Farm & Garden Notes: Spring in Swing

With the arrival of longer days and warmer temperatures, the farm has come alive with the colorful delights of spring!

Our native blackberry and huckleberry bushes are dotting the forested trails with their snowy-white blossoms, and the asparagus shoots in the garden are growing an inch a day! Right alongside, the new Tulameen raspberries are just waking up and the green tops of new potatoes are starting to poke up out of the soil. We are busy turning in the cover crop to enrich the soil in our newly-expanded vegetable beds in the south garden, which is almost ready for planting.

The ‘girls’ are looking sleek in their new spring coats, and are enjoying time spent lounging in the pasture nibbling on new green grass and the brambles they can reach over the fence. The local Jersey cows that provide us with fresh milk are also spending time out in their pastures, which means changes for our creamery, too—with fresh green grass notes, these new batches of milk will add delightful nuance to our handcrafted cheeses.

In our farmhouse kitchen, we have been enjoying a bounty of new produce after many months of winter fare. The beautiful greens and leafy vegetables have inspired countless new recipes, along with the fiddleheads and wild nettles we have foraged on the grounds. We also have our eyes peeled for the sight of earthy morel mushrooms dotting the landscape, which we hope to soon spot as we continue through this wonderful season.