New Year, New Season!

Hello Neighbours, Friends, Family and fellow farmers!

Welcome to a new year and new growing season! We can finally see daylight after coming home from work at 5:00pm. We can finally see some patches of ground after an absorbent amount of snow in January and February... and March. So I decided, now, more than ever, would be a great time for reflection on our first year at Uprooted.

Last year, our first year developing the farm was a great year of learning and growing (not just food). We simply began with an idea, and an escape. An escape from the every day hamster wheel we felt we were on. We ran with an idea and things began to take form:

We planted our first garden (May 2017)

We got our first plow! (May 2017)

It was antique and a little rusty, but Ben got to work and it cuts like butter! And did it ever make a difference in turning our decades old farming fields into real workable dirt.

We sold our first beet chips! Thirsty Beets (June 2017)

And it was a hit.. and I have never ate so many beets in my life. We continued to sell to some friends and gym friends over the course of the summer!

We had our first harvest! (September 2017)

We had some gorgeous looking beets and carrots for days!

We planted our first garlic! (October 2017)

We sweat (a lot), we got really dirty, we had some failures, we grew some veg, we drank a lot of beer, we laughed, and we were stoked up on fuel for the future. So over all, 2017 went pretty well for our first year.

So with reflection on all of the progress we made last year in our farming goals, we can begin the planning of Uprooted =2018:

One of our favourite dates in January this year was the planning of the farm and seed ordering. It's like a second Christmas, back when you used to look over the giant Sears catalogue and mark down each page that had your absolute dream toy, those ankle breaking moon boots.. sigh. Those were the days.

Our Sears catalogue Christmases of the past are no more, but instead lie out our favourite Canadian seed catalogues with dreams bigger than our hands can manage (but that will never change!).

Ben and I sat down with a wonderful cascade sour ale to determine our 2018 harvest seeds in January. We are excited to have ordered some different heritage varieties of beets, carrots, potatoes, and brussels sprouts! We also have the addition of ground cherries, cucamelons, giant seed sunflowers and garlic (planted in October) to add to our experiments!

Of course we have our one offs as well, such as a unique hops variety we will be planting at the farm! Some different herbs and other enticing seeds we just couldn't help but buy. It certainly got us excited for the spring to commence and the winter blues to melt away! We hope that this season is a bit of a breakout for the farm, in establishing our land from fields just last year, to fruitful garden beds (sans the million thistles).

We hope that we keep enticing more new friends to support our big ideas and grow even bigger this year! I will be continuing on our blogging journey as we delve into the 2nd year of challenges, turning bigger harvests and stepping into the market world!

So, as it is the first official day of Spring, I wanted to say welcome back to the Uprooted Farmer's blog for another season of trials and successes, sunburns, sore backs, purple fingers and dirt under our nails!

Until next time, my friends!

Kait

#growing #firstseason #firsttimers #plow #beetchips #planning