Summer Crop Transplanting & a New Chicken Chateau

Village Farm Team,

At the beginning of the year, we planted an impressive variety of tomato seeds, approximately 1,000 plants-worth to be exact. Now that we have the trellis system installed and a significant portion of the brassicas harvested from the North Farm, we were able to transplant the last of the tomatoes from the greenhouse. We sure hope you like tomatoes because we will swimming in them before you know it! To complement our tomatoes, we planted basil in our raised planter boxes. Nothing says summer quite like a thick slice of tomato with a few fresh basil leaves and a bit of fresh mozzarella.

Aside from the tomatoes, we were also able to transplant summer squashes in our new bare beds on the North Farm. To help with irrigation and proper levels of soil moisture, drip tape was installed along the summer squash beds. Once our squash begin to set their flowers, the fate of the fruit relies heavily upon our pollinators. Squash have both male and female flowers on the same plant. In order to actually produce, the pollen has to be transferred from the male to the female flowers. That’s where our pollinators come in! Once the flowers are pollinated it can take as little as a week before the squash is ready to harvest.

We have two new chicks that will soon be added to our flock. They’re approximately two months old so they’re not yet old enough to determine their sex. Since they are still so young and working on building up their immune systems, they’ve been housed separately from our ladies. In order to make integration a smoother process, Farm Educator Adam is working on building a “chicken chateau”. This structure will be placed inside the existing chicken run but will allow us the option to separate out young chicks from the rest of the flock until they are old enough to join them.