I started keeping a “farm journal” just over a year ago. It’s one of those “Five Year Journals” where each day has five entry spaces on it so you can document what you did on the same day for a five year period. Audra has been doing one for our son since he was born. She’s much more diligent about it than I am. So far this year, though, I’ve documented something about the farm every day. It’s been interesting to see already how this year is so different than last, but also how similar it is. We keep growing and changing in ways we maybe never thought possible, though life still plugs along in the same glorious way it always has.
According to my journal, our plants are just a little bit behind where they were last year (more due to the cool spring than any fault on our part). Granted, we have a lot MORE plants than we did last year. A year ago yesterday we first put our chickens into their outdoor coop. I celebrated the anniversary privately by spending two hours cleaning and disinfecting their coop today. Today may be a helpful thing to remember the next time I think we need even more chickens.
Last week one of our customers made a joke to Audra about how she just pictures us outside in the field in miner’s helmets at night doing all the work that we don’t have time to do in the daylight. She was kidding, but she didn’t know that we had just purchased new headlamps on Amazon and had been giving them a run for their money ever since. With last night’s fear of frost, we were out there again, headlamps blazing, installing low tunnel hoops and frost protection fabric over all of our cold-sensitive crops. Of course we forgot to order the bags to fill with sand to weigh them down, so we had to search for anything and everything we could that would work as a temporary weight. Rocks, broken pieces of concrete, plastic weights from an old weight bench, and Schwan’s ice cream buckets filled with sand all work just fine in a pinch. I think tomorrow I’ll call our produce supply company and add sand bags to the growing list of things that we still need to buy. Hopefully we won’t need them again until this fall.
As the sun dips further towards the horizon as I write these words, I guess that’s my cue to get back out there. I have eggs to collect, a hoop house to close up, and hive boxes to get ready to add to my beehives tomorrow. Sometimes I hear people complain about being bored or having nothing to do. I feel like I’m a pretty empathetic person and can find common ground with just about anyone, but I have no damn idea what that emotion feels like. I’m assuming it involves feeling less sore and tired than I currently am, but even so, I think I’ll keep on keepin’ on.
If you haven’t already, please add our open house to your calendar for Saturday, June 25 from 3:00-6:00. There will be lots of veggies and flowers to purchase and farm tours all afternoon. We’d love to have you help us celebrate our second year of this crazy, exhausting, and strangely satisfying adventure.
