Date Night and Other Stories

How we do Date Night at GFF

At one point in time, Tammy and I saw Friday as the gateway to the weekend, just as so many people do.  But, since we started this vegetable farm thing, Fridays just don't mean the same thing they used to.

Today's 'date night' began with a wild flurry to get the truck loaded with vegetables, eggs and plants for our plant sale down at Hansen's Outlet in Cedar Falls.  We were also delivered egg orders and our Spring CSA shares to our Cedar Falls members.  While we were at it, we delivered a few other orders for lettuce and asparagus.  Nearly everyone who placed orders showed up, many plants were purchased and we were able to converse with many wonderful people.

Once the truck was reloaded, we did manage to go somewhere for dinner.  But, we did so with the knowledge that rain was coming *and* we still had to pick and prepare for the Waverly Farmers' Market tomorrow morning.  We ate fairly quickly and rolled home watching the clouds in the West.

Veg Cleaning by Candlelight

While days are long, dark clouds in the West make it hard to see much earlier.  Of course, if you start cleaning your veg at 9:15 PM, you probably are asking for some problems with available light outside.  So, we grabbed a trouble light and an extension cord and hung it up in the cleaning area.  Tammy thought it was romantic to be cleaning veg by 'candlelight.'

Ok, maybe she didn't think it was romantic.  But, it was still part of our date night.

To make a long story less long, we were still outside cleaning veg when it started to sprinkle about 9:30 PM.  It's moments like that where we are both amused and a bit irritated by the situation.  It's better if we emphasize the amused part.

What is it about 9:30PM and RAIN this Spring?

It seems that 9:30 PM is time for rain over the last week or so.  If we could count on this schedule, I suspect we could find some way to deal with it...

But, we're finding it difficult to deal with the amount of rain we are getting again this Spring.  It is terribly frustrating for us to see that some of our fields might be ready to work in the next day or so, only to have it rain again.  We might have been able to get into some of the fields tomorrow afternoon.  But, all you have to do is look at the forecast to see that we will not do so.  Ah well, we'll make it work.

It Huffed and it Puffed

One of our 9:30pm rains packed a wallop.  That wind that knocked down trees in Waverly gave us a pretty good poof on the farm as well.  The arborvitae trees were bent over so that their tops were horizontal to the ground. 

There was some loud noises I couldn't identify for awhile, though the back of my brain told me it was the barn.  It seems the peak of the barn decided to get a bit lower during that Poof.  It did not, however, do us the favor of falling all the way down.  I wonder if we could ask the Port Authority to help us?

Blue Cars and the Port Authority

One of the best things about having new people work on the farm is that Rob can teach them all about farm-related things - even if some of those things might fall under "creative writing."

For example, every weekday at about 3:45pm, a blue car speeds down our road.  About 2 minutes later, it comes back the other way.  I've already got our workers looking for that blue car every day.  We're trying to come up with the best reasons for this behavior.   Some that we've discussed over the past summer + this Spring are:

• this person is rushing home to get his 'super suit.'
• they fall for the phone prank "Is your refrigerator running - it's running down the street" every day and have to go check to see if their appliance is all right.  Their friends must think it's a real hoot to get them to take that drive every afternoon.
• the GPS in the car has a glitch that takes them down this detour every day.  It takes them a couple of miles to realize that they've followed its mistaken directions yet again.  It must be that Army Corps of Engineers turn that reminds them of this.

Then, there is the Port Authority.  Did you know that the cars you see on rural roads where the person is driving while sitting in the passenger side are Port Authority vehicles?  They're checking to see if there need to be tariffs placed on things in your mailbox.  It doesn't have to make sense.  In fact, it is better when it doesn't.

Nuggets sans Wisdom

These are not nuggets of wisdom.  Instead, they are chicken nuggets!  The broilers are at nugget size right now.   Old enough to be past the 'cute' stage and well on their way to the 'annoying' stage.

They are growing well and we're trying to get them outside on pasture.  There are several issues - among them is the weather.  It has been hard to find a day to put them out when the night won't present challenges.  Eventually, you give up and get them out there anyway.  The problem is, it means you spend an inordinate amount of time finding ways to tighten up the shelter to keep them healthy.