It's April 20th; instead of preparing for our annual party that is not happening AGAIN, I sit here contemplating our progress through the wackiest year ever.   We are essentially shut ins.  So we're making lots of progress on the farm.

The predicted last frost date was Mid April; yet here we go again.  3 nights this week threaten to kill our seedlings.  Last night it didn't quite get cold enough and tonight is going to be ok.  Friday and Saturday however have predictions that belong in December.  29 degrees with a "feels like"

Our 1st ever chickens laid their 1st ever eggs for us as Christmas presents.  Since then I've discovered that our organic, free range chicken eggs do not incapacitate me with stomach pain, the way the store bought eggs have been treating me.   For the last 6 years I could not eat more than a egg a week without suffering severe stomach pain.  Now I'm having 2 egg sandwiches for breakfast most days.  hooray!. 

Fall lasted for a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks ago.  It switched abruptly to winter on Halloween Night.  The leaves haven't fallen yet but the temperatures have.

Farmers on your Mark, get set, grow!   At 2 a.m. this Sunday our clocks spring forward to 3 a.m.  The extra hour of daylight at the end of the day comes just in time to help us catch up with all the things that either didn't get done over winter or that were damaged by the winter.  But that hour of sun has to come from somewhere and since we're not really early risers here losing the extra hour of sun in the morning is no big deal.

After a year of experimenting with black plastic to cover and condition planting areas.  We began looking for a better way.  The plastic did a fine job of killing off the grass and beating back weed pressure; however it did not last a full season before beginning to become brittle and disintegrating in our fields.  The cost of plastic and the time cost of clean up were enough to have us seeking a better way to no till bed prepping.  We had already planned to build swales for our food forest with the hay from our fields instead of digging the swales.  We had already decided to use the leftover hay as mulch in the planting areas in the spring.  Then it hit me.... Why wait til spring,  cover the fields now and the hay should do the job of the plastic.

Moving into our 2nd growing season here we will continue to establish perennial areas, build soil and cut paths.  We will create a few nice campsites this year and hopefully build some more WWOOFer quarters and a harvest processing station. 

One of the basic principles of self sufficiency and resilience is the abilility to feed yourself. As long as you've got money and the store's open that's how most people do it.  If you've got a garden it takes some investment of money to start it and a considerable investment of time to maintain it.  And yet, most people overlook or even scoff at the idea of harvesting food from the wild.  Food and medicine, that you don't have to invest anything more than harvest and prep time to get.  We think that's wasteful so we'd like to show you what you've already got on your land. 

The Never Till River is a project to refurbish the depleted hard ass land that exists on this ridge into fluffy, fertile dirt over time with out tilling or plowing.