I have to get this out before the writers go on strike! Oops, too late. But first a few announcements.
Potato (or as Dan Quayle spells it, Potatoe) planting party is this Saturday from 1:00 until done. Come enjoy the lovely weather, the lovely company and the lovely exercise! We have a new way of planting the potatoes which I think everyone will find quite lovely. Bring the kids. Bring the parents. Bring the neighbors! We’d love to see all of you lovely people there! Let me know if you can make it!
Still trying to sell the remaining shares. We had a good run this past week. If we could have a couple more weeks like that we could sell out! Keep sending people our way!
Speaking of shares. Why not buy a VeggieShare for Mother’s Day? That way Mom can make you dinner with all these delicious, nutritious veggies! Win-win! (This is this week’s lesson in our ongoing series “How to identify humor and not get mistakenly outraged!” How many of you correctly identified it?)
Payments for shares are past due unless you are on a payment plan. Send in your payment or contact me if you don’t know what you owe.
For those who ordered six packs, they should be ready the week of May 15th depending on the weather. I’ll send out an update when we get closer.
Which reminds me, you can still order Eggs, Coffee, Flowers and Mushrooms! We have just a couple of WinterShares left so if you plan to get a WinterShare please order it soon!
Farm New
I was curious to see how this season’s late start compared to last year’s late start so I took a look back at the May 3, 2022 newsletter and I was surprised that though in some ways we are running later than even last years late start, there are also some things that are far ahead of last year. For example, the picture at the top of the last May’s newsletter is blooming crocuses. This year we had a picture of blooming crocuses in the April 12th 2023 newsletter — almost three weeks ago! Another picture from last May’s first newsletter was a picture of garlic. It is about a quarter of the size of this year’s garlic plants. I find this quite fascinating because as of May 2nd 2023 we have not put anything into the ground. Plus we had hail this past Saturday! And this evening (Tuesday) the forecast calls for a low of 34 degrees. It has been a very strange April indeed!
And that is why we are now having to plant everything, everywhere all at once! Our greenhouse is overflowing with plants. Our cold frame is overflowing with plants. And our outdoor acclimating benches are almost full! I don’t have an exact count on the number of plants but just the onions are over 10,000! So starting Wednesday we will be planting like there is no tomorrow. (Actually if I really think about it, if there truly was no tomorrow I don’t think I’d spend the day planting. Seems like a waste of time if we are all going to perish). Everything on the outdoor benches and everything in the cold frame needs to be planted this week. We may even have a few things in the greenhouse that should be planted. Plus we have a bunch of direct seeded crops that need to go in. We have to check and possibly repair the underground irrigation lines. We need to hook-up the drip lines to the header lines so we can start irrigating the transplanted crops. We have to setup the sprinklers on the direct seeded crops to get them off to a good start. The garlic could already use a good weeding. And we have to get the area ready for planting the potatoes this Saturday! And this doesn’t even take into account fixing whatever breaks during this process.
But we’ll git er done! Because we have no choice. The weather forecast looks favorable for a lot of outdoor farming so that’s helpful. We have two returning employees on this season’s crew which will make training less of an issue. Plus the other two crew members seem quite capable! (You got to love it when you try to hand the new guy a box cutter to cut drip tape and he pulls out a large knife and says, “That’s not a knife. This is a knife!”)
Anyway, I’m sure by the time this newsletter goes out we’ll either have planted a bunch of brassicas or you’ll hear me swearing wherever you may live. Let’s hope for the former.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, jokes, puzzlers, share payments or share orders!
This Week’s Joke
Why is Yoda such a good gardener?
He has a green thumb!
May the fourth be with you!