Hi friends!
Now that Christmas and New Year are coming to a close, we are gearing up for the 2020 growing season. I am personally ready for warm sunny weather and greenery again. Chris on the other had, loves the cool weather where he’s not sweating. I can’t seem to agree yet. ;)
We have started taking inventory of our seed supply and making lists of new things we want to grow, stuff we don’t plan to grow at all, and new fields of flowers and sweet corn still in the planning process. Our goal is to have a few acres of sweet corn and a u-pick flower field!
As we head into the new year, we can’t help but look far into the future when it comes to planning. We will eventually be adding another field of red raspberries and 5 more rows of black raspberries. They were a hit this year! Our CSA program will continue this year as well as selling to some local cafes, and going to the farmers market. We will be at Sugarcreek again but will also be looking for a larger Saturday market possibly in Grove City. All of this is still so up in the air as we begin to plan out the year. I always suggest signing up for our newsletter so you can stay up to date and not miss a thing.
Our big green house is still under construction but we plan to have that completed before summer so we can use it for tomatoes.
Xenia township also agreed to bring and dump leaves collected from the city for us to compost. This will provide a rich compost to enhance our soil making growing even better. We are thankful to Xena Twp for doing this. We will now just turn over the leaves every so often, and in about 6 months it will be beautiful dirt.
We are hoping and praying we do not have another spring like last year. The constant rain last spring put such a hold on things, and pushed us back about 4 weeks with growing. A lot of farmers in the area were suffering from this. Having both hoop houses will help.
Next priority will be pruning. All of those blueberries and blackberries have to be pruned by hand, one by one. Most of our winter and early spring is spent doing this. It’s tedious but must be done. Only good thing to look forward to is after pruning is complete, berries come next!!!
We cannot wait to see what 2020 brings us as we continue to grow and expand the farm, reach more of our community and build relationships with people.
As always thanks for your continued support year after year.
Chris & Sarah
Berryhill
