Getting Ready

Tomorrow is a market day and that has meant I have spent most of my energy today getting ready for market.

The day before market starts early, I start harvesting leafy greens and herbs a bit after sunrise. Actually today because Eugene didn't get up until after 6:30 I opened the chickens, fed them and moved their tractors off of their nightly manure area (chickens poop while they sleep). I was about the get them water when he appeared carrying their waterer. After chicken duty I started in oh the harvesting. Normally I do all the harvesting for the Saturday farmers' market on Friday but this week Friday fell on a bad day for harvesting (or doing much of anything with plants other than killing weeds) according to the biodynamic calendar "The Stella Natura". So yesterday evening I did a lot of the harvest chores. I picked all the remaining garlic scapes off of the garlic plants. Got in a lot of red turnips and picked the first of the sugar snap peas. Since I was picking things towards the end of the day I did not want to cut herbs or greens because they do not do well with late in the day harvesting. Because of this I decided to do greens and herbs this morning despite having the knowledge that things will likely not be at their best.

Between 7 and 8:30am I was cutting swiss chard, Italian parsley, cilantro, baby zukes, cucumbers, oregano, tarragon and chives. By 8:35 everything I harvested was in the big 3-door fridge to cool down. I noticed the cilantro/parsley bed was inundated with weeds but that was okay because today was a great weeding day and I later got out to wheel hoe that bed and several others.

After getting my harvest chores finished I ate some breakfast and had a second cup of coffee and got started on an email to alert my customers and other interested parties about tomorrow's Farmers' market and the fact it is Alumni weekend at Miami University and also that Betty Quantz is going to be doing a cooking Demo (she does great cooking demos and passes out lots of samples) using food from us local farmers. That took a couple of hours. I also made a lot of labels and some new signs for the market stand. After that I went up to the garden to weed out some beds that needed it. Got 3 done and decided it was too hot for such work and also it was lunch time so went back in with Eugene and had lunch and cooled off.

After lunch I got to work labeling bags and bagging up a lot of dried herbs and garlic powder and made a batch of cookies. When that was done I went to the barn and started in on the fresh herbs and other things like bunching red turnips, bagging chard and garlic scapes. All the while listening to Air America Radio (I love listening to Randi Rhodes rant about the neocons. She's so right on). When that task was done I realized I still had to get a CSA newsletter together for our lone CSA member (which I still have not done) and also to get out tally sheet done for tomorrow and a few more table signs. I did get the sheet and the signs done and than decided to blog about it.

This takes us up to now (7:45pm) and I have to still do the newsletter and get something ready for dinner and call it a night (gotta be up at 4:30am tomorrow!)