We now have duck eggs and bagged lettuce mix for sale at Buckland Farm Market.
If you find yourself heading down Route 29 toward Warrenton, you might swing by Buckland Farm Market for a few minutes. Many locally-sourced grocery items (produce, meat, eggs, dairy), an ice cream parlor, playground out back for the kids, and I’m told they plan on putting in a brewery at some point. Earlier this morning, Elissa and I delivered them some cartons of duck eggs and bags of our lettuce mix, which they then put up for sale in the refrigerated section of the store. We chatted with owner Chris Gilbert for a while and are hopeful that this new venture is a win win for everyone!
Back at the farm, our tomatoes are coming along nicely. We’re still hoping for first harvest in June, but we’ll keep you posted. Plenty of lettuce this time of year, and still good supplies of duck eggs and chicken eggs. Microgreens and potted herbs, as always. Hope to see you at the Manassas farmer’s market Saturday, or head over to Buckland Farm Market to find some of our products there!
Buckland Farm Market address: 4484 Lee Highway Warrenton, VA 20187
We got a 16’x50′ hoop house kit from Farmer’s Friend at the end of 2021, intended for aiding lettuce production. This video is a series of time lapses which cover 99% of the entire construction process. Cancel your appointments, grab some popcorn, and tuck in for a half hour of Pennington Market Farm.
We hope to have tomato starts available at the market at least through June.
The main market season is fully underway and we’re up to our elbows in farm activities these days. The latest highlights:
The past couple months have been hoop house mania for us. We completed the 16’x50′ lettuce hoop house (sans end walls) in mid-March, and then finally got some real-deal end walls up on the 12’x50′ tomato house. (The end wall attempt that we put up in October 2021 didn’t survive the winter.) The tomato house is fairly well sealed now and gets super toasty when the sun is out. Over 120 F some days! We’ve had to keep the doors open on it to ventilate mid-day.
We’ve been planting tomatoes earlier this year (due to aforementioned sealed hoop house). Last year, I think our first planting was May 8 or so… this year, April 20. So we’re hoping that with the warmer average temps in the hoop house plus the earlier planting, we’ll have tomato half pints available at the market some number of weeks earlier this year vs. last. We brought our first tomatoes to market July 31 last year, so, who knows, maybe early July, if not June this year? We’ll hope for the best and keep you posted.
A much wider selection of potted herbs this time of year vs. last. Currently bringing 16 different varieties of herbs! We grow these inside alongside our microgreens, and it can be a challenge sometimes trying to find rack space for everything. Some form of outbuilding grow room has been on our wish list for the past couple years, and that may be increasing in priority.
Chickens and ducks have been fairly productive so far this year. We did our annual soil testing of various areas of the farm, one being the bird pens. The pens have been increasing their levels of… just about every nutrient category… over these past few years. The grass is literally greener in their pens. While this is probably fine and welcome for now, I do worry about too much of a good thing over the long term. We want to keep nutrient levels, etc all within bounds. So we may consider moving the whole setup maybe sometime later this year(?)
Hope to see you at the market soon! As always, our primary sales outlet is the Manassas farmer’s market on Saturdays (8am – 1pm). We plan to be there basically every week until Thanksgiving (give or take).
A quick notice that there will be no farmer’s market on April 2. March 26 will be the last “winter market” date, then no market April 2, and then “main season” market begins April 9. To our knowledge, location will remain the commuter lot across from Baldwin Elementary. From a customer perspective, the only real difference between the two seasons is that the winter market runs from 9am – 1pm, whereas the main season market will be 8am – 1pm. I believe the April 2 break is for market manager time off, planning purposes, etc.
I should caveat that all of the above applies to the Saturday market. Manassas has typically also had a Thursday market, at least for the main season, but I don’t yet know any details about that. (We don’t currently plan on attending the Thursday market regardless.)
Just got word from the market managers that the 3/12 Manassas farmer’s market has been cancelled due to anticipated bad weather (super cold, windy, precipitation of various kinds, etc). Probably for the best. We’ll look ahead to 3/19. For anyone who had a pre-order for pickup on 3/12, we will roll that forward to 3/19. If you aren’t able to pickup on 3/19, please contact us to let us know!
We’re now taking pre-orders for eggs for pickup at the March 12 Manassas farmer’s market. We ask $3.50 / half dozen for chicken eggs and $4.50 / half dozen for duck eggs. As far as supply, plenty of chicken eggs, somewhat limited on duck eggs. Feel free to contact us at farmer@pennmarketfarm.com to place an order!
Gearing up for our return to the Manassas farmer’s market! Our first Saturday back will be March 12 (not the 5th as previously hoped). Check out the video for our latest updates!
Hope everyone had a nice holiday season. We just got back from a trip to Orlando a few days ago… a long time in the making, as we had a 2020 trip cancelled due to Covid, and finally had a chance to cash in the airline credits from that. So the kids got to fly for the first time (I think they liked it!), and we hit up Disney World, Universal Studios, and went over to Cape Canaveral. It was a nice break from the frigid Nokesville temps.
Speaking of frigid Nokesville temps…
We have 3.5 beds of lettuce growing (slowly) under the low tunnels. Hoop house in the background has dead tomatoes from the summer that need clearing out at some point.
The farm at this point is probably at its lowest level of activity for the year. Our indoor grow room is completely shutdown, and nothing going on in the hoop house. We have about 3.5 beds of lettuce laying in wait in the garden under poly low tunnels. These were planted back in August and September… we had harvested from them for some of the last markets that we did in 2021, but are hoping they spring up and that we can get something from them when we return to the farmer’s market in March.
Ducks and chickens are still doing their thing. We haven’t had a single duck egg for… maybe approaching two months(?) We’re hoping they start thinking about it as the days slowly get longer and temps warm. Chickens were in a lull for a while, but have recently started picking up production.
In other news, we made a fairly large purchase during the offseason (large for us)…
That’s a kit for a second hoop house. Purchased from Farmer’s Friend. Showed up the day before we left for Orlando. This one is 16 feet wide and 50 feet long (first hoop house was 12 feet wide, 50 feet long). And this has internal wind bracing and, I believe, one zipper door endwall. Anyway, we have all of these parts laying out under the snow in the garden and are excited to start putting the thing together once the snow melts and ground dries out a bit. This will be the sort of thing where, by the time we have this hoop house all built, winter will be over and it will no longer be needed! Go figure. (It will likely be beneficial year ’round.) Our intention is to use it for lettuce production.
Anyway, that’s the latest from the farm. I’m thinking our next video might focus on the building process for this next hoop house, but we’ll see what we see. One way or another, we’ll check in again before too long. Hope everyone is doing well!
Some video highlights from the past few months! Just a reminder that our last sales opportunities of the year are coming up this weekend… We’ll have our self-serve farm stand open 12/4 and 12/5 from 9am to 2pm both days. 10218 Lonesome Rd, Nokesville. Hope you can swing by!
A quick update on our schedule: This coming Saturday, 11/20 will be our last date at the Manassas farmer’s market. We had originally planned to attend on December 4, but we have learned that there will be no market on December 4.
So 11/20 is our last market date… HOWEVER, we plan to have our self-serve roadside farm stand open on both 12/4 and 12/5. That will be our last weekend for the farm stand for 2021. For the folks who like our eggs, this would be a chance to pre-order and pickup (just send us an email and we’ll get back to you). Hours would be 9am – 2pm both days.
