This Week on the Farm 2/10
Well we just got back from our winter trip down to Florida to spend some time with Tyler’s parents and we are ready to jump right in to farm work. Tyler is busy working on our old white truck to get it ready to unload the freight truck that should be coming the end of this week. All of our planting trays and the system components for our new retail greenhouse should be on this load, so we need to make sure we can unload the big truck quickly. The white truck is a little temperamental in the cold weather, so Tyler is giving it some TLC today to make sure that we can use it when the delivery truck arrives.
We are also waiting for our delivery of potting media to arrive. Because we are ordering more pallets this year, we are having the pallets delivered to the cabinetry shop where Tyler works in the winter. They have a fork lift and will be able to unload the pallets much more efficiently, plus we are able to avoid an extra $55 charge per pallet for unloading without a forklift by having the pallets delivered there. We are going to take our big hay wagon over to the shop on Friday so that it is ready for whenever that delivery truck arrives.
This week we are hustling to get our big greenhouse and our germination chamber cleaned and sterilized again before we start planting on Monday. Shelbi did a great job cleaning everything in November after our season was done, but we like to make sure everything is cleaned once more before we start seeding. Since we don’t spray any chemicals to prevent disease we have to rely pretty heavily on cultural controls (like starting with clean surfaces) to keep our plants healthy.
Our other projects include getting the last of our marketing materials finalized for 2016 as we have two open house events in February. We are going to be at Heritage Monona on February 18th at a health fair for their residents. On February 23rd we will be speaking at the Columbia County Master Gardeners meeting in Portage. These are the first of our seven open house/speaking engagements for this spring, so I want to try to get everything ready in the next week so I have all of the brochures and information gathered and set aside so we can just grab our box and head to the events.
If you have sent in your share in the last week and a half we have had our mail held since we were on vacation. I should be getting your welcome packet and receipt out to you in the next day or two, so don’t worry that it got lost in the mail.
With the greenhouses getting fired up in the next week we should have more to write about in the coming weeks and more pictures to post, so stay tuned!