February 2022 and POP-UP Share

For pop-up share sign up info see below…

February 2022

I watch the Almond tree out the window on these cold winter days, its tall upright branches easily bending back and forth obeying the direction of the blowing wind.   I wonder how the tree is handling these extreme nighttime temperatures we’ve been getting. The reading was -18 here one morning last week when I woke up.  Neither we or the Almond tree has experienced prolonged low nighttime temperatures in our short time here.  Kyle got it in his head shortly after moving here, we should be growing Almond trees.  The idea was a combination of advice from old time farmers saying they wished they had planted more trees in early years, and a little bit of Almond industry news and research. The Almond industry was newsworthy around the time California entered the most recent, now many years of drought.  Almond trees are grown on huge thousand-acre plantations and they require millions of gallons of pumped in water for irrigation.   One single almond nut takes about 1.1 gallons of water to mature, so multiply that by hundreds of nuts per tree, times thousands of trees per farm and you quickly have a water issue.  Kyle figured we had the perfect environment for these thirsty Almond trees, with our wet springs and our large pond, the exception being Almond trees don’t grow in cold climates.  Kyle was determined and did some internet searching and found a new variety being trialed that was supposed to be cold hardy down to zone 6.  We are zone 4-5, so it would be a stretch, but we figured we would try.  We ordered two trees from a very un-legit looking online nursery.  The nursery seemed to be using desperate measures to sell product, pictures of pinup type girls holding different greenery (they shortly went out of business).  The trees showed up on a UPS truck a few weeks later.  We’ve planted a fair number of trees now, and these were pretty bad looking starts.  They were 3-4 feet tall each, with now visible roots of branches.  We carefully dug our holes, added compost and stuck them both in the ground in our front yard.  It looked like we had planted two sticks. Kyle dutifully watered them weekly, and throughout the summer, one stick did absolutely nothing, and one started to produce green shoots, the beginning of branches.  By the time fall came around, the one tree had almost tripled in height and began to claim its shape, branches reaching slightly out from the trunk and then shooting up.  We wondered if it would make it through the that first winter, but sure enough in the spring the shoots turned green and started to grow again.  It’s now been 7 winters, and each year the Almond tree grows taller, now over 25 feet high, and is covered in delicate pink flowers each spring.  A few years back the saw our first fruit forming after the flowers had dropped and that fall the seedpod fell to the ground.  We peeled back the green husk resembling a peach and inside was the shell of the nut.  Kyle eagerly cracked the shell, and sure enough inside was an almond. The funny part was, it was 90% shell, 10% edible nut.  We don’t know if the weirdly small size is due to lack of a second pollinating tree, the climate, or lack of tree maturity.  The tree has continued to produce more and more nuts each year, although still small, but it gives us immense pleasure to be maybe one of the first farms in Maine growing Almonds, definitely a good talking point.    

Sign up using the Google Form:sign up here we have been having periodic form issues, so please email hosacfarm@gmail.com if the link does not work and youd like to sign up. Thanks!

POP-UP SHARE:

2 Carnival Acorn Squash

2lbs Carrots

2lbs Yellow Onions

4lbs Kohlrabi 

3lbs Potatoes

2lbs Beets

2lbs Leeks

-note, we are working with another farm to try and get some greens, we won’t know until next week if this is possible due to temperatures.  There will be a place on the sign-up form to select if you would like the addition of greens to the share. 

Pickup Info: Choose either Earle Farm or Hosac Farm, Saturday February 19th. 10am-12pm. 

Cost: 45.00

Its never to early to sign up for our Summer 2022 CSA: www.hosacfarm.com/csa