Notes from the farm: BIG days/weeks around here!
This time of year the days feel bright and FULL with a serious uptick in farm activities. My energy has come back in pace with the sun and warmer temps. It feels like I do so much in each day (with great zeal) and, yet, I’m still not acclimated to the transition from the restful season of winter. Which means I’m totally pooped by the end of the day. The birds are chirping a full chorus all day long and the landscape has gone from grey/brown to vibrant green in a matter of days. The chickens are laying more eggs and the robins are busy gathering small sticks for their nests. It’s an exciting time and I figured you could use some good news so here’s a few highlights from the past few weeks.
We harvested our first full buckets of anemones and crates of double tulips from the hoop houses. Which meant we had flowers for wholesale and started taking orders and making deliveries last week.
After about six weeks of on and off sorting through applications and interviewing potential candidates for our farm crew we made the official offers. This year we had more qualified people and more applicants than any of the last 4 years. I think it’s because we made some tweaks to our crew format: namely we upped our hourly wages and changed the posted positions to be only part-time. As I’ve said in past newsletters, farming is laborious/hard work in all kinds of weather, compared to other industries it’s relatively low paying and it’s only for nine months out of the year. For all of those reasons it’s hard to retain people season after season. I’m trying to do what I can to make the work more sustainable for the people working here and also easier for me to manage, with hopefully less retraining and rehiring over time. Which is part of why I’m making the huge leap into hiring two full-time temporary agricultural workers from other countries through the H2A visa program. I wrote about this program last month and have been sharing lots about it on our social media. Fingers-crossed our first worker, Ade, from Mexico arrives by the end of this week.
Other behind-the-scene happenings:
We've been working on a huge drainage project to help water flow away from our high tunnels, and out of one of our fields - hopefully reducing flooding during rain events.
We got a new-to-us cooler to help us store the big boom of flowers we get every spring with thousands of tulips and ranunculus blooming at the same time. With a few minor upgrades she'll be "cool" in no time.
Thanks for reading along. I hope you have a good week and are able to get some sunshine on your cheeks. -Maggie
