First off, welcome to the 2020 season! We’re excited to have all 270 of you joining us this season. We know we’re not in the most normal of times right now, but we’ve got what we think is an awesome crop plan for the year and we’re excited to share it with you all.
Just some general information quick for everyone that’s joining us for the first time or that want to brush up on how it all works - here is a link to the email we sent last week with info regarding setting preferences, swapping items, pickup locations, etc.: https://mailchi.mp/105e43153607/veggie-boxes-start-soon
We’ll be sending an email out shortly to everyone that will be using the 24/7 cooler trailer in Cheboygan with detailed pickup instructions, keycode access, etc. If anyone has a question about their pickup, let us know, but most will be a self-serve pickup, as they have been in the past - your box will be labeled with your name. With the exception of Mackinac Island, we request box returns each delivery (simply bring back your previous box when you pick up your next one). Each box will have a disposable plastic liner with your contents inside. For food safety purposes, we do not reuse these bags, so we encourage you to repurpose or recycle them.
Shifting gears a bit, I can’t think of a better way of explaining how the start of the growing season is going than to say that I am writing this first farm happening of the 2020 season at 4:30 in the morning after having been up for hours battling the cold temperatures overnight (we’re currently at 30.4 degrees - not quite the 37 they predicted!). There’s nothing to wake you up in a hurry quite like laying additional row cover at 2:30am with headlamps or heating up frozen irrigation valves by 4am. Soon enough, the sun will be up and we’ll be taking apart all of our work from hours before - it’s just the way the game goes!
This spring has been anything but consistent; about a week after we started our first outdoor planting the forecast changed and we ended up with a low of 19 one night within a string of well below freezing nights (a far cry from the 40’s that were predicted when we decided to plant). A couple weeks later we hit a high of 90 and now just a few days later, here we are again covering crops and running sprinklers to avoid any damage to the warm season crops. Fortunately, we bought a couple thousand feet of row cover this spring - we thought we’d be using it to try to give our warm season crops a boost; little did we know we would be using it just to keep both our warm and cool season crops alive.
Despite all of this and the inevitable delays it’ll cause with some crops, we’re having a great start to the season around here! Everyone’s excited about the season and we’re getting a ton of work done each week. We typically start falling a bit behind this time of year as harvesting begins, while the weeds are growing exponentially and planting is still happening in full force, but everyone’s putting in extra hours to make sure that we stay on track. So, we want to make sure everyone that’s working here gets a little shoutout, because as much as Greta (or I) may be the face of the farm, we couldn’t make it all happen without a crew that’s so dedicated to what’s happening around here.
Given that we’re running on only a few hours sleep at this point and have a lot of things on the to-do list when the daylight breaks in a few hours, I think we’ll leave this farm happening a bit short, but, again, we’re excited to have all of you joining us.
If anyone has any questions before the season kicks off, by all means send us a quick message and we’ll get you all squared away!Have a good week!
-Brendan & Greta
