Farm Happenings at Springdale Farm
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Farm Happenings for June 24, 2020

Posted on June 20th, 2020 by Peter Seely

"Indoor" growing of cukes:  By growing some crops inside the greenhouses, we find we can better provide better, less stressful conditions for the plants.  Here is our next to last planting of cucumbers getting attached to strings to help them grow upward, where it will be easier to harvest, less disease-prone, and less susceptible to the damages of the extremes of temperature and moisture that we find in the outdoor plantings.  While most conventional greenhouse growers of vegetables use sterile, growing medium (similar to styrofoam), and feed the plants synthetic fertilizers through the watering system, we use the living soil, fortified with compost, and seaweed and kelp, to supply the necessary minerals and biological conditions to feed the plants.  But even now hydroponically-grown produce is allowed to pass the organic standards, so sometimes it is not easy to know what exactly you are getting, even if something is called "organic".  (For more info, consult the Real Organic Project, (https://www.realorganicproject.org/); many interesting stories and articles and pictures and farm profiles!

Pick-up reminders

Leave the totes at the pick-up site! 

Be sure to get to your site in the appropriate time! (If by chance ahead of time you can foresee that it will be impossible to get to your site in the allotted time, then immediately contact your pick-up host to ask if they might be able to hold onto your tote somewhat longer.  If they are able to, (which they may or may not be able to accommodate), they would need to be aware of that request before the end of the pick-up period, not after! 

Do not bring back plastic bags to the pick-up site.  Egg cartons with the Miller label, we can re-use, not any other egg cartons.  For the time being, until we can sanitize on the farm the clamshell containers like the ones we would send the sugar snap peas in, please recycle them elsewhere.  Eventually we will want to be able to use any containers we send out multiple times, but at this time we are not yet able to do that!

Patience with Harvie: While a few of you, as well as we, occasionally have something wrong go with the Harvie software that we utilize to prepare the deliveries of our produce to you, we find that the system overall saves us an incredible amount of time, and also gets you the produce that you most want, that we will continue to steadfastly work through the occasional blips that occur.  You can also continue to send to their customer support e-mail address (support@harvie.farm) questions or issues that may arise with your share!