This is CSA week so don’t get caught without your CSA share. We still have a few sitting on the shelf. Go to our online farmstand to reserve yours for this season! Order soon we are getting close to selling out.
While there you might as well pick-up a ‘ShroomShare or EggShare or FlowerShare. Oh what the heck, pick up all three and throw in a CoffeeShare for good measure.
Tell both of your friends to join as well and if they remember to write your name in the “Where did you hear about us?” spot on the order we will credit your account $25!
Final payment for people who put down a deposit on their shares is due by the end of March. If you don’t know how much you owe feel free to contact me. We offer payment plans as well.
The greenhouse will be relaunching next week! Please plan accordingly.
Farm News
As you’d expect there isn’t a lot of exciting farm news this time of year. It is mostly ordering supplies. Reordering supplies from a different supplier that were sold out from the usual supplier. Getting angry at the usual supplier for not being transparent about their inventory so you didn’t waste your free shipping on supplies that are sold out. Ensuring that you did get all the supplies you were looking to get. You get the idea.
So there is that plus the whole tax thing. Who knew taxes could be so complicated? My one-sided postcard tax return I was promised with the last rewrite of the federal tax laws is the size of a small parking lot. I’m not sure the post office would deliver it for the price of a post card stamp. I wonder where I went wrong.
The other thing going on right now is finalizing the greenhouse project. It is mostly ready for next week but we still have a few glitches to work out. When it is all done — hopefully by the end of the week — we will be farming in a computer controlled greenhouse environment complete with touch screen and colorful LEDs! We’ve finally made it into the 21st century, except of course for everything else like our 1946 tractor.
Another project we are progressing along is our disease mitigation project. As I mentioned in a past newsletter, we are using a hot water bath treatment to hopefully rid our seeds of harmful pathogens. The process is fairly precise. If not followed correctly we run the risk of killing not only the pathogens but also the seeds. So to ensure I’m not a serial seed killer I practiced the process on a few older broccoli seeds we haven’t planted in recent years. I setup an experiment where I heat treated a few seeds of two different varieties then tried to germinate them — along with a control group of non-treated seeds — in our patent pending germination chamber some might call “just a ziplock bag with a wet towel inside”.
After leaving the germination chamber in our climate controlled laboratory (my wife calls it a kitchen) for a few days I took a look and viola we have germinated seeds in both the experimental group and the control group. Who’s calling it just a ziplock bag with a wet towel inside now?
So it appears the process does no harm. We won’t know if it is helpful until we see how much disease pressure we have on the plants this season. I’m hopeful it will be successful!
That’s pretty much it. Now I am off to all the CSA week events. Now I am back from all the CSA Week events. Phew! Feel free to send in questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, etc.