Maryellen's legs after a morning of planting.  Next week it supposed to be in the high 80s.  Spring has finally sprung and summer is around the corner!

This one is the bee home for all the bees.  They pollinate the flowers.  I took these pictures because I want to put them on the blog.

From Henry.

This is my papa's tomato plants that he will be planting. 

It really looks like the middle of April around rather than the middle of March right now.  It has been so warm that almost all the snow is gone where we are now.  I keep thinking we are going to get one more big snowfall, but I woke up the other morning to the sound of rain on the tin roof, so maybe we are done with winter.

As you can see, Shelby likes the lack of snow.  She was born in late fall, so this is her first go around with bare ground.  Lots of new smells!

Wow.  It has been a long winter here at Old Shaw Farm.  And we apologize about not blogging much.  But this winter we have been doing a lot of thinking about the farm, thinking about our family, and planning for future.  A lot of this work has been driven by the financial realities of farming, and the financial needs of our family. 

You see, we haven't been making enough money on the farm to support our family.  Actually, we haven't even come close.  And this winter, for a variety of reasons -- financial, personal, physical, spiritual, emotional -- we decided that some things need to change around here.  We have been trying to grow 40 different crops each year, and on the scale we are at, that is difficult to do efficiently, so we have decided to scale back, and just focus on crops we are sure are making us money.

That sounds easy enough, but the big problem with dropping a lot of crops is that it means we need to rethink our markets as well.  For example, if we are only growing 6 crops, instead of 40, all of a sudden it doesn't really make sense to be doing a CSA, or even farmer's markets.  A CSA with only 6 crops just wouldn't be very popular.

Where does all this lead?  Well, we decided that this year we would continue to build our seedling sales, to grow our greenhouse tomatoes, and to do the Danville Farmer's Market.  But we also decided to take a year off from the CSA and the Waitsfield Market. 

This will make us a lot smaller this year, but it will also make a lot of other things possible.  First, it will allow Peter to work part time off the farm again, and make our life more financially sustainable.  Second, it will give us some time to develop a new plan for the farm moving forward.  And third, it will hopefully give us the space to breathe a bit, recover from some built-up burnout, and to fall in love with this farm again.

Just like a plant must sometimes be pruned, it is our hope that this pulling back time will lead to a period of even more vigorous growth.  Although some of these decisions have been tough to make, we are excited to see what happens next.  We also want to thank each and every one of you for your support and love over the years.  We couldn't be doing any of this without you!

But now, the days are starting to get longer, and it is actually getting to be time to get back to work!  The greenhouses need to get cleaned up, our early herbs and onion seedlings need to get started, some gear still needs to get repaired, the tool bench needs to get cleaned up, so on and so forth.  So check back for more posts soon, and thanks again for all your support.

Shelby the puppy joined the farm today.  We love her!