Plants are ready at Windy Ridge Farm!  This year we are offering a full assortment of Vegetable starts, perennial and annual herbs as well as flowers.  Visit us at the Berkshire Farmer’s Market in two short weeks on Saturdays and Wednesdays 8am-2pm.  You can also find our plants at The Old Creamery Coop in Cummington and Corner’s Grocery in Worthington.  Plants can be purchased at the farm by calling us in advance,  we offer lower prices for those that come directly to the farm for their spring plants.  Here is this year’s selection, I am sure I haven’t gotten everything here…

Annual Veggy Starts
Beets
Broccoli
Brussel Sprouts
Red Cabbage
Gr Cabbage
Cauliflower
Celery
Chard(bright lights)
Collard
Lacinato Kale
Curly Kale
Purple Kale
Red Russian Kale
Siberian Kale
Leeks
Romaine Lettuce
green leaf Lettuce
Red Leaf Lettuce
Red Onions
Yellow Onions
White Onions
Eggplant
Hot peppers(Cayenne, Anaheim, Hot Cherry, Hot wax, Jalepeno, Portugal)
Sweet peppers (Lady bell, Cubanelle, Red bell, yellow bell)

Tomatoes ( The full gamut, brandywine, sungold, grape, cherokee purple, plum, Green Zebra, Romas etc.)   tomatoes come in 3″ peat pots

Annual herbs in 4″ pots
Basil (lemon, purple, thai, genovese)
Dill
Cilantro
Curly Parsley
Flat Leaf Parsley
Rosemary
Eucalyptus

Perennial herbs in 4″ pots
English Mint
Chocolate Mint
Spearmint
Peppermint
Thyme
Chives
Garlic Chives
Oregano
Sage
Purple Sage
Tri Color Sage
Lemongrass
Lemon Verbena
Munstead Lavender
Hidcote Lavendar
Catnip
Marjoram
Tarragon

Misc.

Seascape Strawberries in 4″ Pots (everbearing, dayneutral)
Geraniums in 4.5″ pots
New Guinea Impatiens
Wave Petunia 10″ Hanging Baskets
Seascape Strawberry 10″ Hanging Baskets

These plants were seeded in February.  Our first harvest was this evening for dinner.  Fresh greens are such a welcome sight after so many winter potatoes and garlic!

We have broken ground with the plow on two new fields this week.  By the end of the month the Brassicas will start to be sent from their trays in the greenhouse out into the soil.  The propagation house is staying fairly caught up and so far we are still managing to keep the space above freezing on all of these 20 degree nights.  My estimation is that there are about 20,000 seedlings being taken care right now so space is at a bit of a premium.

What is the best way to mark the start of our propagation house season?   With a foot of snow!  Today we filled our wood heated nursery house with 55 gallon drums of water to add to the thermal mass of the space.  We section off a third of our greenhouse with an extra layer of plastic.  This is in addition to the double layer already on the outer structure.  The outside of the house has hay bales to help keep that vicious wind away from our seedlings.   What a cozy place to be on a snowy New England morning.  Today we seeded almost 2000 beet seeds.  Here’s to a great 2012 plant season and hopefully in just 2 short months we will all be enjoying Brazed Beet Greens and Beet Juice Elixirs!

Windy Ridge Farm was founded in 2004.  Our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) project is now entering into it’s sixth year.  We began in Worthington, MA on family land.  Our first several years saw rapid expansion to 15 acres of leased fields.  We attended Farmer’s Markets 5 days a week in Pittsfield, Greenfield and Shelburne Falls.  We also worked with many wholesale customers in the Pioneer Valley and the Berkshires.
With our expanding enterprise came the need for more labor.  In 2008 and 2009 we operated a 5 person internship program during the summer months which gave young adults the opportunity to live on a working farm and learn valuable sustainable crop production skills.
In 2010 we made the decision to scale back our operation in order to start a family of our own.  We relocated our farm base to Hawley and maintained field leases in Worthington.  We also continued to act as stewards of the land on the original farm property.  In 2011 we installed an orchard on the family farmland in Worthington, putting the tillage to rest on the property.  We continue to work on transforming these fields from our childhood into a working fruit tree orchard.
Our scale back also allowed us to realize what it is that we truly enjoy about vegetable farming.  We care deeply about our children’s lifestyle and what we offer them as an example of positive methods of living in today’s globalized culture.  We do not expect to change the world, but have found that the most effective way we can improve the outcome for future generations is to teach others the skills that we possess to grow our own food.  Regardless of economic, political and social climates, people need to eat.  Being able to provide this basic necessity for one’s self is, we feel, one of the most important skills a young person can learn.

After moving to Hawley we began our search for land within our geographic community.  Franklin County has a rich agricultural history.  We soon found that many of the fields in our immediate area still provide essential space for feed production for area dairy farms.  During the 2011 growing season we fine-tuned intensive crop production methods in the Eliot Coleman style of organic farming.  We feel that this is the method that best suits our ideals for soil improvement and also provides a high yield of food per acre.  Our goal is to stay as small scale as possible while reaching as many families in our community as we can.  We want to teach others about the importance of and joys found within growing food.