Hello all,

Sorry it’s been a minute since the last farm report; we’ve been busy getting set up for the season. And though the snow was still deep, we got our first seedlings (lettuce and onions) started in our growing trailer. It’s always wild to have happy little green sprouts inside and several feet of snow outside.
Watering our first lettuce sprouts of the season!
Due to the insulatory properties of all the snow we’ve had this winter, the cover crops that we sowed in the high tunnels unexpectedly survived the winter temperatures. We’ve been doing a lot of snow removal to get into the tunnels and lay down tarps to terminate the thriving cover crops before the first spring plantings of lettuce, peas, and hakurei turnips happen later this month.
Farm staff Carol and Meghan digging out a buried tunnel.
In addition to the behind the scenes work, we had several wonderful community events in February including our annual paper pot making party, which had a lovely turn out. We made thousands of newspaper pots for our tomatoes and squash.
Paper pot making party!

We also had our annual elderberry workshop facilitated by elderberry expert Abbie Sewall and set in a snowed-in high tunnel. If you’re interested in learning to prune but missed this workshop, we’re hosting a second workshop on Saturday now that enough snow has melted and we can more easily access the elderberries. You can sign up for Saturday’s workshop here! We’ll also have hedgerow and willow pruning workshops later in the spring, with dates TBD. If you or someone you know is a willow expert who is willing to lead a willow pruning and/or live willow structure weaving workshop, please respond to this email!
The first elderberry workshop of the season, in knee-deep snow.

We’re so excited to see you all on the farm! For those of you who don’t know yet, we’ve launched a new volunteer management platform, which will make coordinating and managing volunteers more streamlined and allow us so many more options to grow our programs. The good news is that there are no longer pop-up ads when you sign up to volunteer. The not-so-good news is that all volunteers will have to create a user account in the new system, even if you have volunteered with us before. If you haven’t done so yet, please fill out this volunteer application.

The volunteer application will ask you for a password – use this section to set a password that you will then use to sign in to www.volgistics.com/vicnet. Once you’ve signed in to Vicnet, click on the “schedule” tab at the top of the page and view all available shifts on the calendar! Please email volunteer@growingtogive.farm if you have any trouble filling out the application or signing up for a shift.

We have decided to push volunteer sessions a week later due to the weather – there’s a lot more snow this year than last year and we’re very limited in on-farm work until we have access to the soil for tarping and mulching.

Finally, we are turning the garden shed into a farm office/volunteer rest space and are in search of some patio furniture to furnish it. If you have a little patio love seat and/or cozy chair that you’d like to donate, please reach out!

With care,
Lindsay Wasko