Tomatoes are in the ground!

It was a good weekend on the farm! The weather stayed dry and warm(ish) which gave us the ability to begin planting our tomatoes! Over the weekend we planted close to 1,000 tomatoes plants! We are excited for the weather this week because it continues to warm up and highs in the 70s and even 80s! We will be planting thousands of plants through the week, and not only tomatoes. We have peppers, melons, cole crops and more to transplant to the fields.

We are very excited for the upcoming farm season and are expecting it to be one of the best we´ve had! Be sure to come by the Minneapolis Market on Saturday and Sunday to say hello and pick up some Maple Syrup!

Spring has sprung on the farm!

This weekend has been one for the record books! We have had a large portion of our snow cover melt with the warm weather and large amount of rainfall. When the snow melts this quick we get a lot of water flowing down the hill and it takes the path of least resistance. We have been hard at work helping the water navigate it´s way off the driveway. A couple culverts are still frozen so we have built small channels for the water to follow to bypass it. Who said playing in the mud is just for kids?

We have also started tapping trees and collecting sap for maple syrup! We are excited for this years syrup season. We have over 70 taps placed which is more than we´ve had in the past. We plan to start boiling syrup today, 3/18/19!

The pups have been loving this weather. Warm sun mixed with snow and mud is a recipe for a nasty mud pup filled with happiness! The full pond in the back is lookin´ gorgeous under the sunset.

Reminder- itś not too late to sign up for our 2019 CSA season, check out our CSA page for more information!

We look forward to keeping you updated on the 2019 season as things progress!

New mower!

A new mower may not sound very exciting to most, but living on the farm we have acres of land that have to be mowed! Having a quality working mower can transform the look of the farm! We made it through 2017 using an old mower with 1 working blade and a battery that needed to be charged every time you used it. Now we have a brand new 46" 22hp Cub Cadet mower!

Spring time on the farm comes with many things to do beyond working in the field. There is a lot of upkeep that starts in order to keep the farm looking great! We have many acres of mowing, a treenline that needs to be kept up, flower gardens to be cleaned up and mulched and so many little projects all alround the farm. We could work from dawn until dusk every single day and still not be able to be fully caught up.

When it comes to field work, we have accomplished plenty of that as well! We continue to plant tomatoes, of course. We started three fields of pumpkins, squash and gourds. We have finished most of it but have also been delayed due to wet fields and lack of time. We have also planted onions, beans, peas, radishes, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, zucchini and more!

We are off to a fantastic start to our season! We're very excited to have a fantastic farming season with outstanding produce!

5.15.18 Tomatoes and Potatoes!

We are very excited to let everyone know that we have started transplanting our heirloom tomatoes!

This planting is a couple weeks ahead of last years schedule, so we are hoping for some early season tomatoes! The last couple of days we have transplanted over 1,000 tomato plants! We plan to be planting tomatoes over the next month or so. Last year we had an immense amount of rain through the spring which set us back on planting because the fields were too wet. This year we feel like spring skipped us- we went straight from winter to summer weather! This isn't necessarily a bad thing, just as long as we get some rain along with the sunny weather! When it doesn't rain we are forced to be watering the plants by hand.

Along with tomatoes, we also planted potatoes! We planted some blues, some reds and some double reds (red skin and red inside). Potatoes are unique when compared to most produce because to get potatoes for this year we simply plant leftover potatoes from last year!

There are many spring jobs on the farm which we enjoy however trimming apple trees is not one of them... If it weren't essential to do, we would not do it. It's one of our least favorite jobs on the farm but we love good apples so it's a must! When we trim the trees we mainly try to cut off the water sprouts, unless more major trimming is required. If we let water sprouts continue to grow they'll turn into full branches. Water sprouts typically grow straight up reaching out to get as much sun as possible. When trimming apple trees you don't want branches overlapping, growing together or growing straight up. This causes issues as they get bigger. This is why we work hard to eliminate those sprouts to keep the trees growing healthy and producing good fruit!

5.3.18 Outdoor Planting Season Begins

The snow has melted, the ground is drying, the sun is hot and we are ready for the spring weather! We have taken this opportunity to catch up and get back on track from a lonnggg winter!

You have to start by determining when the field is ready to be worked up. Do it too early and it will be too wet and the soil will clump too much. Do it too late and the field will be too dry and won't have enough moisture to promote early seed growth. We are at the perfect spot right now!

We are currently in the busiest time of the spring season, planting. We started working up the ground earlier this week to prepare. Today we planted our first set of sweet corn, so we are prepared for an early batch!

We've also got some garlic coming up! This is always exciting because garlic is planted in the fall with hopes that it all comes up in the spring time! We see it as one of the first true signs of spring around here.

We'll have another update soon, so check in the next couple of days for that! :)

3.19.18 New boiling station!

This was a busy weekend for us! We spent Saturday and Sunday outside working on fixing up our driveway, carrying 5 gallon buckets of sap out of the woods to our boiling station and finally fixing up our boiling station!

50 degree days in March are always welcomed by us! It gives us the ability to get a head start on the season. It helps melt the snow, thaw the ground, dry the mud and lets the sap flow! We carried over 40 gallons of sap from our tapped trees out to the boiling station. The general rule of thumb is 40 to 1, meaning 40 gallons of sap is equal to 1 gallon of maple syrup! We collect our sap with 5 gallon bucks and then carry it to where it needs to be. This way does require a bit more physical labor, but we can get a cleaner end product using no chemicals. Another way to do it is collect sap via tubing and run downhill to a collection point. The issue with this is that those tubes have to be cleaned with chemicals, which we prefer to stay away from.

We started Saturday's work with trying to thaw out the previous boiling spot so we could dig it out a better spot. Well, that didn't go quite as planned.. We ran into 2 inches of thawed mud and then frozen solid ground. After taking a minute to look at the situation we decided it best to move the boiling station over in order to create a fresh clean spot. We had purchased new concrete blocks to reconstruct it all. With our new station we should be able to boil roughly 100 gallons of sap simultaneously.

Finally the fun got started! We had everything set up to start boiling the sap! Having a fire large enough to boil the quantity of sap we do requires a monumental amount of firewood. While the fire blazes on and the sap boils we make trip after trip in and out of the woods collecting fuel for the fire.

We have tapped more trees this year than any year before and we have a better boiling setup than any previous year. We anticipate this to be our best maple syrup season yet! We look forward to having some final product soon to share with all of you!

-The Gyslands

2.26.18 Maple tree tapping has begun!

With temperatures now teatering above and below freezing, we decided it's time to begin tapping our maple trees! We tapped 29 trees trees along the driveway. We always start with trees along the driveway, because that is where the sun and warmth hits first! Maple trees begin flowing once the trees warm up during the day and then freeze again at night.

Last year we tapped around 49 trees, we hope to add more taps this year so we are able to yield more syrup for all of you! Tapping trees and set up are the easy part. Once we get syrup flowing, we are going to have hours of hard work before us! We will have to rebuild our boiling station and then we'll be carrying hundreds of pounds of sap to be boiled over an open fire!

We'll update all of you once we are onto the next steps of the process!