hello from the farm, 

We're excited to have a fruit share available to pick up at the farm from North Star Orchard this season, and want to give you more information and links for learning more and signing up. 

 

North Star Orchard has been growing heirloom and unique varieties of tree fruits for twenty years, and has offered a very popular CSA Fruit Share for 9 years. The Fruit Share consists of an 8.5 pound bag of unique and high-quality varieties of fruit each week for 12 or 15 weeks, whichever you choose when you become a member. Fruit selections include peaches, nectarines, plums, pears, Asian pears, and apples, starting the first week of August.

You can learn about the Fruit Share and sign up for membership directly on the North Star Orchard website: http://www.northstarorchard.com/csa_fruit.php
Members of the Fruit Share will receive their bag of fruit each week (starting in August) when you come to the Goodwill at Homefields farm to get your vegetables, and will receive an email from North Star Orchard each week detailing the varieties which are in the share.  A slide show of their fruit is at:http://www.flickr.com/photos/northstarorchard/sets/72157628765638177/

A bit about North Star Orchard: 

North Star Orchard, owned by Ike and Lisa Kerschner, is a small diversified farm in Chester County specializing in unique varieties of high-quality fruit. Ike and Lisa sell the farm's produce directly to consumers at area producer-only farmers' markets and through their CSA; they do not sell through wholesale channels. Their farm is best known for its abundance of apple varieties (now numbering in the hundreds!), unique Asian pears, and the high standard of quality in all of its fruits and vegetables.
Ike and Lisa have always been interested in both growing unusual varieties of fruit and vegetables and in using the newest ideas in production, training and trellising. They are highly concerned about the environment, and work hard to farm in a manner as sustainable and safe as possible.

Fruit Share members have said:

"On behalf of our family, I just wanted to say thank you. My 5-year-old has never eaten as many plums as he has this year. The quality of the fruit from your farm is outstanding." -2010 Member Stephanie

"Your fruits are wicked good!" -2005 Member Shelly R.

"Our family would like to thank NSO for the phenomenal Fruit Share this summer. It gets better every year. My son asked me what was 'wrong' with the apples we got from the store....priceless!" - 2010 Member Anna C.

"I wanted to thank you for such a wonderful season of delicious fruit! Our whole family is in the habit of eating fresh fruit now, it's so wonderful! My four young kids inhaled your pears, peaches, apples and plums like you wouldn't believe (well, maybe you would believe). So many thanks to YOU and your wonderful crew who made all of this possible. We'll definitely be back next year!!" -2006 Member Carrie E.

Looking forward to a great harvest season.  Fresh salads, berries and veggies will be here before we know it.

Scott 

February Farm update: what's happening, King Corn, and what you Love about the farm

Hello from the farm,

The planting season is quickly approaching and we've got a bunch of new ideas and inspiration for it in part thanks to the farm conference this week at Hershey.  The sessions on organic growing used to be few and sparsely attended, but now all are pretty much packed.  Look for us to be experimenting with fabric for weed suppression in the pick your own field and possibly unrolling round bales for weed suppressing mulch between the vegetable beds.

Free Farming Movie:  King Corn

Can a farming movie be fascinating?  Yes.  As of last check, when my wife and I watched it two weeks ago,  King Corn is available to watch for free at hulu.com.  It follows the adventures of two city boys who head to Iowa to grow an acre of corn and find out what modern corn farming is like.  Funny, sobering and educational all in one, it makes you appreciate local and sustainable all the more.

What you Love about the farm:

(as we prepare for the new season, these are the things that shareholder wrote about last season--it's a great encouragement to us)

• Exposed me to veggies I don't normally eat. Discovered how much better fresh veggies are than frozen.
   
• Having my children experience a farm, knowing that their food does not come from Giant, and that someone is working hard to produce this food.
   
• Being connected with the land and the people who grow our food feels natural and reassuring, more like how I grew up. Providing meaningful work for people, growing more food and PRESERVING Lancaster County farmland makes me a shareholder for life. Think about selling lifeshares...
   
• Great people, fantastic food that is free of chemicals & pesticides, pleasant surroundings
   
• Friendly staff
   
• Truly enjoyed the experience of coming out to Millersville once a week, especially enjoyed picking the flowers and other pick your own.
   
• bringing the kids out to see, harvest, eat, and enjoy  picking stuff ourselves
   
• My kids experience visiting a farm each week
   
• Having a sense of community with the farm staff and families participating in the CSA. The hands-on family friendly atmosphere is admirable and refreshing!
   
• Well, you all just rock.
   
• The fact that I don't have to go shopping as often and don't have to decide what to buy. :-)
   
• Forces variety in our diet and teaches us to be satisfied and creative with what we get. I grew up with a garden, and now that I live in the city, it gives me the benefit of having a garden without having to have the land for it. I also like that it keeps me in touch with the seasons, the weather, and what's going on. In a strange way I like it when we get too much eggplant or too few potatoes, because then I get to ask why, and find out what's going on at the farm and in the county.
   
• Recipes and serving suggestions for unfamiliar things like Napa cabbage, bok choy, and garlic scapes (I really LOVED the pesto).
   
• Knowing my food is grown locally and sustainably, and by the world's most comprehensively amazing Farmer!
   
• We love the "iron chef" challenge to find tasty ways to clean out the crisper bins!
   
• The physical beauty of the farm, especially berry-picking on cool summer mornings.
• Showing my daughter how important it is to eat well and know where our food comes from. The FLOWERS! Oh, how I LOVED picking my own flowers!
   
• great variety!
   
• Friendly farmers and workers ready to answer questions.
   
• I like going out into the PYO fields. 

Soon the little sprouts will be popping up by the thousands, as we anticipate sun-warmed strawberries and tomatoes, green beans and edamame and farm fresh salads once again.

See you soon,

Your farmers 

Survey says, new for 2012, and preparations underway

Hello from the rained on frozen fields,


January, a time for reflection on the past season and preparation for the season ahead. Thank you for your feedback, suggestions and great ideas for the farm for next season. Comments from the survey show that:

--you really enjoy the farm experience, and that people with children or grandchildren like the learning and experience that children have at the farm.

--you appreciate the fresh flavors and nutrition of well-grown chemical-free food.

--you're glad that the Pick Your Own field is included in the share price: you like the opportunity to pick your own flowers, herbs, hot peppers, and berries, both for the experience and for choosing the size and ripeness that you prefer.

--you received a lot of food for the money that was tasty and relished varieties that are not available in a store.

--you like the friendly atmosphere of the farm, the staff, and the mission of helping and employing people with disabilities, blended with the growing of sustainable food and preserving farmland.

--things you wished had happened differently: (us too!) that the potatoes would have done better (they suffered from the cold wet spring) and that the berries would have had more fruit (they didn't get the sunshine they needed to prosper). The beets were missed by some people (they didn't germinate well at all), and the squash and pumpkins were not real happy about 30 inches of rain in September, causing high losses to rotting and mold. The Asian pears were rendered inedible by stinkbugs. Okra lovers were disappointed with the variety of okra that we planted - it got woody very quickly, so we'll plant a different variety this year. Some of you felt overwhelmed by crops that did almost too well - sweet peppers, bok choi and Napa come to mind. Feel free not to take them if it's too much - we send the excess to the food bank.


So what's happening for 2012?

We will be a pick up site for a Fruit Share from North Star Orchard. Ike and Lisa Kerschner are long time fruit growers, enthusiasts and breeders of outstanding and well grown fruit. They have nine seasons of tree fruit CSA under their belts and we are excited to offer this opportunity to you--heirloom and modern apples, pears, plums, and more. For more information, pictures and videos on their farm and fruit share check out: http://www.northstarorchard.com/csa_fruit.php. Their fruit harvest begins in mid-August. Sign up and payment is through their site, we are simply a pick up site. More info in February.

We will continue to include the fruit (strawberries, blueberries, grapes, melons, berries, and our Asian pears) that we grow in our half and full farm shares.

We will patch that pothole in the driveway!--heckle us a little if we need a reminder :-) We get focused on the crops. We'll also try to make the driveway entrance more visible.

We'll be giving sweet potatoes another try this year using a clear mulch as an experiment. Past methods did not result in many sweet potatoes.

You've asked for seedless watermelons, so we'll be doing some trial plantings of them in addition to our regular favorite melons that do have seeds.

Sign up for the 2012 Season is Available now at http://goodwillathomefieldsfarm.csasignup.com/members

Word of mouth is the way most people find out about our farm and CSA. Please let others know about us and of course, sign yourself up if you haven't yet. You'll notice prices of everything seem to be increasing, but our shares will be the same price again this season. It's outstanding food for you at a great price while caring for your health and the community. If the lump sum cost of the share is tricky, feel free to break it down into months, there are five months before the harvests begin.

Your farmers