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Jade Family Farm gets spring planting season underway

Posted by Local Food Journey on 03/31, 2015 at 08:09 AM

Jade Family Farm gets spring planting season underway

After cleaning out goat pens, manure is piled up to start the composting process.

By Emily Edling, WPSU Local Food Journey intern

While it hasn’t been feeling much like spring, warmer weather is surely on its way, and the staff of the Jade Family Farm is hard at work to prepare for the spring season.

Even though it still feels like winter some days, especially with the snowstorm on the first day of spring, that doesn’t mean that farmers get to take a break. There is much preparation that goes into a farm having a successful growing season.

I spoke with John Eisenstein, co-founder of Jade Family Farm along with his wife Dana, about what steps he and his team take to prepare for spring. He said that his job as field commander is to make sure they have all the supplies they need, such as seed and irrigation, and that all the equipment is working. He also is working to make sure the farm’s labor situation is in order, with the high turnover of farm hands, before the growing season is in full swing.

To get ready for spring, the staff at Jade Family Farm is busy planting seedlings in their greenhouse so that when spring finally does come, they have something to transplant when the weather warms up, because without that there is no season. They are also working to prune fruit trees, clearing out and cleaning up any fields that they didn’t get to last fall, and getting organized so that when this cold weather finally breaks they will be ready.

Even with lingering snow around, chores must be done, such as pruning trees.

Since it is still so cold out, the Jade Family Farm has nothing planted outside, but instead they are utilizing their high tunnels, which are unheated greenhouses. John said he had wanted to plant in February, but it was so cold and there is no heat in the greenhouse that he just planted a couple of weeks ago. He says the rhubarbs are starting to poke out of the ground and the asparagus will be next, once it warms up he will transplant them to the field and then things will pick up quickly.

With the cold weather, it becomes very draining mentally and it is easy to feel like you are stuck in winter. The hardest part of making the transition into springtime is the exhaustion that comes with the last few weeks of winter.

We are right on the verge of spring, hopefully with warmer weather just on the horizon. And with all the preparations they are taking, the Jade Family Farm will be ready to go as soon as spring hits.

Tags: JadeFamilyFarm | spring | EmilyEdling |