Bed Shaping & Planting Wildflowers

Village Farm Team,

The soil on the North Farm finally dried out enough to allow us to shape more beds this week. We were able to put in 9 beds adjacent to the flat beds with the plan to add more in order to fill in the remaining space left next to our black plastic beds. First, the beds are shaped with our BCS tractor. Next, we add approximately 3 yards of compost to the top of each bed. Then, we add about 60 pounds of Micro Life organic fertilizer per bed, sprinkling it evenly over the top of the compost. Last, we change implements on the BCS and go over each bed once again in order to mix the compost and Micro Life into the soil. To keep the beds workable until we can transplant, we covered them with silage tarps made from recycled billboards.

We had gorgeous weather and an amazing turnout for Farm Fun Day this past weekend! Attendees were able to help us plant wildflowers in some of our flat bed space as well as in 4-inch pots in the greenhouse. The flowers are being seeded in preparation for a Mother’s Day event in May that will involve turning the beautiful, farm-grown flowers into bouquets. In the meantime, we’ll be watching them grow and dreaming about all of the potential beauty that one seed can hold.

Though learning on a farm is often through trial and error, we’ve been taking a different approach the past week by collectively reading Ben Hartman’s book The Lean Farm. The book focuses on the concept of minimizing waste in order to maximize efficiency with regards to farming. We’re only a few chapters in but we’ve already been able to organize our tools in a way that makes them easier to find and put back so we don’t lose valuable time when the need for one arises. We can’t wait to implement more practices like this on the farm as we read through the remainder of the book in the coming weeks.