Still taking orders for veggies, fruit, eggs, shrooms, cheese, coffee, flowers, and winter shares. We also sell six packs of plants if you are interested. Place your order in our online farmstand!
Final payment for your shares is due this month. Let me know if you have any questions.
Last call for nuts and/or legumes. The interest isn’t where it needs to be for us to offer these two items so if you are interested please let me know ASAP. Find out more in this old newsletter.
Farm News
I was walking down the driveway the other day as I am wont to this time of year and experienced something I haven’t experienced in quite some time. For those unfamiliar with our farm our driveway isn’t the typical suburban driveway. It is about 900 feet long (takes awhile to shovel in the winter time) so it is a reasonably long walk for a driveway walk. Also, this is the time of year that with greenhouse work I tend to walk down the driveway quite a few times a day. The greenhouse is at the other end of the driveway from our house. Well, not quite at the end. At the end is the street, which I think is pretty typical when it comes to driveways. House on one end. Street on the other. Greenhouse in between but far closer to the street end.
Wait. Where was I? Oh yes. Walking down our long driveway. As I walked toward the greenhouse I started passing gas. Odd. I don’t usually pass gas walking down the driveway but I guess maybe it happens? I recall passing gas walking down the driveway once before but that was back in 2009. Anyway, I figured I had work to do and no time for this so off I went to the greenhouse.
After planting a bunch of onion seeds I headed back for lunch. As I walked up the driveway back to the house I started passing gas again! Like clockwork. So, odd. But I wasn’t certain. So when I got to the house I found my son Chris and asked him to come check it out. We walked down the driveway and at first didn’t notice anything unusual. Then suddenly we were both passing gas! Yikes! It was time to call in the experts!
So I called Xcel and told them I was passing gas every time I walked down the driveway. The customer support rep was a little confused at first but when I explained how as I walked down the driveway I smelled gas as I was passing by a certain spot. He then better understood.
Within the hour I had an Xcel (should that be “a” Xcel or “an” Xcel?) truck on site. The technician walked around with his sniffer sniffing around my driveway looking for the source of the gas. It took awhile to figure out the exact location. Well, to be more precise, to find the approximate location, which actually sounds less precise. They couldn’t identify the exact location until they dug up the pipe.
At this point I was getting a bit concerned. You see, the gas pipe is located above the power line and below the telecommunication line all placed in the same trench when it was first installed. That wasn’t my concern though. My concern was I put an irrigation line above the other lines. And having them dig up the gas line was surely going to dig up my irrigation line. And equally troubling, I fear the gas locator guy pounding in the three foot long metal gas sniffer doohickey may have penetrated my irrigation lines as well! Seems like this Spring’s irrigation pipe repair season may involve far more than gopher holes.
Once the approximate location was determined a group of workers in hardhats arrived. As I observed the activities I determined that to dig up a gas line you need two people to do the digging and three people to supervise. — plus the gas sniffing guy. It might be time to implement a similar approach to management here at the farm.
It took them five or six hours to complete the task. There was some medium-size equipment digging.and a lot of hand digging. I suppose they didn’t want to create an even bigger problem using the larger equipment so hand digging was the best option.
They found a pretty small hole in the gas pipe. Much smaller than I expected and far smaller than any gopher hole I’ve repaired on our irrigation lines. Makes me think there might be a bunch of these smaller holes in our irrigation lines but since water doesn’t smell strongly I don’t notice them. I don’t understand why gophers tunnel through pipes instead of just going around them? I suppose since they are a member of the rodent family their main purpose in life is to destroy everything we humans create. I’m hoping that since this was a gas pipe and not a water pipe that this was the last time this particular gopher makes a tunnel.
Anyway, now when I walk down the driveway I am no longer passing gas. Well, I suppose that isn’t entirely true. I am still passing gas but I’m no longer smelling it, which is how gas should be.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, share orders, or other items you think would be relevant.
Joke of the Week
What is invisible and smells like carrots?
Bunny farts.