Hello, all!
We picked up our very first mother plants from East Coast Hemp Supply this week! They’re a new acquaintance of ours based in Dunn, NC. Go check them out online if you get the chance!
For those who don’t know what a mother plant is, it’s, well, a plant from which you can create baby plants of course! The benefit of this process is that the “babies” will be the same age and genetically identical to the “mother,” ensuring that none of our plants go to seed and making the the CBD levels even across all plants. It took our manager 6 hours to go get these pretty ladies and we’re very excited about them. After we’ve transplanted an acre’s worth of baby hemp plants, we’re hoping to sell hemp wholesale as well as using it to develop our own cosmetics, hemp infused syrups, etc!
Fun hemp fact: 80% of all textiles, fabrics, clothes, linen, drapes, bed sheets etc., were made from hemp until the 1820s!
We’ve been extra busy planting this past week! Sewing seeds to get started on okra, tomatoes, cilantro, squash, etc, planting carrots, onions, shallots, and even starting potatoes!... but we’ll get to that later. We like to employ the use of a broadfork for tilling our rows before going over them with a tractor. A broadfork breaks down and aerates the soil deeper, so that we don’t have to rely as heavily on a carbon intensive tractor. And they’re 100% American made!
We spent most of the day Friday at our King William property planting 2,000 pounds of… wait for it… potatoes! We’ve got a couple different varieties which include Adirondack blue, Yukon gold, and banana. Our summer CSA will be full of a variety of veggies, so let us know if you’re interested in a season subscription!
We add organic fertilizer to our crop every two weeks so that we get substantial nutrition and beautiful plants.
We’ve been organizing our attic space and processing room during our rainy day “down time,” getting ready for a busy summer of processing quail, pheasant, and partridge for local restaurants as well as you and your family! If you ask me it's quite a daunting task--whew!
Our chicken tractors, or pheasant tractors rather, have been doing very well! We moved them for the first time this week, providing our birds with fresh new grass, bugs, and frolicking space. When the pheasants get moved they leave behind a nutrient rich, well scratched--or tilled--soil. Hey, free labor! Our birds are comfortable enough in their new home to start laying eggs as well! We’ve been collecting around a dozen and a half per day and they’re available to purchase at $3.50 for a half dozen!
Our bees are doing okay too! We aren’t sure how the ones that swarmed will turnout but for now they are safe back in their hive. We are still looking for some donations to help with the rebuilding of our hives, as one was stolen last month. Thank you!
GoFundMe: gf.me/u/xqhwxf