Who Made the Days So Long/So Short?

The sun gets up pretty early and goes down pretty late.  So, the days can seem pretty long around here.  At the same time, the long list of things that must be done AND the fact that nature just seems to SPEED UP in the Spring finds us wondering how time seems so short.

These heirloom tomatoes are MUCH bigger now

The most difficult part is trying to balance everything.  We still have office work to do (of course), but we really can't sit in the office when the sun is up and there are things to do.  Though, we have done that on some rainy, ugly days.  But, even the rainy/ugly days see us outside doing work.  And, of course, we have plant sales and Saturday farmers' market on our plates.  Add in Tammy's work at Wartburg and both of us getting used to having people on the farm four or so days a week and you've got a recipe for controlled chaos.

The poultry chores can get a bit annoying because, when they need doing - they need doing.  You can't tell a flock of broilers to wait for water when they need water.  Nor can you neglect moving their shelters once the grass around the shelter is pretty well packed down/eaten.  This is especially true when things are wet.  Water complicates matters further because you have to avoid any low spots that might pond water.

The nuggets shelter is a horse trailer. Why be conventional?

Like all people, we sometimes try to take a short cut to get something done.  For example, we figured we might be able to just push the horse trailer forward a little distance to a new area.  Normally, this would be possible.  But, this is apparently not true when the ground is really wet.  So, of course we ended up getting the tractor hooked up to it to move it.  But, then that led to a batch of additional related projects.  Fun how that happens.

The Snort can really be annoying sometimes.

The effort to put in a frost-free water line and prepare the site for the new high tunnel building has been delayed due to the rain and the excavator's schedule.  The net result is that we have a big 'no go there' zone on the farm.  If we want to do something like, oh, take the bedding from the hen room out to the compost pile, we had to take the Loooooong way around.  Thankfully, things dried out enough that Rosie and Rob cleared a path so we could take a more direct path.

And, we look at the calendar and realize our first CSA farm share distribution week is coming up.  REALLY?  How did that happen?  Well, it's probably a good thing, because we've got a batch of radish that are looking really good and the asparagus is really picking it up again.

this picture was from May 19.  It doesn't look like this now.

We really need to get into the habit of taking pictures almost daily this time of year.  For example, the picture above was taken ten days ago.  This area looks NOTHING like this now.  All of the pallets have trays with plants on them.  All of the cold frames are full.  No trailers are in this picture, but now there are TWO of them full of plants in the area.  The cold frame at the right and closest to the camera has potatoes that are draping leaves over the edge.  The second cold frame no longer has radish, but has newly planted Pablo lettuce and some green onions.  The far raised bed no longer has wood sides, it now has steel sides and had green onions added to the spinach already in the bed.

By next Friday, we are hopeful that the pallets will still be full, but with a completely different set of trays.  All of the trays on there now should be planted or (hopefully) sold.  Although the latter is probably wishful thinking since we have about 700 heirloom tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, cucumber, onion and lettuce transplants currently available.  Send people our way if plants are still needed/wanted.

Until next time!