This is how we start our sweet potato “slips” each year.  Around the first of April we prepare a bed lined with creek sand, lay down the potatoes, cover them with a section of welded wire fence, and cover with about 4 more inches of sand.  The potatoes will send up sprouts called “slips”.  We can pull these slips off the potatoes to plant out in the garden.  The section of fence holds them in the sand so we don’t pull up the whole potato when yanking on the slips.  The 4 inches of sand gives room for the slip to make plenty of good roots that remain attached to the slip.  And the potato will continue to make more slips.  Sweet potatoes are our family’s number one staple so we give them timely care!

Ira and Opal found the season’s first morel mushrooms (“dry land fish” as our neighbors know them).  Olivia thought we were looking for “elves” when we said “morels”.  Just as well.  It’s all magical!  Opal picked a bunch of “fiddlehead” ferns as seen in the bottom of her basket.  She stuffed them into her mushroom with some butter and we cooked it in a skillet with some lamb fat.  She had a hard time sharing any!

Ira has been taking great care of his flock of Indian Runner and Blue Swedish ducks.  He has been getting 9 eggs a day from 9 ducks.  They spend their days freely roaming and foraging in the wooded hollow.  Their favorite activity is swimming in the branch that flows through our homestead.  Every evening he shuts them up in a coop and closes an electric fence to protect them from predators.  Unlike chickens, ducks lay their eggs at night, so their ready for your breakfast.  We read that duck eggs are alkaline and chicken eggs are acidic.  Anyway, they are delicious! Ira will have a few dozen for sale this Saturday, March 10th, at the indoor West Nashville Farmers Market.   www.westnashvillefarmersmarket.com

Ira is bottle feeding this newborn calf that was rejected by it’s mama.  This is a morning and evening chore that will need to be done for at least two months.  He is calling her “Chocolate Smoothie”.  And she now thinks of him as “Mama”.

As you may have read in our last post, we are limiting our shares this season, so please reserve your space right away.

If you are interested in reserving a share, please follow these steps:

1.  Call us, send us a letter, or email us to make certain we have shares available:

• Telephone - For your quickest response, please leave a message on our farm phone. 270-457-BUGS (2847)
• Postal address - 950 Rack Creek Rd, Gamaliel, KY 42140
• Email - info@bugtusslefarm.com

2.  Print out the share reservation form as a pdf (or Word doc).  Fill it out and mail it to us, along with your check.

We look forward to being in community with you!

Hello Bugtussle friends and shareholders,
Just a quick note for those of you who have not heard.  We are attempting to respect our original holistic goal of staying small and personal with our CSA.  So, we are going to try limiting our membership to just 50 people/families this year.  We usually take about 70.  If you’ve already signed up that’s great, thank you.  If not, we wanted to clue you in on our plans so as to avoid any possible disappointment.  We are getting several new people interested in joining and did not want to fill up without including our long standing shareholders.  So, if you can, sign up now.
If you have any questions just let us know.

Thanks,
Eric and Cher Smith