When this website starteed I thought I could keep a diary and let you know what was going on each week, although i did get pictures taken trying to keep up was impossible, so waht i am doing is trying to take pictures of a season and let you see how the year goes in our world.
In the first part of January we begin seeding for our early tomatoes as well as for our perrenials. At this time our stand is only open on fridays, and we are attending the greenspring market twice a month. People think winter is a down time for farming, but that isn't exactly true. The cattle need to be fed and cared for daily, manure is spread as the weather allows, and all of the machinery we use needs to be repaired and prepared for the season. We mostly work with "antiques." I'm also finishing up on all of the seed and plastic ordering for the year.
Tom and my dad built this machine that helps with the filling of the pots.
By February the cutting plants arrive and we start transplanting the started seedlings as well as the incoming cuttings. This time of year we can be in our t-shirt inside, and have to bundle up when we go out because it is below freezing outside.
As you can see we reuse/recycle about as many of the pots we can. it takes atleast three of us to the the pots filled. We try to do enough to get us through a week.
By early march while the greenhouses are getting busy with the flowers. The houses are really filling up. We have to start thinking about planting the early seedlings in the greenhouse. This is the start for our soil grown green house tomatoes. We use bees to pollinate and we use these little waspsas a preditor to kill the white fly that is the biggest enemy of indoor tomatoes.
This is also the time we start with the first of the chicks for the season. It will be cold and they will start indoors under heat lamps, but as soon as they get a little bigger they will go out onto the grass.
Weather permitting, by the end of March or the first of April, it is time to think about field work.
April is the month we always hope is warm, and always ends up wet and cold. The greenhouses are overflowing with flowers. Prepara
tions for the opening of the stand start. During this month Tom tries to get potatoes planted, and start planting field corn. Chicks are about ready to go out.
May is the month where everything happens at once. The greenhouses are full, flower sales start, the markets start. the green house tomatoes need to be pruned regularly, All of the produce needs to go into the field, and by memorial weekend the first of the hay needs to be baled, unless lit is like last year, when it never stopped raining. 
As you can tell I have fallen a little behind in my diary. Things were going along so well, then boom, it stopped raining, flowers started selling, it was time to start putting produce in the ground. Then by the beginning of June it was time to start cutting hay. This is the time of year when you loose track of what day and time it is. The days get filled quickly. Everything needs to be done at once, especially this year. With the wet spring it was to muddy to get in the fields early, so when it dried up everything needed to be planted two weeks earlier. Now the plants are bearing fruit. The first of the tomatoes had blossom rot due to the weather, but are beginning to pick well now.
We raised another batch of chickens. They did quite well until this week. A storm came through and scared them. Chickens are not known to be the brightest, so when they got scared they piled up on top of each other and suffocated themselves. We lost 85 birds that day. It doesn’t make sense. They had plenty of room and shelter from the wind if they wanted it. We are not quite sure how to prevent it other than just checking on them.
If all goes well i am going to use this diary as a photo gallery of sorts to catch you all up on what we have been doing. A picture is worth a 1000 words they say. Hope you are enjoying your summer.
Greetings, 
