June 18th, 2019
What’s in your share?
Radishes
Salad Mix
Scallions
Boy Choy
Stir Fry Greens
Cabbage
Cilantro
Looking back over the last few months, I can’t believe how much we have accomplished since January. Thinking back to the winter days of endless planning, long lists outlining the days, weeks, and months to come. How anxious we were for the snow to melt and for the temperatures to reach above freezing so we could work outside. And when winter conditions endured, we worked nonetheless. We built our first greenhouse in several feet of snow and freezing temperatures, maneuvering ladders, power tools, and lots of heavy metal; our frozen fingers dropping countless screws in the snow. We made a home for those first seedlings, lighting the fire every night, covering and uncovering them with blankets every day. When it snowed at the end of April, half our field was already planted. The three of us crawled around in the dark that night trying to brush off the snow from many of the crops you find in your share today.
In May we built two more high tunnels in our field. May and June are already the most overwhelming months on the farm, when the field is cultivated, seeded and planted in its entirety. Having to build two more 30’ by 75’ structures amidst all the other work tested our resilience. One afternoon, the air got suddenly warm and the sky went dark. It took four of us to hold onto the endwall of one of our tunnels before we had to cut it off entirely. We love living and farming as close as we do to the lake, but 50 mile per hour gusts of wind are humbling, to say the least.
The rain and wind were just as stubborn as us this spring, yet each week we continued to build, seed, and plant. Our system of using permanent raised beds in our field set us ahead of many other growers in our area, many of them with fields still too saturated to work. Our style of farming is more reliant on human power than machine power, and in this case, it’s easier to get yourself unstuck from the mud than a sinking tractor.
If the act of farming on a daily basis can be described as anything, I’d describe it as constant problem solving. Luckily there’s three of us, and despite unprecedented temperatures and precipitation this spring, we’ve made it to today.
We’re so proud and excited to bring you the first share of the year, hopefully just the beginning of more homegrown goodness to come.