What twenty tons of manure looks like.

At the beginning of each season, Michael has soil samples analyzed to assess the state of the farm's fertility. Based on the results, he places an order for minerals to spread around the farm. Earlier this week, Michael took delivery of a dump-truck load of well-composted manure premixed with these minerals, and he has spent a couple of afternoons applying this mix to the fields.

This is a critical yearly task. One of the central principles of the way we farm is that the health of the soil is all. The early-twentieth-century English agronomist Sir Albert Howard -- who is considered one of the fathers of organic farming -- promoted the idea that we should view the "whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal, and man as one great subject." The health of our plants -- and the health of our shareholders -- depend on the health of our soil. We therefore do all we can to ensure that our soil is fertile, nutrient-dense, and teeming with worms and beneficial microorganisms. And sometimes creating healthy soil means spreading twenty tons of manure.

It was a good day to be a duck.

Though yesterday was a fine dry day, in the morning we had to fulfill some large plant orders -- over three thousand units.  The crew didn't get out in the fields to plant most of the onions until later in the day.

This morning, as we prepared to plant the last bed and a half, the rain started, gently at first, then more steadily. The sky thundered a couple of times, but not close enough to send us for cover. We put on our rain gear and kept planting, which was fine. If I can stay dry, I don't mind being in the rain. (But, once I'm wet, I get cranky fast.) It's a quiet and peaceful way to work. Just as we finished the last bed, the rain really started to come down, ending the fieldwork for the day.

Michael had been gone much of the morning running errands, and, when he returned at lunchtime, he brought with him a cardboard box of ducklings. Tractor Supply Company was running a clearance sale, two bucks a duck. He figured that, since we were already set up for chickens, adding a few ducks to the poultry mix wouldn't be much more work. He bought six.

They're lively, inquisitive little things. At the end of the day, we let them out for a while to explore the wet world. They took to it ... well, like a duck takes to water.

Stalking the wild leek.

Over at Mark Bittman's blog, a couple of guest contributors are extolling the virtues of ramps. A member of the allium family (along with onions, leeks, chives, garlic, and scallions), ramps are a wild, native perennial that appears in the woods around here this time of year.

I'd never heard of ramps until I started working at Trillium. Though some may think of them as haute cuisine -- ramps often appear on the menus of tonier restaurants and on cooking shows of celebrity chefs -- their culinary roots are quite humble. Which is what you would expect, as country people scoured their local woods and fields for something green to carry them through the lean early spring.

When Michael and Anja started farming here, ramps grew naturally in a few spots in the woods. They've since planted several more patches, with an eye toward developing them for sale as a specialty crop. We're waiting for them to become established so they can be harvested sustainably. I don't know if we'll harvest any this year, but I hope so. I'd like to try them.

Or I could just plant my own. As an experiment, Michael bought a box of ramp starts from a farm in West Virginia. We've been planting them in four-inch pots to sell along with our other vegetable plants. It's been a bit of a trick learning how to grow them. We planted the first batch too soon, and now they're past their prime, so we'll plant those in the woods. But the next couple of rounds are looking pretty good. Look for them at the market. 

This is what vegetable gridlock looks like.

As soon as I say the weather is cooperating, it doesn't. Of course. All this rain -- over three inches so far -- is keeping us out of the fields. Not that we can't work in the rain. We'll stay out so long as there isn't lightning, and sometimes even then. But if the fields are too wet, moving tractors and wagons and feet through them only compacts the soil. So we're waiting for the fields to dry out some. And waiting.

To make room in the greenhouse for more seeding, we've been moving seedlings that are ready for transplanting out onto the wagons. Well, all the wagons are all full now, and the greenhouse is still filled wall to wall. Muck fields drain pretty quickly, though, and today was a dry and sunny day, so there's a good chance we'll but putting a lot of things in the ground tomorrow. If the weather cooperates.

Suddenly, we're in the fields.

At least, that's the way it seems. So far, activity on the farm has consisted mostly of greenhouse work with the occasional construction project. This past week, though, we started transplanting. The crew was ready for it. Thursday, we put in the first round of lettuce, radicchio, and endive. About a quarter of the onions went in on Friday. Next week, we'll plant the rest of them, as well as the kale. The weather seems to be cooperating, with gloriously warm and partly sunny days at the end of last week and now a solid rain this weekend to water in what we transplanted.