Errata to Erratic

Just a few sundry thoughts to put in the blog that deserve sharing.

Farm Errata #1:
The meat chickens (well, at least half of them) were supposed to take their trip to the park this week. Unfortunately, there was a scheduling snafu and they are still on the farm - wreaking havoc and causing general mayhem. We still intend to have the last laugh. Wednesday. We can hold on until Wednesday....

Erratic ID:
One of our CSA families sent their offspring to pick up the share a week or so ago. Asked to describe what was in the share for the week ,the response was something like this:
"Well, there's lettuce...and another kind of lettuce...and an odd sort of lettuce with round, red things hanging off of the leaves..."

For the uninitiated, that sort of lettuce is recognized by many as radishes....

All I can say is this - if it were my family - the rest of the members would never let this person forget!

Error Rat (ah!):
We should have known this would happen some day. We have a nest of rats in the barn that have found out that we feed grain to our birds. DB and Cubbie (the outdoor farm managers aka cats) have taken opposite opinions on this matter. DB has decided that they aren't worth the effort. Cubbie seems to enjoy the challenge and has been seen nabbing a rat or two.

Still, it can be a little alarming (hence the 'ah!' part of the label) when one runs over your foot.

Er..Radical?:
I met a person at the post office a while back who asked how this CSA thing worked. I gave the standard magazine subscription analogy - which fell flat with this person. So, I tried another approach. I asked if they had ever bought a large amount of some product because it was on sale - figuring it would keep and they just use it up over time. After confirmation that they had - I suggested that a CSA share was similar - except that we (the farmer) stored the produce at our farm in the form of plants that were growing and we would then mete it out as it was ready.

Response? "That's a bit too radical for me..."

It must be the long hair.

Farm Errata #2:
We have gotten our wake up call in the form of a wider range of produce to pick for CSA distributions. Thursday's shares had beets, summer squash, zucchini, beans, peas, kohlrabi, basil, cilantro, some peppers, some tomatoes, radish (lettuce with red or pink round things on the ends), kale and (of course) lettuce.

The upshot is this - we are now picking things that take a long time to pick (beans and peas). We are also picking things that must be picked frequently to keep them producing (summer squash for example). And, we are now increasing our cleaning and packing complexity. Guess we're going to have to stop doing anything other than picking and packing on Tues/Thus and we're going to have to start pulling in workers to help with these tasks.

It's a good problem to have - just requires an adjustment or two for the season changes.