Hello again and welcome to my first in a series catch up posts for the last few months. I caint believe it is already 2011 last fall went by in a flash it seems but it was definitely a busy flash. I am not going to go into to much detail of everything that was happening around the farm but i will provide a recap of the major accomplishments last fall. The weather for fall 2010 was great and it helped to prolong my season and make the late season harvest more comfortable as it was relatively warm and dry for the time of year. At the the beginning of the spring i made picking berries in five different months one of my major goals for the year. Happily i can say that i met this goal and i have to say that the berry patch overall exceeded even my most optimistic predictions for the level of plant growth and production in there first year i still was picking up until halloween. I am amazed that overall the berries were productive enough to more than cover there cost in the first year. The biggest benefit though of how well both the strawberries and raspberries did this year was the amount of new plants an canes that i was able to transplant from them. This allowed for me to double and for a couple varieties of the raspberries almost triple the row length from what i planted in the spring. The main bonus of this is that it saved me probably close to 1500.00 dollars but also it allowed me to begin expanding the berry patch faster and larger than i thought possible when i started out. Originally i thought it would take until the end of my second season to be able to start transplanting and thinning the rows but thankfully the weather helped to speed that along. The only real complaint that i have from transplanting in the fall in comparison to the spring is the weather but it was more than worth it because of the major head start this gave me on my expansion plans for 2011. This year i have decided that the berry patch will be my primary focus as i have a dependable level of demand for them from my wholesale customer and was unable to fully satisfy it for the strawberries last season. Right now my major goals for the berry patch this year is to grow it to about five times its original size by next fall. The other bonus about fall transplanting is that the strawberries especially will be raring to grow as soon as the weather allows as they have had the winter to settle in an lay there roots down firmly and will grow to maturity faster than spring transplants because of the head start. I am still going to be purchasing fresh plants and canes this spring. I have decided that i am more than satisfied with the strawberry variety i have. I will be trying a couple new varieties of raspberries this spring to help prolong their season and provide a steady production level from when the early season varieties start producing till the frost arrives and the ever bearing raspberries finish for the season. I hope that if the raspberries really produce well this year that i will be able to start wholesaling them also by late summer. So overall i am very satisfied with how well the berry patch did this year and that i know it will be profitable in the long term and allow me to make a living while still providing a financial foundation for new ventures on the farm in the next few years which i will post about in the coming months. Pictures from the expanded berry patch will be posted soon. I finally added the pictures these show me doing some of the transplanting and some of the beautiful sunsets an mornings i enjoyed while doing thankfully it was a mild November. I will be posting again soon its almost pruning season for the fruit trees so hopefully i will have something on that topic.
