Year in Review: Favorite Memories
Wintertime on a farm means less crops to harvest and time for planning for the upcoming year. While planning, we have found ourselves reminiscing about our favorite moments of 2018, and we’d like to share them with you.
Jamie’s Memory - Releasing 20 pullets into their new run
2018 was the year of the chicken at Burkett. We decided to add 20 new gals, pullets for the chicken purists, to the farm. Because our “old gals,” as we call them, had started to slow production, being around 4 years old now, we decided to add another flock because we want to continue to provide fresh eggs to Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. Don’t worry though, our old gals aren’t going anywhere. They will continue to live their best lives on the farm!
The chickens came to us when they were in the pullet stage. Here’s a quick chicken lesson: Pullets are female chickens that are less than one year old and haven’t started laying eggs. A pullet officially becomes a hen after its first moult, which can occur either quite early or quite late in the first year of their life. The pullet year is considered the most productive laying period for chickens.
Before we brought in the new chickens, Greg took the reins, designed, and built them a fancy resort in which to reside. Burkett Farm chickens have a reputation for being a spoiled bunch, so we couldn’t let our new gals move into just any coop and run. It was truly a joy to release these gals into their new home. They have settled in nicely and are now laying lots of beautiful eggs!
Julie’s Memory - Going into the bee hive for the first time
Our bees did not have a great start to 2018, and we were worried we would have to replace the queen, as she was not laying enough eggs.
Julie has been wanting to learn more about beekeeping, so she really enjoyed this process. In August, she got to comb through each frame of our hives to see if we could find the old queen before introducing a new one. Well, what we thought was an underperforming queen ended up being a long-gone queen! Julie released a new one into the hive and checked in the next week to make sure she was settling in ok.
Emma’s Memory - Planting all the bulbs
We have been working hard on our flower program over the past couple of years, and 2018 was our most successful year yet. For 2019 we have planned to have even more of our favorite flowers on hand for florists in the area, which means we had to put more bulbs in the ground.
This past fall, we planted more than 4,000 bulbs and corms that included daffodils, tulips, muscari, ornithogalum, ranunculus and anemone. To maximize our space, we decided to try the trenching method of planting bulbs. It’s exactly how it sounds. We dug a trench in one of our beds the desired depth for each bulb and packed it full of, We covered it with soil and watered them in. Trenching is such an easy way to plant hundreds (even thousands) of bulbs in a short period of time. It is hard physical work, but it is worth it for making the most of your space.
Natalie’s Memory - Successfully growing didiscus flowers for the first time
As you can tell, we love our flowers at Burkett! Last year we seeded and successfully grew a new flower type for us, named didiscus. Another name for this flower is “lace flower”.
Didiscus is a very delicate flower, but it has strong stems and is fairly easy to grow. We sowed our seeds in soil blocks and then transplanted the blocks in the beds as the plant does not enjoy having its roots disturbed. We made sure we thinned the plants when they were young and pinched them to ensure they had nice, bushy growth. After that, we just let them do their thing, and boy did they! We started this year’s seedlings last week and can’t wait to see them grow.
Erica’s Memory - Tasting tomatoes with farm guest
Last year we decided to really have fun with our tomatoes and planted almost two dozen different varieties of slicing and cherry tomatoes. It proved to be a fun experiment for our taste buds.
Each time we had a visitor to the farm, we brought out the cutting board, knife, and salt so they could taste some of our favorite varieties of tomatoes. This was a great idea because we got so much input on flavor and texture to add to our notes for planting in 2019. Some favorites in the slicing tomato category were: Stupice, Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye, Barnes Mountain Yellow, Peg’s Round Orange and Mortgage Lifter. We were surprised by how much people enjoyed Peg’s Round Orange, especially. It’s beautiful when sliced and a nice mix of meaty and juicy. Many suggested it had a hint of melon flavor. The favorites in the cherry varieties were: Sungold (of course) and sun peach.
We’ve placed our seed order for this year, and look forward to having more folks out to the farm to give us their thoughts on their favorite tomato of 2019. We’ve also decided to add a fun tomato themed event to our calendar for the end of the summer. Keep an eye out for dates!
Other favorite moments of 2018
Adding to the staff - 2018 was not only a year for growth in the amount of produce and flowers we grew at the farm, but also in the number of staff we had! We added Erica, our Community Liaison & Event Planner, in July and Emma, our second full-time farmer, in October. We now have a staff of five, and they’re all amazing women!
Harvesting 30+ lbs of mushrooms - We had the biggest mushroom flush in 2018. One of Emma’s favorite memories was harvesting more than 30 lbs of shiitake mushrooms one week in late summer.
Kimchi - Everyone on the farm would agree that our kimchi event is a yearly favorite! This year we decided to invite folks who haven’t had the opportunity to experience Burkett Farm all while giving back to farmers affected by hurricanes Michael and Florence by donating to RAFI-USA (Rural Advancement Foundation International).
Planting the pollinator garden - Another favorite memory for Julie was planting the pollinator garden. Our pollinator garden contains only native plants that encourage butterflies (especially monarchs) and other pollinators, such as our bee friends, to visit and have a stay each year. We added even more native varieties to this garden in 2018.
We got WORMS - We added a worm composting bin (vermicomposting) to collect castings to use as fertilizer in our soil mix. CLICK HERE to see them squiggle on our Instagram.