Yes, it was April Fools’ day.

This happens to be one of my favorite “holidays”, but this year the prank was on me. Mother Nature left us a lovely gift in the form of a fresh coating of new snow.  That moved us all into the Rimol greenhouse to work on seed starting and transplanting.

The real beauty of this day was the fact that we had 14 volunteers arrive to help despite the uncomfortable temperature. Looking at the photos from today, you can tell the team did not seem to mind working in the 30 degree temp. You may also notice that almost everyone had on hats, coats, scarfs… 🙂

The seedling trailer is filling up. Genevieve was arranging trays for optimal light and adjusting lights as plants get taller.

Or was she?

It is the warmest spot on the farm right now!

On Friday volunteers were working in bright sunshine, some in sleeveless shirts. The weather is always shifting/changing. The weather people give us the bus stop forecast, a ski report, coastal forecast, inland forecast, weather in the county, weather in the mountains, Portland weather and even New Hampshire weather is in our daily update. I’m thinking maybe we could have a farm forecast? But on second thought, we are located in Brunswick, but rely on forecasts for west Durham. Oh well, just dress in layers and bring an extra pair of socks!

We are moving backwards in the farm report because I was out of town for most of the week, and Carrie ran the show. So we are both writing this week’s report, and now it’s Carrie’s turn to share what her crews accomplished:

On Monday and Wednesday of this past week, we had an amazing crew of seven volunteers visiting from Wellesley College as part of an alternative Spring break trip that involved learning about food insecurity and traveling to Maine to do service at Growing to Give, MCHPP, and Locker Project. It was such a joy to work with these motivated young folks, who worked two 6-hour days on the farm getting peas in the ground in tunnel upper 6 and plot 9 (a huge project that involved weeding and bed prep, path mulching, de-tangling and erecting the trellis, and then gently planting the presprouted peas), on top of getting hundreds of seeds started and our elderberry orchard pruned. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with them, and we hope to have you all back in the future. Thank you Yanqing, Courtney, Audrey, Josselyn, Laila, Maya, and Sofia for all your enthusiastic help! And thank you as well to the Thursday volunteers who got over 600 lettuce seedlings blocked and braved strong wind to get the spinach watered!    – Carrie

Thanks to everyone who came to help us get going. It was great to have you back, and it was also great to meet a couple of new volunteers. It feels like it’s going to be an exciting season.

Always grateful,

Theda