This Week on the Farm 3/22
Spring is officially here! The garlic is up, the sandhill cranes are back, and we have been so busy getting the season up and running that I haven’t had time to update our blog!
A large part of our time has been spent getting our retail greenhouse up and running. It now has its double layer of plastic installed and Tyler installed the louvers and the ventilation fans this past weekend. We barely survived the 60 mph winds of last week. A section of the metal channel that holds the plastic in place ripped off of the framing and I struggled to hold down what basically amounted to a 20 foot kite while Tyler re-screwed the channel back onto the frame. It was a stressful half an hour, but we managed to get it back in place and it should be good to go now.
Now that the plastic is on the next tasks are to get the doors installed, install the furnace, electrical, and circulation fans. He spent a good portion of today at the store getting the last of the lumber to frame out the doors and other supplies to finish the electrical work. We had a truck deliver four pallets of cinder blocks and additional lumber to construct the greenhouse benches. My sister and her family are coming down this weekend and are going to help us build the benches.
Next week we should hopefully have the new electric line installed (they have to put in an additional line from the road to get us enough service). We also need to have the gas tank installed, but that has to wait until the furnace is fully installed. There are a lot of different pieces that are all coming together in the next two weeks and I am hoping that everything goes smoothly. We need to get that greenhouse up and running because we are starting to run out of space in our other greenhouses.
Our big greenhouse is currently full of flowers, some of which I have started to up pot because they are getting so big. Our two smaller greenhouses house our vegetables for our CSA members. Currently we have scallions, onions, leeks, kohlrabi, kale, collards, broccoli, and some herbs in those greenhouses. This week we add a second planting of a lot of the cole crops. It is so lovely to go down to a warm space and see green things growing!
We would like to thank all of our member who have gotten their sign-up forms in for this season already. We are already ahead of where we were last year and we have a lot of new members too!