What Happens When We Aren't Looking
The clematis blooms, and it's ever so lovely. It's easy to get caught up in the practicality of vegetables, but there are so many flowers on the farm as well, most of them thanks to my grandmother's efforts.
Things have reached a fever pitch here on the farm ahead of the market's opening weekend - only two (!) more days left. I finished planting the cucumbers tonight, so that's bought us a little time and space in the greenhouse. I'm also in the middle of some storage experiments with the green garlic; right now it looks like storing it like parsley (ends in a glass of water, tops covered in a plastic bag) is winning out.
I had a good laugh tonight when I read through my weekly supply lists/inventories from last year's market - we really were scrambling to put together enough to warrant a trip downtown. Timing and scale are our two biggest challenges because of our manpower issues, but I think this year we've made tremendous progress, and we're actually planning for succession plantings of some crops like tomatoes and basil.
Since the garden/greenhouse situation can be left in a holding pattern for the next few days, we're spending most of our working time organizing supplies and working on our booth presentation. It's times like this when I'm extremely grateful for the marketing and packaging experience I've accumulated in my career as a graphic designer!
But for the moment I'm going to put on the clerical hat and draw up some spreadsheets to keep track of what we take to the market and how much of it we sell. If you're on the mailing list, expect a test email tomorrow and then this week's actual market inventory email to go out late Friday afternoon.
