Dear Friends and Shareholders,
        What a beautiful evening of sun, and wind after more rain. Our Family farm food production is exploding with growth! Our team has busted butt planting since memorial day with 48 oriental egg plants, 48 black beaut eggplants, 8 rows of early serve green beans, 8 rows black wax beans, Some blue lake green beans,
6 rows of Clemson Okra, Dwarf Okra, 6 rows of cucumbers, (picklers/slicers), 1 row of rutabaga, 3 rows red cabbage, more zucchini and summer squash, some sweet hot peppers in the herb garden, and lots of other herbs.

We are done working on an old J.D. (Go-Devil) 4 row cultivator. Weeds are also exploding. Last to plant next week is pumpkins, melons and squash, numerous varieties, then one more planting of sweet corn (the 3rd). Then start making 300 tomato cages from 4x8 sheets of “remesh wire” to install after we cultivate weeds.

The 4000 plants of new asparagus is done producing this year! Now we let the females grow up to recharge the roots for next year’s males... we had an amazing 1st harvest from just the 2nd year after
planting.

Our Green house is done so no Saturday pickup this week!

We recommend you try our fresh local
produce at The Red Steakhouse… Chef Kirk is really good! 

Once our outside “New crop” starts coming we expect a Big crop!...  Maybe next week we will have distribution, be sure to check your email Next Thursday night for Heikes Family farm production update.

Have a wonderful weekend… Thank the Lord for blessing us with timely rain, good weather and new growth!

Sincerely Sam and Heidi

P.S. we now have two university interns; Carly from USD, and Amanda from U of Minnesota. 

Just a reminder we do not use any Monsanto GMO plant material, just a little roundup to kill invasive thistles. 

Dear Friends and shareholders,



What an intensive week… new moisture, warming temps, and explosive growth. We planted
660 tomatoes: 85 slicers 2 roma pastes, and 2 cherries 1 yellow. 160 peppers, 5
sweet, some hot from mild to really hot!! Ie: Habanero. 50# of Oregon sugar snap
edible pea pods in our soil building cover crop. Now Planted and up Broccoli,
Cabbage, Celery, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi seeds and plants, red kale and
rubarb. 5 varieties of cukes are up. Lettuce, spinach yellow squash, beans,
zucchini, 3 varieties of basil, rosemary, tarragon, sage, English thyme, oregano, and peppermint are now
planted. As well as 2500 sweet potatoes. Okra, Dill, Rutabagas and 3 more pickler cukes were planted today! We also started cultivating garlic, potatoes and onions today. The weeds are explosive too! Carrots in the greenhouse are close to harvest; outside parsnips and carrots are not up yet. Red cabbage went
in today. Lots of Ambrosia sweet corn is up nicely, 2 more varieties of sweet corn to plant as well as new colored Indian flint corn. Early June is planting time for melons, Squash and pumpkins. We plan on 4 melons, 5 squash and 4 pumpkins about 1 acre total.
We are winding down 1st year of Asparagus and greenhouse
production… Ramping up on outside production! So you expect a short lag
time on your CSA produce… the next week or
2.


Saturday distribution will include: some
greens, lettuce, spinach, and a little asparagus and a few new
herbs.


See you Saturday
10-2pm


P.S. According to our records we now
have 93 personal shareholders, that is all we think we can handle this
year thank you to each of you for your
help.



Sam and
  Heidi

                                                                   
 


Dear Friends and shareholders,
Green is growing everywhere here, lots of rain, and lots of mud!  It’s time to plant! We had a small
planting window last week for potatoes, and a start on onions, yesterday another small window to finish the onions and leeks (10,000 planted) and started on Broccoli (500 planted), then rained us out of the field. So we put in 75 new strawberries and 18 more Red Raspberries. We then mudded in 18 more rhubarb. I
noticed the new small asparagus buds suffered a little frost damage under the last cold wet snow, but it seems to be recovering with new explosive growth, it should be a pretty good harvest cut for this weekend’s distribution. We recently weeded the greenhouse and irrigated the greens for new regrowth, we
expect some spring greens Saturday especially good spinach. We have been
harvesting spring greens for over a month now.

With the warm and dry forecast for the next week we will be
very busy planting broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, and celery. We could use some more help! My 4 row planter now has 4 seats, 1 for each row planted individually. Anybody interested in helping plant is welcome! Just call me 605.222.3949 to schedule a seat.
On another note we are doing a survey of our shareholders: would you be interested in getting frozen meat products at the Heikes family farm? Beef, chicken, lamb, pork, duck, goose, eggs all natural federally inspected from Humboldt, SD? Heidi you may not know is a good baker at café Brule working 2 days a week. She is now thinking about offering her fresh baked goods for Saturdays CSA pick up days: breads, pastries and other items. If there is enough interest, please let us know by email. 


See You Saturday,
Sam and Heidi @ the Heikes Family Farm

Dear Friends and shareholders, 
 Our South Dakota Weather went from 85 degrees to a snow storm with a nice rain in 3 days: April Showers bring May flowers! (1 ½ more moisture to grow our new produce!) On Tuesday we planted 600# of Certified Minnesota seed potatoes (3reds, 2 whites, and 2 fingerlings) We cut four buckets of new asparagus, then started planting “Red Zepplin Onions… till my help left. Moisture on new plantings is wonderful… Thank you Lord! This week’s Saturday share distribution will be Lettuce, Arugula, Spinach, Radish from the greenhouse and new asparagus ! 



See you Saturday 10-2pm at the farm.



Sam and Heidi