We had our first expansion into significant winter sales last year, with promising results; this year we're planning to produce much more for the cold cellar and the pantry shelf. One new crop to that end is the sweet potato. We grew them several years ago, when we were farming a piece of leased land with a particularly tough plow-pan, which is the layer of compacted soil that develops just below the reach of the plow - or the tiller, in this case, as we didn't have any large equipment at that point and our primary cultivation tool was a rototiller. So about six inches down it was hard as cement. The sweets actually grew through that, but our root digger couldn't get into it, and when we harvested them many got sliced right in half. In addition to which, some vole or mole or rat or something had discovered them before we dug them up and taken a few bites out of almost every one.

So that was a disappointment, and we didn't try them again for a while. But we love them, and know that they'd be a good addition to a winter market stand, so this year we vowed to try again.

Sweet potatoes are typically planted from what's called a "slip," which is essentially a little seedling, except it sprouts off an old sweet potato rather than from a seed. We ordered ours from a reputable organic supplier in North Carolina with three-day shipping, but an unhappy coincidence of delays meant that they arrived after five days instead of three, and we weren't able to plant them until the day after we got them. They were sorry looking little sprouts, indeed, but we thought we'd give them a shot.

Well, the short story is that they didn't make it. But, undaunted, we decided to give it another try, this time with guaranteed two-day shipping. The slips arrived in good shape, and our two employees were kind enough to agree to come back to the farm after their dinners, when it was cool, to help us plant them out. With the four of us (plus the help of our toddler, whose job was to pull out the poor little dead stems of the first round), we got all six hundred feet re-planted. As there was no rain forecast in the next day, we covered the plants with shade cloth to prevent their drying out. It was a tense little while - our soil is stellar at holding moisture, but a baby plant can only take so much sun, and to water them by hand would be an effort we hoped to avoid. But the rain did come, and they seem to be thriving.

It's too early to bet on rodents, but we've got better soil, better harvesting equipment, and a lot more experience now; with luck, we'll have sweet potatoes for the end of CSA and well into the winter market.

This week has been pretty rainy, as I'm sure you've noticed. Though it isn't always pleasant to work in, we're glad of the rain: we direct seeded carrots, arugula, and snap, shell, and dry beans, and the consistent moisture is key to getting good germination, which of course is the first step towards getting a good crop.

Last Saturday we had a break of sun long enough to spray the brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower) with a product called Deer Stopper, which is a delightful mixture of rotten egg, mint, and rosemary that deer hate the smell of. (Unfortunately, we've sine determined that the creature nibbling on the brassicas is a woodchuck, not a deer, and he doesn't seem to mind the smell.)

Now that our seeds are all up, we're looking forward to some dry days ahead: dry weather is good for weeding, and the weeds also experienced good germination in the rain. The various weeding attachments for the tractor that Jeremy has been investing in will start paying off quickly now. Weeding is typically the largest single labor cost on organic farms, and our labor time is at a premium. Though there is something satisfying and meditative about weeding by hand, the tractor do in less than ten minutes what it would take our crew of three several hours, and those are hours that we can use in lots of other ways. And of course, the tractor will always miss a few, so there's never a shortage of hand weeding to be done anyway.

It's hard to believe, but the CSA season has begun! Tomorrow will be our first CSA-pickup for 2013.

We're very excited about this year's farming season, and it's off to a great start. This is the first time in our five years of farming that we've been on the same piece of land for two years in a row - up until we bought this property in early 2012, we had been farming on a different piece of leased land each year. In addition, we invested in a fair amount of equipment last year and this spring. The increased capacity from not starting from scratch and having the tools we need has already made a difference, and the farm is humming along, well-planted and well-weeded.

There are a few more infrastructure improvements we intend to make this year, including building an irrigation pond and significantly increasing our cooler capacity, but it's very satisfying to see how far this farm has come in just a year.

As of now, the potatoes have been hilled, the tomatoes in the greenhouse are making little tomatoes, lettuce and peas are ready, and the spring broccoli is looking great. The farmers' market has been going well, and the crazy weather doesn't seem to have thrown anything off too badly.

We're really looking forward to the rest of the season and we hope you are, too!