Spring 2025

Rosa
Nov 3
4 min read

March, April, and May on the Farm

March arrived to find us putting the finishing touches on infrastructure projects and garden plans. The days lengthened, but the overwintering plants still slept under their covers. Here and there, green peeked into the chilly world.

When the final frost melted in early April, the slow awakening of the farm quickly accelerated. Spring flowers bloomed and veggies ripened, and the growing season got underway. By the end of May, our earliest crops had peaked, pollinators had returned, and the farm was gearing up for the oncoming heat.

Read on below to see what we did during this season of returns!

Sowing for the Season

About two months before the last frost, we began planting out into the gardens. We sowed these babies inside as early as January! We sow into soil blocks, which saves us space and time, and makes transplanting much easier.

We drew up our planting schedules for the year during winter. Flowers and veggies require slightly different planning patterns, partially due to the different DTM of the plants. DTM is the "days to maturity," which is basically how long it takes a plant to grow from seed to production. Vegetable DTMs vary a lot, but generally are shorter than flowers'. There's many, many other factors to consider when planning, but when spring begins, consideration is done. It's time for planting!

The flowers we transplanted were hardy annuals, which tolerate frost and require cool temperatures. In fact, we planted half of them last fall, and they've been hunkered down all winter. This spring generation will bloom a couple weeks later than the winter generation, providing us a longer harvest window for spring favorites. (If you're interested in learning more about overwintering hardy annuals, we learned a lot from Lisa Ziegler at The Gardener's Workshop.)

Buckets of Blooms

The first blooms of the year opened in our high tunnel. Snapdragons, our beloved workhorses of spring, raised colorful spires of pink, red, and yellow. Bellflowers followed close behind, unfurling charming purple teacup flowers. Soon, the whole farm joined in: sweet William and bachelor buttons, irises and peonies. Soapwort bloomed in banks of airy pink flowers, and poppies fed the bees in the warming days.

Spring started slowly, and then tumbled quickly into abundance. The tunnel snapdragons began blooming alone, and by their last harvest, nearly every flower had joined in.

Baskets of Beets

Unlike flowers, we can harvest some vegetables year-round. With our tunnel and cloth covers combined, winter greens continued to grow, albeit slowly. Those harvests went to our partnership with the Clemson Free Clinic's Produce Rx program, which provides free, fresh produce to local families.

Spring swiftly diversified our harvests! Radishes were some of the first to arrive, because their DTM is less than 30 days (which is crazy fast.) Soon we had spring greens, collards, kale, turnips, lettuce, scallions, and beets!

Best of all is snap peas. I could personally eat sugar snaps right off the vine every day of my life- but they only produce for a couple weeks every year! Like everything in these months, our peas made hay while the sun was shining, so to speak. The window between frost and heat is narrow, so the plants get a lot done real quick!

Sharing the Abundance

With our baskets and buckets overflowing, it was time to share! Our local farmers markets began in late April and early May. It's always so lovely to see familiar faces and friends come by our booth, and to meet new people, too!

Our bouquet subscriptions and CSA produce boxes also began, and this was our biggest year yet. We introduced weekly CSA's along with our bi-weekly option, and so every week we packed produce boxes with the newest harvest. Mothers' Day was a big to-do for flowers, of course, and kicked May off with a bang.

In spring, our market booth is an ever-changing pastel rainbow. Bellflower, a favorite, opens lavender, then purple, then pinks; a new color each week! New vegetables join in, too. One week it's freezing cold and the winter greens are leafing out, and the next its warm and the peas are ripe!

After a long winter of preparation, it's always a joy to return to the markets, deliveries, and all the ways we connect the farm to the community.

Farm Fellows

We humans are not the only creatures happy for spring! The pastures filled with sweet grass, and thank goodness; Gnocchi the Donkey gets grumpy when he's hungry! Merry and Pippin took off their winter coats and were slightly embarrassed for a few days, but they certainly won't want them next month.

Our chickens also enjoyed many more fresh greens, and they seemed grateful for the warm days. Egg laying in general slows in cold months, so it picked back up as everything else did. We got new chicks as well; they'll take several months to start contributing eggs, but they are already cute.

On the land, the bluebirds, finches, and wrens nested in their boxes. The swallows joined a little later, winging in from their long migrations the same as they do every spring. The iridescent Tree Swallows nested in a box by the flower garden. The Barn Swallows chose a ledge under the eaves, and performed their aerial acrobatics all around the porch and yard.

Beneath our feet, the soil awakened. Soil cycles are profoundly vital to our farm; fungi, microbes, and bugs literally build the ground on which grow. And even these littlest creatures celebrate spring. I could literally feel the activity in the soil when I dug in.

Our farm relies on nature in order to flourish. Without pesticides, we need beneficial predators like swallows and wasps to control pests. Without synthetic fertilizers, we need healthy, living soil to provide nutrients. We tend to the land and in return, we get beautiful flowers and nutritious food!

Spring is a lot of hard work. But there's nothing like brisk mornings with warm sun, the smell of flowers, and a day ahead on the farm.