By the time March has marched on and April has arrived, we are looking forward to the rain to wash away the yellow sins of yesterday and water the seeds of hope we planted. Thankfully our earth’s cycle continues despite her injury, despite change. She is resilient to say the least. We chose to follow her stead. The month of April definitely tested that.

Allergies On Another Level

This year allergies have required us to tap into every single home remedy in our apothecary. Personally allergy season isn’t usually rough for me. This year even I have fallen victim to spring’s unintentional weapon. I do feel for anyone who has to regularly deal with such issues. This is why our tea garden continues to expand year after year. Our family needs all of the help the soil can offer! In light of the struggle all of us were having. I decided to make a Goldenrod Lemonade. The hope was that having the medicinal rich herb at our fingertips, just a pour away would help aid us to intake it more regularly and in turn help our systems fight the chaotic, unnecessary immune response to pollen, histamine. It seems to have worked to some degree. If nothing else, it was refreshing. Next time I’ll make more. It’s a good thing that Goldenrod grows so freely here.

Goldenrod tea is a favorite of our customers this time of the year for this very reason. I’m thankful to have had the guidance to help me appreciate its benefits a few years back. If you are interested in trying it our for yourself you may purchase it from us here. One thing we tell anyone who is interested in our herbal teas is to research the ingredients before ingesting. Although organic, many herbs interact with prescription medications. Remember most meds are plant based. The point is to be careful and do your research!

If you have ever tried doing anything while having an allergy attack, you can likely imagine how difficult it is to complete farm chores while sneezing, coughing, and trying to maintain a level of dignity. It is not pretty. Mornings tend to be the most difficult so we found ourselves doing farm chores later in the day. Unfortunately, April brings much warmer temperatures and by the time the allergy symptoms let up around mid morning, the heat was also UP! This created a vicious cycle throughout the month. It was be taken out by allergies or the heat. Our choices were few. The heat was as unrelenting as the allergies. Either choice we made resulted in a shower and a long nap. Needless to say, things moved a bit slower than we would have preferred as a result. This was concerning since May brings farmers market season and we needed to keep to our schedules if we wanted a chance to have produce items for our customers.

Experiment Pay-Offs & Fails

You’ve likely followed our early planting of okra. This trial has been rather exciting. Feel free to catch up here, here and here. We harvested our first okra for 2025 on April 21st by utilizing our high tunnel. I wish this had been something we had been doing not just for okra but other summer items. Next year we will definitely add more crops to the early planting schedule.

Our experiment included watermelon as well, however the watermelon did not do very well with remaining in the starter pots for the long time period. Since we decided not to plant them in the high tunnel we were forced to wait until danger of frost had passed to plant them outdoors. It is unclear where we errored or if watermelon simply will not be rushed but those results are a complete and utter FAIL. We did try with an heirloom variety. Perhaps that is where our error was. Next time we will use a hybrid variety instead.

Not so much as a trial, more a last ditch effort, was our attempt to stop the life cycle of the fungus destroying our nectarine harvest and the insects causing damage as well. More details here. Unfortunately, our attempts here also failed. This is so very disheartening. Our trees are like an extension of our farm. They each reflect an investment of time and love. The harvest is the return on that investment. To have it stolen year after year by pests and fungus is hurtful. We think the best option at this point is to do a deep cutting back of the nectarine tree to protect the peach trees. This will mean we won’t have a harvest for at least another year. If it works, the sacrifice will have been worth it.

In other orchard news, we have successfully rooted Mulberry & lemon tree cuttings! We used rooting hormone for the first time. That along with scratching off a small section of the bark, which exposes the cambium layer, of the cutting seemed to be the missing ingredient. We simply:

• Cut the ends on a 45 degree angle
• Removed bark to cambium layer on bottom half inch of the cutting
• Dipped the aforementioned end in rooting hormone
• Allowed to dry for about 5 minutes
• Stuck cutting into moist medium ( we used seed starting mix)

We hope to use this same technique to clone our fig tree later this fall. Stay tuned!

Managing The Harvests

Garlic scapes were among the first things we harvested this month. They have become something we look forward to each season. One reason is of course the wonderful flavor. Who can resist the child of a green bean and garlic? Not us! Another reason we look forward to garlic scapes is they mark the time we assist the plant to stop its focus on reproduction. If left, the scapes will create flowers then bulbils for reproduction. By cutting the scapes, energy that would go into the production of flowers is now diverted to the bulb.

We began to harvest our cabbage earlier than we had planned due pest issues. I have mixed feelings about that as those were among items we planned to have on our tables for the farmers market in May. On the otherhand, I always welcome the opportunity to have more fresh produce for the family. We have some real exciting plans for this cabbage harvest. So far we have enjoyed using it in a cabbage soup, of sorts. Along with it we added home grown carrots, fennel, garlic and onion.

Speaking of onions several of our late planted onions have already began to fall over! Considering how late they were planted, this was surprising. What’s even more shocking is that some were even decently sized! There are many yet to be pulled from various areas of the farm. In raised beds, in ground, and in the high tunnel. We will have just enough for farmers market season and perhaps enough to last us until at least October. Well, that was rather generous. August is more reasonable. What can we say – WE LOVE ONIONS!

If you look at our photo gallery from the month of April you’ll find that our nasturtium plants are continuing to grow well, we planted amaryllis bulbs along the outside of our fence line, eggs are in large supply, chicks were moved out to their own beach, we grew pink oyster mushrooms on our kitchen table again, the knock out rose is in full bloom, peas, greens, beans, tomatoes, honeysuckle – AND THEN SOME!

By the time we commence to blogging again we will have experienced our first farmers market in over a year! We will have plenty to share. Until then, grow big from home – from our family to yours!