REGIONAL – The dramas of March are behind us and we can safely say "Spring is here!" And up and down the Rondout Valley and other fertile expanses in our readership area, growers of fruits and vegetables are preparing for the coming season.

While fruit growers are hoping for a slow, smooth start to the season, given that late frosts remain their great enemy, farmers are very busy just now getting ready to put the more robust vegetables into the ground.

"We'll be planting the hardier things now: the kale, the root vegetables, things that can take a bit of rough weather," said Oleg Maczaj of Rusty Plough Farm in Wawarsing. "We won't plant the tender things, the cucumbers and tomatoes, until May."

But vegetables aren't the only crops being seeded in the valley. Up at the Farm Hub on the border between Hurley and Marbletown, they are now starting to grow Kernza — a perennial wheat grass that's a relative of wheat with a big difference; it doesn't die at the end of the season. Developed by the Land Institute, it is described by some as a "super wheat" because it develops a deep, dense root system and can improve soil health while normal wheat crops, like all annual grasses, tend to suck nutrients out and impoverish the soil.

This is part of Farm Hub's experimental mission, and gift to farming in the region: researching grain varieties that might be profitable to grow here, such as organic barley and hops to feed the booming microbrewery business.

Indeed, there are a number of interesting new developments pressing forward in the valley, harbingers of a new style of agriculture. One example, up in Stone Ridge, is Tongore Brook Farm, where they're producing micro greens right through the winter in a geo-thermally heated "unique four season greenhouse" with the new heat cutting energy needs by 90 percent. They offer certified organic microgreen pea shoots, sunflowers and a variety of radishes "cut at flavor peak." Customers so far are both retailers and restaurants, especially down in New York City. They irrigate with recovered rainwater that meets potable water standards, and seem to be our first high tech market garden operation.

They won't be the last. Down in Mamakating, Lex Heslin's Beautiful Earth Group got its planning permits last month and will be going forward with their indoor agriculture project on the footprint of the formerly proposed Yukiguni Mushroom plant project, which floundered some years back. The new project, to be built in two phases, will eventually have a 214,000 square foot main plant that will grow, indoors, everything from strawberries to tomatoes in a vertical farming format.

"We are discussing potential partnerships with a number of operators on the growing side which see great demand for the products in the increasingly healthy, local-food oriented New York regional market," Heslin said. "So much of the produce we buy is picked before it's ready for market, and then shipped across the country on refrigerated trucks burning diesel fuel. Taste is related to freshness and ripeness, and the vast majority of non-local produce tastes dull and flavorless. How often do you get strawberries bursting with flavor? Tomatoes? Probably not a lot. Buyers deserve better and this project will offer a consistent source of fresh, delicious produce unaffected by New York's short and unpredictable growing season."

Back at Rusty Plough, Oleg and Nadia Maczaj said they're still doing things the old fashioned way — organic, and outdoors. But, they, too, are innovators always looking for new things to grow. At the end of March, Oleg was still concerned about the state of the ground.

"It was still frozen six inches down, and we're in mud season. So right now we're just starting to plant outside," he said. "Mostly it's work indoors, in the high tunnels and greenhouse. Lots of things are sprouting there, parsley, the onion family, the lettuces, the kale, the chard, the beets, fennel and kohlrabi."

Ah, kohlrabi, that's an interesting newcomer up here.

"It does pretty well here, and there's two kinds, the green and the purple," he replied, moving on to talk about the growing popularity of the vegetable's purple varieties and how it fits with people seeking out more naturally colorful foods, because those colors mean healthy things like beta carotene and other anti-oxidants.

But, spring can be deceptive. Oleg adds, "It's not really safe from the last frost here — we're 1200 feet up — until late May. So I won't risk going too early."

The Maczajes also pointed out how they're going to be working with new varieties of lettuce and other things, started indoors at Rusty Plough.

"Lovelock lettuce, Cayman tomatoes, Geronimo — another tomato variety, and, of course Azure Star, that purple kohlrabi," Oleg added.

Meanwhile over in the orchards, they're not saying anything about the weather just now.

"I was brought up to be highly superstitious," explained Elizabeth Ryan of Stone Ridge Orchards. "My Iowa grandfather said never say anything about the weather because the gods are listening. I thought it was ludicrous, irrational, but now that I'm a farmer I'm dealing with it and you learn in this business that anything can happen."

Indeed, in this part of the continent, the weather can be highly variable.

"Growing perennial crops is one of the most risky and challenging ventures you can have. It's very capital intensive, very labor intensive. It takes five to ten years to bring an orchard into production and you can lose your crop in just a few minutes," Ryan added. "Spring, for us, is a very fragile time, and you just hold your breath. What we want is a late spring, no temperature extremes."

Ryan added that her orchard's working on plans to open a tasting room soon for her various ciders, possibly by early summer, along with a home for cider dinners and an eventual CSA for apples, pasta and hard cider shares.

Plenty to do before her season starts for good, in other words.