Wrong Salad, When a Lettuce is not a Lettuce

I have been reading things about salads that really bother me the past couple of weeks. Specifically I see lists of favorite "lettuces" and the list always seems to include arugula, mache and frisee. All wonderful salad greens but not a single one of them is a member of the lettuce family,  Lactuca sativa.
Here is one example of a misinformed Food writer Twinkle's Kitchen  and another from Heifer International (whom you would think would know better)

3 kinds of Lettuce, leaf, bibb and romaine

Mach (aka corn salad, Lewiston cornsalad, lamb's lettuce, fetticus, field salad, mâche, feldsalat, nut lettuce and rapunzel.) is Valerianella locusta, a completely different genus than lettuce. It is a nice low growing green that is one of the first greens to come up in our yards and garden in the late winter/early spring. It is jammed packed with a lot of nutrients. But it ain't lettuce, despite some of the common names implying such.

Frisee is an endive which hails from the chicory family and a gain not a lettuce, though it is green, leafy and generally eaten raw in salads

Arugula, Eruca sativa (aka rocket, roquette) is another non lettuce salad green. Arugula is a brassica and is closely related to mustard, cabbage, and broccoli. We grow a lot of arugula on our farm and it is one of our all tome favorite salad greens (and we grow some of the best arugula on the planet, why? I don't know but we seem to have an affinity for the stuff)

Arugula

If food writers, Chefs and other culinary celebs want to write about lettuce I suggest they do some homework and write about lettuce and not other salad greens. There are over 400 different varieties of lettuce grown these days (though most people only know about leaf, iceberg, romaine and bibb). Some of my favorites include the lollos, an Italian frilly bibb like lettuce that is a stunning red and green, Amish deer tongue that looks like a cross between bibb and romaine but is neither. Cracoviensis, one of the most ancient lettuces and likely one of the parents of romaine.

These people do are doing the public a disservice by calling things that are not lettuce, lettuce. it is much like an automotive writer calling a pick-up truck a sedan, they two are not the same, though both do have similarities. it doe show me how disconnected people are from the food they eat when supposed experts get such simple things wrong. And when people read what these folks write they assume the "experts" are correct. Sadly with food and garden writing all too often the "experts" are dead wrong and and that is no good for the salad eating public and it is truly vexing to us lettuce and salad green growers who have to explain over and over again to our customers who read and/or hear this misinformation  that arugula, et. al. are not lettuces at all, though they are lovely salad greens in their own right.

Food writers, Chefs and the rest of you salad experts try to get this right from now on. Go out and learn about the wonderful world of lettuces and quit calling all salad greens lettuce. Thank you in advance

Lettuce 101

Check out what I wrote for the Farm Aid (yeah, like in Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp) site's Homegrown.org site about how to grow your own lettuce

Lettuce 101

Putting Together a Winter Share

Harvesting the produce is only half the battle putting it all together into a share is the other half. Once things are out of the field and cleaned up than the produce is ready to be bunched, boxed, etc.. and than put together into shares. The following pictures show how we put together the most recent winter share.

after weighing out and/or bunching or bagging finished items are put into 15 individual piles, one pile per winter share member. So far this pile has carrots, cilantro, leeks dried tomatoes and root parsley

Because our members get what would be a double regular share we had to make 2 piles per member and this is the beginning od th pile #2. We have shallots, garlic and wheat berries

Collard greens bunched and ready to add to the pile. these things are so sweet that the dog stole several leaves and ate them while we were harvesting

Eugene weighing Up potatoes

The piles grow and now we have added beets to this side..

...and spring mix, collards, kale, broccoli and parsley and a bag of lettuce. And there are 3 boxes of winter squash one has butternut, one has delicata and one has acorn. they got one of each kind in their shares

Pears and spinach have been added

Close up of 1/2 of a finished share with the potatoes added to the pile

and here is the other half, it's a lotta food

Eugene is doing a final check of the shares to make sure we got everything just right

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March Winter Market Adventures

It is the last morning of winter (as far as the position of the sun in the sky) but it has been spring here for weeks.

We did the March edition of the Oxford Winter farmers Market and sold out of everything but garlic, garlic powder, dried beans, catnip and dried herbs.

We brought in a lot of greens (and some roots)
30 bags of spinach
18 bags of lettuce
13 bags of spring mix
5 bags of arugula
3 bags of mizuna
13 bags of kale
15 boxes of potatoes
4 bags of parsnips
5 bags of chard
52 leeks

and around 95% of it sold in under 1 hour. That was some crazy selling for us, constant taking orders, fulfilling orders, making change and refilling the baskets. Eugene and i were busy little beavers.

than it was over, we had few things left on our table and an hour of market left to go.

So I went shopping and bought 4 packs of nitrate free Organic sauasages from the Filbruns and than got ground beef from Hokebee farms and stew beef and a roast from Reserve Run and 5 pounds of honey from Scott Downing, the Apple Man who sets up next to us and sells it cheap ($15!).

Eugene bought me a new mixing bowl from the potter who was set up next to us. He had broken a favorite mixing bowl of mine, an 8" Roseville bowl my sister gave to me years ago. I have several 10" Roseville mixing bowls but only one of the 8" bowls. And I discovered it is very hard to replace this 8" bowl with a Roseville bowl or anything not made from plastic. Or at least it was until last month at the farmers market I saw that this potter (I really should learn his name as he has been selling at OFMU for 2 or 3 years and now I own one of his pieces) has a cobalt blue 8" bowl. The bowl is everything I wanted-locally made, ceramic, 8" and blue.

Ended the day bartering 2 leeks and a bag of beet greens for some bread with Pia Terranova. She wanted to just give me the bread but I had 2 leeks and a single bag of greens left over and because she took those items we could turn off the commercial fridge when we got home

So all and all a fantastic market

Winter Farm Fun

I had a spring mix order to fill for tomorrow so that meant going up to the salad house and seeing what there was to cut. So Eugene and I went up to see what's what and among other things, found buried in the area that is supposed to have onion seedlings a deer leg. Nice.


So he moved the leg out of the garden and we proceeded on to the salad house, went inside and found it nice and warm-a good 10 degrees warmer than outside. Nice conditions for the arugula, lettuces, mizuna, mustard and weeds growing in there.

We keep row covers on everything to keep the risk of frost damage down and so far this winter it has worked well. Though, in past winters, even with row cover and gallon milk jugs acting as heat sinks, we have had major damage to the crops. But not this year and it has been real nice to be able to eat fresh greens in deep winter. But using row covers means we have to remove them to work the beds

and That is exactly what Eugene is doing here, removing the cover over the arugula and mustard bed. And you can see the beds beyond him and next to him have no covers over them because I took those off so I could cut greens.


While I cut Eugene hoed. Even in winter we have to do some weeding. But the weeds and crops grow slowly so it is relatively easy to keep up with them. This arugula/mustard bed was not too bad and the soil was dry enough to work


But this lettuce bed to the south of the arugula/mustard bed was quite wet and hard to hoe. But it has to be done before these weeds all flower and go to seed


and you can see already some of the winter hardy weeds are beginning to flower. That is because in the hoop houses it is already late Feb/early March.

So for about 30 minutes we hoed weeds and cut salad. I harvested a pound of spring mix in that time. In warmer months I would have easily harvested 15 pounds in a half hour of cutting and within 10 days the cut beds would have grown back. This time of year it takes about 8 weeks for the greens to grow back. though this will change in a matter of days, by mid month the crops in the hoop houses will have broken dormancy and will start growing again.


About the time we were all done with work in the hoop house and were debating whether or not we should call it quits or not (there was a little bit of hoeing that could have been done) betty makes the decision for us by appearing outside the hoop house-we heard a noise and the next thing we see black paws on the side of the house. Betty had escaped from the fenced back yard. how? We do not know.


So we leave the hoop house taking our harvest and tools with us and see what Betty is up to.


Betty is hunting mice because she remembered that yesterday she caught her first vole right out side this hoop house and she hoped to get more (and she will in the fullness of time). So We let her poke around the perimeter of the hoop house for a bit than eventually went back to the hiuse. okay Betty and Eugene went to the house and I went to the store to bagged the Spring Mix for tomorrow's order.

Summer Summary

Fall is here which means the summer of 2009 is officially history. It was a really good summer growing and marketing season for us. the weather was cool and for the most part dry. but when we did get rain it was generally a lot and at just the right time. Still we are down over 4" on rain for the year but perhaps this fall will be wetter than normal and we will make it up.

We grew the best melons ever (and Eugene is an excellent melon grower). Maybe 2% of them were not absolutely excellent. we had several customers (and these are people who's opinions about such things I respect) tell us that our water melons were the best they have ever eaten.

The alliums out did themselves again this year, meaning they are better this year than last and last year they were incredible. Sublime garlic, gigantic leeks (and so far, all we have harvested are the small fall leeks, the winter leeks which should be 2x to 3x larger won't be ready for another month or so), beautiful onions and wonderful scallions.

The tomatoes, despite the plants succumbing to some sort of local blight (not late blight but rather something we contend with every year) fairly early, still produced a lot of huge fruits. Or at least most of them did. We did have some failures such as Black Krim which gave us few very cat faced fruits. I believe we got about 4 usable maters from 15 plants. I do not believe we will grow these again. The Paul Robeson did not do well for us but when the plants did produce typical fruit it produced some gorgeous tomatoes. I saved seed early on and this will get a second chance. The Green Zebra was something else-I believe a small red saladette type mater, something we have far too many of already. Baker Creek messed up on that and as this was about the 7th time they have messed up with us, we will not be ordering from them in 2010. I do like their philosophy but they will have to do far better with selling us correct seed, good seed and getting orders to us in a timely fashion. There are several other seed houses that do heirlooms that give us better service such as Seed Savers Exchange.

Ah enough ranting, back to maters. The great White tomato, while a bad seller, was a great producer of beautiful ivory white fruits with a good acid bite. they came on early and produced longer than just about anything else except early girls which, while early and prolific were a bit of a disappointment this year. The early girls were not as big as last year and found the flavor lacking. fortunately we had GL-18 (AKA Glick's Pride) as our mainstay red mater and they far exceeded our expectations. they were far bigger than they have been before. The shape was about perfect and they rarely cracked and had zero cat facing. It would have been nice if they could have held on a week or two longer but they got us through most of September and we had big red maters when no one else did at the farmers market, cha-ching!. The other reds we grew-the canners did really well for us but I don't think as well as last year (or was it two years ago?). We grew Amish paste and Opalka again. The Amish paste out produced the Opalka about 4:1. We grew enough of these to make and can ourselves plenty of tomato sauce, ratatouille and salsa plus we sold about 300 pounds to others so they could put up tomatoes.

The cherry tomatoes were only so so (which is actually a good thing since when they do really well that means someone has to spend several hours daily picking them and than we have to figure out what to do with the excess). We have decided never to grow green grape again since it does not sell. This means it will produce hundreds of volunteers all over the farm in the future. It is hard to get people to try the green maters. Though it seems when I can get someone to try a green grape they get hooked quickly. they are a very nice mater but for most it is hard to get past the color. The yellow pear barely produced and a lot of them were green again this year. I think it is time to get new seed. the Sun sugar did well for about 3 weeks than quit producing much and the plants now look like hell. This is good as everyone at the farmers market(s) grew this kind this year so the market was flooded and sales were way down. I think next year we will cut back a lot on the cherry tomatoes. We do not need all that many for the farm share-maybe 20 to 30 plants and it seems they have become passe at market. that will free up beds for something else next year.

Unlike last year, we have a lot of ripe peppers. Last year the peppers were very late and we got a killing frost before they got ripe. It did not help that on Sept 14th 2008 we had hurricane force winds for about 6 hours that knocked down all the pepper plants. This year things are completely different. We have a lot of huge bell peppers and they are getting ripe well before it gets cold. I have also learned to take them off the plants when they show color and they ripen up just fine indoors away from pests and diseases that tend to ruin about 50% of the ripe peppers (which is why red, yellow and orange (ripe) peppers cost twice as much as green peppers).

the raspberries out did themselves again this season. The Lathams, our early summer raspberry, was spectacular again. Heavy production and excellent quality. My only complaint was we did a piss poor job of pruning in the early spring which made parts of the raspberry patch almost impossible to harvest. Next year I am cutting back a lot more than Eugene will deem necessary (he has a problem with thinning out plants and wants to leave a lot more than should be left). The Heritage raspberries, which we mow down in early spring, had quite good production and the flavor has been sublime, far better than the Lathams (which, as I said were excellent). Eugene has this crazy notion that we should let the heritage grow and produce in spring. I have this crazy idea that he can do all the harvesting as well as tilling, seeding, transplanting and other spring chores if this happens. You see we do not need a second kind of spring raspberry when the Lathams are pumping out over 30 gallons of fruit. As it is we do not sell all the Lathams produce (we come close but in order to get rid of them we have to sell in bulk and drop the price 33%). We do sell pretty much 100% of the Late summer berries and if we allow the Heritage to have 2 crops we will lessen the fall yield by about 60% and not have enough for the FSI, store and farmers market in August and September. In other words, Eugene's idea of more spring/summer berries is a bad one on many levels.

The strawberries have not been the best. I don't think we have them in the best place and they need to be replaced this fall with new day neutral berries. the yields have been down and disease problems up. We did get a very nice crop of April may berries because we put a hoop house over them. Granted, the hoop house got nailed twice in the winter-once by heavy wet snow and than a month later by high winds. But neither incident seemed to have any effect on the berry production. it is ironic that the first year the berries have been less than great we do a farm tour and in November a workshop on sustainable berry production. I will say the farm tour attendees did not seem to care what kind of shape the berries were in. Next season we should have a new crop of berries in a new and better spot and hopefully we will be swimming strawberries all spring summer and fall next year.

The greens have been around all season. In spring we had lots of lettuce, spring mix, arugula, kale and various Asian greens. Summer we lost the lettuce-we did try to grow some several times because it was cool most of the summer but every time we started lettuce we would get 5 to 8 days of heat and humidity, always a week or two after germination and that would cause the baby lettuce to get bitter and bolt to seed. now that it is autumn we have several beds of nice lettuce growing as well as volunteers coming up around the market garden. the same thing happened with spring mix. After late June it got impossible to grow it though we did try. We did get several harvests of arugula for our efforts through the summer but nothing else from the spring mix beds. Kale and chard were the summer mainstay greens, they always are.

Broccoli did badly for us but we did get some decent cabbages. I dunno why we have such problems with broccoli, perhaps we should quit growing it. Spring radishes were hit and miss and the early red meat radishes were a complete failure. But we do have a 1/2 bed of them now that are very nice. We got really nice early rutabagas as well as red turnips. the fall red turnips are ready to harvest and store for winter, though it will be early next week before that will happen.

Finally, the Farm Share Initiative has been a great thing for us. It allowed us drop a farmers market and make more money while being allowed to stay home and get more work done. Definitely a win, win for us and the fact very few people seemed to notice there is no longer a Tuesday evening market in Oxford (maybe 10 people have asked about this this summer) tells me that we would have made less money this year than last at that market. So it is good that we are doing the FSI.

I think I will change a few things on how the FSI is run next season. This season I allowed members to sign up for the entire season but pay monthly. That will stop as it is not fair to the members that ponied up the cash for the entire season upfront. And the members who did this have all dropped out for the last month, not good. They also got a few extra weeks as I was treating them like the paid in full members as I expected them to go through the entire season. I think the monthly farm tour/pot luck will go as well since we only were able to hold two this year mostly because of a lack of interest on the part of most of the members. I think a once a year farm tour/pot luck will suffice. I am having a hard time getting it through to the members that farm visits are a very important aspect of the farm share/CSA experience. This is how one connects to their farm and without farm visits one might as well buy their food from the farmers market. I also think it is time to drop the month to month deal. This has the potential of getting very confusing which will lead to mistakes -especially when the FSI grows to more than 30 members. It will be replaced by what I used call "Share Cycles" where I break the season down into 2 or 3 month increments for those who cannot do an entire season for whatever reason.

Well, that's the summery of our summer

Store's Open for 2009

Actually it's tomorrow that I am opening the store for the 2009 season. Saturday and Sunday noon to 7pm. Regular hours will be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday noon to 5pm.

Check our website Boulderbeltfarm.com for more information

The asparagus is coming in and I have also begun picking strawberries, though I don't know if there will be enough to sell by Saturday. The hot, sunny weather today (it's 82F) should cause a lot to ripen in a hurry. Will have to play that one by ear. But asparagus we got, and it is really, really good

If I get out tomorrow morning before the winds pick up we should also have spinach, heirloom lettuce and maybe some scallions and leeks.

Today I am cleaning the store. So far I have washed the sales fridge and all the racks that go in it. Man, that refrigerator was dirty. the bottom was full of goo, dead flies, veggie bits and the walls had lots of black mold (which the GSE I used in the wash water ought to stop). The racks were also nasty and much harder to clean than the fridge box. But now everything is sparkly clean and more important sanitary. I am grateful to my restaurant exp for getting the opportunity to clean out a lot of nasty reach in fridges and walk-in coolers. Makes this job seem easy.

Next I am going to wash down the shelves and windows and do some light vaccuuming. After that put up some posters of various heirloom roots and veggies and than harvest more asparagus for tomorrow.

Pictures from the Equinox

A redwinged Blackbird sitting in an apple tree

A pair of Canada geese that flew onto the pond for a morning swim


Onions and leek seedlings in a cold frame

Eugene in the wood pile that is in the process of being shredded so it can be used as mulch


The perennial herb patch. The green things are chives

Freshly harvested heirloom lettuce from one of the hoop houses

Winter Farm Tour with Cub Scout troop 511

Yesterday we hosted cub scout pack 511. Their leader, Stacy, had called 3 weeks ago to set up a form tour so the kids can get credit for some ecological/green living badge they are working towards. So I guess they thought a tour of a sustainable farm would fit the bill. Unfortunately they had to do this before the end of this month. So we did our first ever winter farm tour and it went swimmingly.

Around 15 kids, ages 8 and nine and 5 or 6 adults came out to learn a bit about sustainable farming. it was a warm day (50F) but messy because of all the melting snow. Of course, the boys loved the fact it was wet and muddy and they could be in it. We gathered everyone on the porch of the store and than set off to look at a hoop house a compost pile (which Eugene allowed the kids to turn using a potato fork. I wish I had remembered to grab the camera because the grins I saw on those faces was priceless). Than down to the bottom field where Eugene talked about nature and stuff with the kids.

I was blown away (I always am) with how receptive the kids were to all this new information. And I was happy to see the adults were also very interested in what we had to say about sustainable farming.

At the end of the tour we gathered on the store's porch again and I passed out heirloom lettuce seed packets to the kids along with boulder belt brochures and card with the information of the Oxford winter market. That really thrilled the kids (I had forgotten how cool it is as a child to get stuff to take home). Eugene explained to everyone how to plant the lettuce and I have a feeling that most of the packets will be planted this spring.

I had forgotten how much fun farm tours are and having one for kids was even better than adults. I think we will do this again.

What We are Doing: Early Feb.

It is mid winter but not to early to start planting things for the market garden. So far we have planted several kinds of onions and 2 kinds of leeks (I am waiting on the seed to arrive for the Musselburgh leeks, an heirloom am excited to try). We also have started White Russian and Winterbor kale.

Soon we will start lettuce for head lettuce (I do not mean iceberg lettuce. All lettuce comes in heads be it leaf, bibb, buttercrunch, lollo or iceberg) inside under lights along with broccoli, cabbage and chard. Most of these things will go into a hoop house for a few weeks until it stops getting really cold at night. Than the hoop houses will be removed and they will be under row covers for the rest of their lives.

In March we will do a lot more seeds. More broccoli, lettuce and cabbage will be sowed indoors along with early zucchini, tomatoes and peppers. We will also start celeriac, parsley, rosemary (which takes about 3 to 5 weeks to germinate and has very low germination too boot) and early basil. Out doors we will start transplanting the onions and leeks and will sow seed for spring mix, arugula, scallions, spinach, parsnips and plant shallot sets. I believe we also have plans to open up more beds so we have more planting room.

We prune fruit trees and deal with the raspberry and blackberry brambles in late Feb/early March. Pruning is amazing important. Without proper pruning the quality of fruit goes way down quickly as does yield. The first year we were here we were faced with 3 apple trees that had not been properly pruned in at least a decade (if they ever were pruned correctly). the fruit was small and full of bugs and disease. the trees themselves were less than healthy and had a lot of kind of dead wood on them. So Eugene did what one should not normally do-he took off nearly 50% of the trees. You generally do not want to take more than 1/3 in any given year but these trees needed major help so they were well pruned. Since than the apples have been much bigger and much higher quality and Eugene has not had to prune more than 25% of the trees since than. The brambles are much easier to deal with because we put them in.

The heritage raspberries get mowed down in late winter because they are an everbearing and we have found the do best if they are not allowed to set fruit in the spring. The Latham raspberries have to have all the old canes removed along with any canes that cross other and canes we don't want. You want to end up with no more than 6 canes per linear foot. Last year these berries went nuts and had a bumper crop (I have never seen so many berries in my life!) so there is a lot of stuff to remove this year. Once we remove everything we will also remove any perennial weeds (dandelion, thistle, etc..) and than put on a nice 6" layer of mulch which is generally a mix of straw and cedar chips to feed the berries, keep the soil on the acid side and keep the weeds down (not that many weeds can compete with these brambles)

The other thing we will plant sometime in March are nut trees. We ordered something like 10 nut trees and when ever they arrive they will go in the ground. We have a fantasy of developing a nut grove. I'll bet the local squirrels will love us for this idea

Winter Greens

It is one of the colder and nastier Decembers in the past several years and yet, remarkably, we have leafy green crops growing just fine under row covers. What's even more remarkable is these crops seem to be doing far better than the crops in Hoop houses and under row cover. This gives them a lot more protection, in theory. Thus the hoop house crops should be doing a lot better than the crops that have only a double layer of row cover over top.

And yet they are not. I suspect that in Feb they will either take off and give us lots of high quality leafy greens or they will decide it is time to reproduce and bolt to seed and be unusable as food crops (but we will likely collect the seeds for future use).

I am not sure why this is happening to the hoop house crops but I suspect because they have been too protected and too coddled. The plants in the hoop houses have never been exposed to wind, full sun, rain or any other weather other than cold temperatures and the cold temps have not been good for a lot of crops in the hoop houses. The crops, especially the leafy green crops, in the houses are rather tender. In contrast the outside crops were exposed to all sorts of weather before being ensconsed in a double layer of row cover so these crops are much more hardy, much more as it turns out, as there is hardly any frost or wind burns on these things. This is good, because there is a farmers market this coming Saturday and I can harvest literally whole beds of small heads of heirloom lettuces that will probably not get any bigger than they already are. There is also nice arugula and mizuna along with spring mix. The Napa cabbage is not looking as nice but I will be willing to bet the cold conditions have made it much more yummy. Frankly, I don't know why Napa keeps being planted, we rarely sell any despite being told it is a very popular vegetable at the farmers market (if it is so damned popular why are we the only farm with it and why is it not selling at all?). And yet there it is in the garden, again.

I wish the hoop house crops were doing better and the crops not in hoop houses had all died because it is much much more enjoiable to go into a hoop house and harvest. In hoop houses, especially if it is at all sunny out, it tends to be spring like-warm, no winds, humid, nice. Contrast that with the plants outside that tend to be harvested in cold, windy wet weather, not nice.

But the outside crops have not died and are quite high quality so we put up with harvesting when the weather allows and doing it in generally pretty nasty conditions

Boulder Belt in Winter

Winter is here-it is cold, snowy and most everything that is not we covered is dead. This means things have slowed way down for us (yay!) It is nice to be able to kick back for a month or so before the 80 hour a week grinds starts again.

People want to know what we farmers do in the off season. For us, we spend a lot of November cleaning up stuff like the store, the garden beds, popcorn, catnip, onions. Crunching numbers on the various produce items we grow so we have an idea as to what is selling and what is not selling so we know what seeds to plant for the coming season. Eugene does not do much on the computer so it is me who keeps the blog and website updated and that can be time consuming, especially this year since it looks like Boulder Belt is back in the CSA biz and that means at some point I need to design an informative CSA page for the Boulder Belt Website.

December is too often spent removing snow from hoop houses and driveways. It is also the time we put in our main seed order with Johnny's Selected Seeds (our favorite seed house). In the past we have waited until after Christmas to put in our order but there are rumors that there will be seed shortages this year so I believe I will get at least part of the order in in early Dec. or even late November. December is usually the Month that we start the onions and leeks indoors, though this year I believe the onions will be started today or tomorrow (that would be mid November). The reason for moving up the date is due to the fact we have quite a few Copra onion seeds left over from last year and We decided that those should be planted to see if they have strong germination. If they do than we do not need to order more seed. If they do not than we will know by Dec 1st if the seeds are working or not and can get an order into Johnny's early enough to avoid the dreaded back order that can set one back several months.

If December, January and February are mild (which is the NOAA prediction for us this winter, but I will believe that when I see it) than the crops in the hoop houses will continue to produce pretty much all winter and someone has to go and harvest and package the crops periodically (weekly-as growth slows way down in the winter even if it is relatively warm and sunny). We than sell the greens, leeks, etc., at the Oxford Monthly Winter market and this year the CSA gets their share as well. We also sell through the store via email appointment and occasionally to a restaurant or Miami University.

If the winter months are cold with a lot of precip, than most things quit growing until Late Feb and cannot be harvested, the exception to this are the leeks and scallions. Than we sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting on the greens to come back to life. Okay, we don't spend much time thumb twiddling (but we do start craving greens in a big way and are delighted when things are harvestable again). If it is a snowy winter than we are spending lots of time removing snow from the hoop houses, otherwise they get flattened and are unuseable and have to be repaired or replaced. this has happened a couple of times to us and incredibly the crops under all the snow and plastic are generally unharmed and producing very well when we finally get to them

What we are doing by Feb is starting seriously seeds indoors. This starts out slowly with around 15 pots of onions and leeks planted in Dec/Jan. Those are followed by the brassicas-kale, broccoli, cabbages, etc., and lettuces in mid to late Feb. Those crops are repeatedly seeded indoors through April/May so we have a continual harvest April through June/July. By late March we are also starting early tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and melons to be planted in mid April in hoop houses. In April the main crops of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, celery, celeriac, parsley, flowers, etc., are started which fills up the grow room along with cold frames and hoop houses with thousands of seedlings.

Once the seeds are started we are tied to the farm. The seeds need daily tending-watering, fertilizing, pricking (this means to re pot into a larger container), making soil (we make our own soil mix for seed starting as we have a hard time finding soiless mixes that don't contain petroleum products or chemical fertilizers. Add to that, we start seeds in soil blocks and we make our own soil blocks so the soiless mix has to be just so for it to work for us. Making our own soil blocks means we use very little plastic when starting our seedlings. It probably saves us around a thousand bucks a year as well (of course it increases our work load by at least 100 hours as we have to make a lot of soil and a lot of soil blocks.)

So you can see that we small sustainable farmers really don't have much down time at all. Some day, perhaps, we will quit this idea of winter growing and marketing and will shut the farm down in November and go to the Caribbean for 4 months.

Weather Cancelled our Market

Did not make it to the Tuesday market today. there were severe thunderstorm warnings for Oxford at 3:45 and we decided that it would not be worth the risk to go. Though now i see it is getting sunny. If you were expecting us we are sorry but we really did not want to risk having our equipment destroyed in high winds.

It's a shame too, as we have a lot of produce to sell and no market for it. the strawberries and spinach have been coming in strong the past few days and we have a lot of both along with lettuce & spring mix

I guess I will have to make the excess strawberries into jam this evening. Than I will have jam to sell at the store later this week. Jam is always a good seller for us

A Locavore Meal

Yesterday Eugene and I did what we do every Tuesday afternoon from may through the end of October, we went to the Tuesday Farmers Market in Oxford, Ohio in order to sell produce. Unlike most Tuesdays, we were invited to a our friend's, the McKinstry's, after market which meant eating some dinner at market. Normally this would mean purchasing food from one of the eateries uptown but since we had eaten fast food in the past 24 hours we really did not want to eat more (we try to limit our ingestion of such poisons to once a month or so-I know, I know, we should limit it to never but hey, we are Americans after all, and even though we love to eat well grown local food sometimes that ain't happening). So we created a nice light meal from local foods found at the Tuesday market. Pia Terranova had matzos and hummus. Debra Bowles had goat cheese and we had lettuce. So that was dinner-matzo topped with hummus, deer tongue lettuce (that had seen better days) and goat cheese (which I bartered greens for). It was deelish and a totally seasonal locavore meal eaten at a locavore market.

My First Weekend in May

May has come in like some sort of energetic animal that seems to need so sleep-a shark perhaps. oh that's right that's March that comes in like some sort of animal-lions, sheep, lorises, etc..

But so far may has been one busy and energetic month. May is my favorite month, not just because I was born on May 11th but because it is the best month of spring-everything is in bloom, the trees are pretty much leafed out by mid May, the grass is green for real, the garden kicks into high gear production wise (you should see the lettuce crop-spectacular!) and our markets start up again which means steady income and not living from savings any longer.

This year May started on a Thursday and I spent May Day morning harvesting greens for our markets (our farm store and the Saturday FM in Oxford) and the afternoon dealing with the packaging for the green (I like to have labels on bags and it takes time to print labels, cut the printed labels to size and than adhere them to the bags. Especially when I am using sheets of labels that are not exactly compatible with my new laser printer-if anyone reading this knows what labels work best with a Samsung CLP-300 let me know. It sure ain't the ones I am using currently). Generally I wash the greens ASAP after harvesting but by 10 am Thursday morning we had 25 mph winds and since my "packing shed" consists of a table, a wash tub and a salad spinner and no shelter of any kind around all this stuff I decided it would be better to put the unwashed greens right into the fridge in an unclean state and get out early on Friday morning and get them washed and re-hydrated than.

So after harvesting 5 kinds of heirloom lettuces (Amish Deer Tongue, Cracoviensis, Marvel of 4 Seasons, Red Sails leaf lettuce and Green Oakleaf) arugula, spring mix, baby lettuce and cilantro I opened the store and than went inside to watch the Price is Right (something Eugene and I have done for the past 15 years or so because we can most days because of our work schedule. We love the almost mindless competition, the blatant commercialism and Drew Carey).

Had several customers drop by the store to buy asparagus, spinach, lettuce, seeds, herb plants between 11 am and 5pm. I found after running the numbers that our sales are up 10,000% so far this year over last. of course last year there were a lot of weeks where the store generated less than $20 a week gross income. Which is something we expected because it seems to take people about 3 years to figure out you are here without an expensive and aggressive marketing campaign.

Since we do not have $50K to spend on marketing and a lot of time on our hands we have opted to go cheap with the marketing and allow our on farm business to slowly develop and flower. My web based marketing (website and email list, which you can subscribe to by going to the Boulder Belt website and following the instructions there) has really taken off in the past 4 or 5 months. All I can say to that is, Finally! The Boulder Belt Eco-Farm website is about 13 years old and it has taken a long time for it to get noticed by the right crowd (that would be people in Ohio/Indiana). It also has taken that long for it to evolve into a really nice website that is both useful to me and to you the www public. I also have made a very nice brochure (another bit of work that has been evolving over the past 10+ years). I have a background in art and the person who introduced my to computers, my late friend Ann Bell, was a DTP person who was also a classically trained artist as well as having a lot of experience in printing using movable type. She trained me to use computers for graphics and nothing else. So, to this day I can barely use a spread sheet (and do not keep any records on the computer. That's all done by hand with paper and pen/pencil) but give me a drawing/paint program or word processing app and I am good to go.

Any Hoo, Got through Thursday and Friday came. In the past Friday has always been a bear of a day. Lots of harvesting and cleaning and bagging/bunching to do for the Saturday farmers' market. But I hope, this year, to have my act together to start harvesting Thursday or even Wednesday for the weekend (and I believe if things continue as they have, I will have to do quite of harvesting on Wed. to keep the store stocked) so that Friday becomes a day of light harvest and lots of selling. It sure was nice this past Friday not to have to work 14 hours getting ready for market.

So Friday morning arrived and I got breakfast early and started to work on washing the greens picked the day before. I was hoping to get done before the high winds redeveloped but did not. I was able to get through all the crates of lettuce before the 25mph+ winds kicked and started blowing by baby lettuce and arugula all over the place. Got everything clean, re-hydrated and back in the fridge by 10 am. Harvested asparagus and took lunch. After lunch started in on bagging the greens, bunching radishes and asparagus and waiting on the occasional customer. Wyatt came by for a visit and kept me company as I bagged up stuff (Eugene was mowing). It started storming which pretty much put a kibosh on business for the afternoon. Around 5 pm the rain stopped for a few hours and we decided we needed more asparagus than we had so the 3 of us grabbed knives and piled into the van and took a trip over to the Crubaugh Rd farm and did our annual raid on the asparagus we planted there 5 or 6 years ago. Got just over 5 pounds and noticed that about 1/4 of the row is not producing any longer. We decided this was probably the last time we would go over to get the stuff. The farm looked pretty good. The apple trees there are in amazing bloom and beautiful. Went back home cleaned up and bunched the asparagus than went out to eat at Fiesta Charro in Eaton (our second favorite eatery in Eaton, which has few decent choices. Our favorite place is Adam's Rib but since we had Wyatt, a vegetarian, and Adam's rib is a BBQ shop with no real veg choices we opted for the Mexican place). went back home and to bed before 11pm.

Saturday dawned stormily. We were up by 4am. Did coffee got the last few details finished for the farmers market, ate breakfast, packed the van and got on the road about 1/2 later than we should. Somehow when working with Eugene we both get stuck in some sort of time sucker and can rarely get anywhere on time. But since I am one of those people than tends to be early to things most of the time we are not very late (on our first date he was 4 hours late and I found this was not a fluke. The boy is very time challenged) and more and more often we are on time.

So we leave the farm later than we should in a driving rain storm and hydroplane our way down to Oxford. get to the market and park the van in our spot and the rain stops. Hooray! We do not have to set up in pouring rain. We get set up about 15 minutes after the market has started. But because of the wet weather few people are there to buy so no big deal we are running late. we get set up and we start selling asparagus. By 9 am we are out of the stuff. Val Taylor, the Locavore Queen of SW Ohio (join her list at cincilocavores) had put in an order for all our remaining leeks and arrived for those around 8:30am. It was nice to be done with the leeks after 9 months of harvesting and selling them. They were a wonderful crop but it was time they were sold. By 10 am the market was getting fairly busy, though not as busy as I would have like to see. the Oxford Gourd and Drum Ensemble set up and played for a couple of hours which was fun. The weather got quite windy and peoples shelters started doing bad things and had to be secured (we tie ours to our van). The market extended its' hours of operation this year from 11:30 to noon. It was dead from 11:30 to noon. We did sell a few things as we were packing up but i do not like the new hours. They will likely not be profitable for us and mean we get home a half hour later than in the past. This means things could go wrong on the farm. As an example, this past Saturday because it was storming when we left home we left all the hoop houses and cold frmes closed up. It got sunny around 11:30 or noon but since we had to tarry in Oxford for an additional half hour, plus run to the the Striets to pick up raw milk for ourselves and the Cox's and than drop that milk off at Adam's Rib, The Cox's restaurant, we were worried that when we got home around 1:30pm many things might be roasted to death (fortunately, they were not) in the hot houses.

Ate lunch, took a 45 minute nap got up and went to a Derby day party at Jules' and Rosie's house. because of life we were an hour late to that and forgot to bring salad (and we had a lot of salad greens left over from market-stupid, stupid, stupid) but did get the brisket from Adam's Rib (which I want to develop a religion around, it is that good. By far the best brisket I have ever eaten. Pete Cox is a master at brisket, the ribs are also excellent.) Got to the party got a mint Julep and put in my bets for the race just in time. watched the race and for about 2 minutes were were all jubilant about Big Brown winning in such fashion and the impressive run of the filly Eight Belles with her second place finish. And than just like that Eight belles is dead. Such a tragedy but that's racing luck (know that I spent a lot of my life working with horses both show and race horses and have seen some them die in competition or because of competition. Death happens but 99% of time death does not touch these animals when in their youth and at the top of their game). This event will not be good for American horse racing as there are simply too many sentimental people who will be permanently offended by this.

Got home from the party around 1am, which meant we had been awake for 21 hours (less the 45 minute nap). Went to bed and because I cannot sleep past 6 am no matter how late I go to bed, I got 4 hours of sleep and spent Sunday feeling hung over (and from two not very strong mint Juleps). Harvested asparagus for the store and set up the store for business and spent the early afternoon dealing with customers. but by 3pm I was spent and Eugene took over sales. I am happy to say we had quite a bit of business that day. Not enough to support the farm yet (which is why we still go to the Oxford farmers markets Saturdays and Tuesdays) but things are picking up, a lot, over the past 2 years and it looks like this year the store will be close to self supporting and when the store becomes self supporting we can stop breaking our humps doing farmers markets and stay home.

At 5pm I closed up the store and started making a big salad for dinner that was full of yummy things from the garden while Eugene mowed the grass that is growing at a scary rate. At 8pm we ate and by 9pm I was asleep on the couch, utterly exhausted.

That was our week.

Planting Update

Eugene planting leeks. they are so small you can't even see them in the picture

The Pepsi cup is not full of pop but rather a bit of water and powdered kelp and leek seedlings

So far this spring we have planted the following in our market garden
strawberries, 2 kinds of leeks (with 2 more beds to plant of King Seig, our huge beautiful leeks), 2 kinds of sweet onions (with several kinds of yellow and red still to go. Should have 10 to 12 beds of onions when we are done), shallots (we probably will not sell any this year. instead will use this planting to build up our seed stock for the 2009 season), garlic (3 kinds planted last November), shelling peas, snow peas, sugar snap peas, scallions, lettuce (many kinds, mostly heirlooms), arugula, spring mix, spinach, asparagus, 3 kinds of kale, 3 kinds of broccoli, cilantro, perennial herbs (these had already been in the garden but were in a very weedy spot so we dug them up, pulled pounds of switch grass roots out of the herb root balls and replanted them in what we hope is a better spot)-oregano, French tarragon, garlic chives, regular chive, winter savory, sage and thyme. I also have basil and parsley started but not planted in the garden yet.

Soon we will transplant cucumbers, zucchini, French melons, tomatoes and basil into the two hoop house we have erected for them. the hoop house will mean we get these items 4 to 8 weeks earlier than if we waited until our last frost date (officially May 15th but the reality of the past 10 years is last frost can be as late as May 31). We have lots of seedlings in our germination room and also in the cold frames just waiting for us to get the time to put down mulch and irrigation tapes (which might be today as it is too wet to till, transplant or direct seed anything that is not covered by plastic in the garden)

We still have leeks in the ground from last year. The plan is to dig all of them up for the farmers market next Saturday, Apr 19th. Than we will be out of leeks until august when the first leeks should be ready to harvest. We also have a few potatoes from last year that have not yet sprouted. Some may just make it to the market as well. As will the garlic from last year I had to put into a refrigerator to keep them from degrading any more. In spring garlic wants to either sprout or rot but keeping them cold tricks them into believing it is still winter.

In the cold frames we have celery, celeriac, two kinds of lettuce (that should have been transplanted yesterday but instead we spent the day transplanting hundreds of leek seedlings. This is a lot like planting grass one blade at a time), a second planting of broccoli, parsley, and pots and pots of of onions and leeks.

Inside we have more lettuce, around 350 peppers seedlings, cuke and zuke seedlings, early tomato seedlings (we have around 35 right now, 3 kinds, yellow taxi, Matina and early Girl.) In a week or so I will plant another 1000 or so tomato seeds, around 25 different kinds, for our main crop along with the eggplant and more zucchini, cukes, melons and basil. It will be a full house until late May/early June when we start transplanting them into the garden.

That's the planting Update for April 11th.

Rain Day Musings

It's raining today. Not a heavy rain but there was enough rain overnight to make the fields too muddy to work in so we have done other things like completing our state and federal income tax returns and writing appropriate checks (the self employed almost never get refunds from the IRS). This means this summer we should get hundreds of dollars in free money from the gummint. I thought the Democrats were the ones to hand out free money. Crazy world.

Went to town to buy things we need like food and envelopes. Also went to the post office to send out an order of garlic powder and to pick up any mail in the PO Box. We had a box of brown turkey figs waiting patiently for us along with a plea from the Farm Bureau to join up so they can promote our farm. Of course that costs money and Boulder Belt seems to be on their web site anyhow so why pay money? Especially to a group who has a history of not being on the small farmers side but rather on the side of big business. Local Harvest has an incredible website that does a great job of promoting Boulder Belt Eco-Farm and they do this for free (though I have been known to contribute to their cause which gives us even better promotion).

Scored some $1 a bottle Santa Cruz organic strawberry lemonade at Kroger's. I love marked down organic food. Made up for the $1.39 a can organic black beans (which I get because they are the only canned beans without a plastic liner in the can leach pthalates into my food).

Made arrangements to give away a sewing machine that was given to me and which I have never used. It has been taking up space for over 5 years and when I saw a request for a sewing machine on Freecycle this morning I sent the woman an email saying she can have mine. I really need to get some stuff together and post it on the several local Freecycle groups to which I belong. Time to get rid of useless (to me) items. Of course, many of these items make good fodder for the 127 yard sale and that is likely where they will end up. That way they will make us a bit of money, but I will probably lose Karma points.

I don't know what I will do with the rest of the day. I know some pepper seeds are beginning to germinate and there are several trays of lettuce to go out to the cold frame so they can be put in the ground next week some time. And I should start more lettuce plants for transplanting in 3 to 4 weeks.

Yesterday after planting asparagus all morning I spent a great deal of the afternoon planting broccoli seedlings while Eugene planted snow peas and snap peas and got the area ready for the new strawberry plants. Oh and talked to some guy who stopped by wanting us to sell his eggs for him. We are not licensed to resell eggs, dairy or meat products. Though I suppose now that we have retail refrigeration it would not be too hard to get an RFE (retail Food Establishment) License. Than again the store building has no running water and that is likely a requirement. The solution, of course is for us to get back into the pastured laying hen biz and raise our own eggs and sell those. Just need a coop for the girls and a supply of new egg cartons. Oh, and the commitment to never leave the farm for more than 18 hours ever again.

Soon it will be time to start dinner which is salmon with some veggies from the freezer. I am thinking wax beans and perhaps some boiled potatoes (which are not frozen) and brownies with walnuts for dessert.

First Day of Spring

It was nice yesterday so I went to work. Planted about 100 lettuce seedlings in a hoop house. It was a hodgepodge of varieties-lollo rosa, cracoviensis, marvel of four seasons, Amish deer tongue, forellenschluss and Simpson green leaf. All heirlooms. They should be ready to harvest in 35 to 40 days. Just about right for the first regular season Farmers Market.

Planting lettuce in a hoop house on a sunny day is hot work. I was dripping sweat in minutes and realizing a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans was way too many clothes. But I did not want to get naked (Eugene was okay with the idea, though) so I sucked it up and dripped on the seedlings while I dug my hands in the warm damp earth planting cube of lettuce after cube of lettuce. once in the ground we gave each plant a hit of kelp/fish solution and put up #9 wire hoops and than a layer of row cover over top of them.

After that was done I went in for lunch and did some business with Miami University which is getting into supplying local foods to their numerous dining facilities. they have a local foods dinner coming up next week and needed root vegetables so we have sold them all our remaining taters, rutabagas, parsnips and about half of the leeks we still have in the ground and a dozen heads of garlic. After that we will pretty much be done with our winter vegetables. that is as it should be, it's spring after all.

The afternoon was spent cleaning and mulching the asparagus and Eugene pruning the two big and unkempt apple trees. I hate heights. No let me rephrase that, I am terrified of heights. So I don't do ladders or getting up on roofs or things of that nature if I can avoid it. That means if the tall trees are gonna get pruned Eugene has to do it. Fortunately he seems to enjoy climbing around in trees with saws and cutter. More power to him.

I stayed on the ground and spent the afternoon yanking dead asparagus canes out of the ground and putting them into a pile. I really should have worn gloves as the things will give your hands a lot of tiny cuts. I knew that going into the job and yet I went with naked hands and now regret that decision. Cleaned up 6 50' beds than went in to wash the cuts on my hands and rub them with shea butter. My hands were really sore, not so much from the cuts (though those did and do hurt) but muscle soreness. I had to do some serious yanking on some canes and my hands were not used to that kind of abuse (but they will get used to it soon enough). The shea butter helped my hands a bit and I went back to the garden to finish the job by digging up some of the perennial weeds which was not all that much fun with sore hands and heavy waterlogged soil. But I got many weeds extracted and than started cutting open bales of organic straw and spreading it on the 6 beds occasionally picking out thistle down and entire flower heads. This is a hazard with using certified organic straw-there tends to be a bit of thistle seed in it but with my sharp eyes I can usually get 95% of it out. I really do not want to get a thistle problem in the asparagus beds if I can help it so it pays to be alert when using the Filbrun's straw.

Got done with the mulching around dusk and picked some tiny heads of lettuce that overwintered under a row cover and were basically forgotten and assumed dead. They were not dead and quite delicious. And it looks like they will grow into nice sized heads of marvel of four seasons and buttercrunch. I also found a patch of cilantro that made it through winter and should get nice in the next 2 or 3 weeks. went back to the house and star fed the dogs than made dinner of brats from the Filbruns hogs and the lettuce and some scallions we over wintered. A locally grown meal except the buns and condiments.

Took a long hot shower and rubbed my now very sore and swollen hands with arnica, watched Lost and went to bed. Over night the arnica did wonders to my hands and today they are hardly sore at all. It's amazing stuff.

It was a good way to usher in the vernal equinox

March Winter Market

Eugene selling produce to happy shoppers

We did a farmers market last Saturday, March 15, the Ides of March. Fortunately no ancient Roman rulers were dispatched at the market.

It was the quietest of the winter markets despite the weather being almost decent. It was a bit below freezing with a thick fog but compared to the heavy snows and very cold, windy weather the other winter markets have had, this was almost nice. But despite the nearly decent weather there was still the fact that Miami University had just started Spring Break and that tends to drain a large percentage of the population of Oxford.

Pia Terranova Selling her incredible artisan breads to hoards of eager customers

That said, we were able to sell a lot of food and made nearly as much as the February market even though we had fewer items to sell. Unlike the last market, we had almost no greens for this market because the voles helped themselves to the spinach under row cover and most of the other greens we have been picking over winter have decided it is spring in the hoop houses and have gone to seed. The winter spring mix was at it's end. We did get several pounds of it for market but that was the last cutting of that bed. Pity, as that also means we go without salad for a bit. We harvested twice as many leeks as the Feb market and sold all but 5 and we had scallions which we did not have at any of the other winter markets.

Seth Filbrun selling organic and pastured meat to a steady line of people

I have been impressed with all the vendors this market brings out in the winter. There are 4 of us growing and selling produce, 2 bread makers, 1 meat seller, 2 soap makers, a potter, a cheese maker and a couple of folks selling a hodgepodge of stuff from eggs to cat toys. There was even a goat in attendance (a kid really). I believe there were ten stalls at this last market. We have a group that is getting good at having things to sell all winter long. This is especially tricky for us produce growers with out using heated greenhouses, which is very expensive. But we have 2 farms, us and Locust Run/Harv Roehling that are very good at season extension and winter growing.

The next, and last, winter market should have more people and a lot more greens as we have been planting a lot of head lettuce (something like 8 different heirlooms), arugula, spinach and spring mix along with radishes and scallions for April. We may also have asparagus and chives, ready to go by than. After that market we start our regular season two weeks later on May 3rd.

Seedling Madness

Yesterday was spent dealing with seedlings, lots and lots of seedlings.

The first round of lettuces went out to a hoop house where they will be transplanted in the next couple of days. The first round of onions and leeks went into a cold frame because they grow better in such conditions than under lights in a too warm and humid for them grow room.

I was good to see all those flats and pots of seedlings going outside because the second round of lettuces germinated and had to be put into 4 flats of 2" soil blocks (49 per flat). This round of lettuce includes two of my favorites-lollo rosa and cracoviensis, both heirlooms. Also did with 3 flats of kale-winterbor, Holona (aka Dinosaur kale) and Russian white. the winterbor we have been growing for years and the other two are new to us.

I still have to do up another 3 or flats of large soil blocks for the celery and celeriac that is just beginning to germinate. Hopefully, I will get to that today after harvesting the leeks for the farmers market this Saturday in Oxford. otherwise they will wait until Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning.

I also did another round of onions yesterday as the Stella Natura indicated it was a good day to plant root seeds. We thought we had enough planted with the first go round but two pots of red onion seed failed to germinate (well one had a whopping 2% germination rate, the other zero) leaving us with 6 pots of onions. So I prepared 6 additional pots and planted more Ailsa Craig, Boulder belt Sweets and some older Copra seed which had fairly poor germination but needed to be used up or thrown out so I sowed them very heavily in hopes of getting 2 full pots of seedlings. I also did a pot of some red onion seed Eugene saved last year that has been doing well for us.

While I was doing that Eugene made soil mix, trimmed the blackberry canes, carried lettuces up to the hoop house, tried to dog proof the fence only to find while he was fixing one part, Nate was wiggling out of a new hole he had created further down the fence line so he could run across 127 to see the dogs on the other side of the road. Damn Dogs.

And it is still early in the season. I have not gotten into the thousands of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, etc., seedlings that will be started in the next couple of weeks. Or all the seedlings that need transplanting or all the perennials that need mulching or the fruit trees that need pruning. We have a lot on our plates but it will all get done as it does every year.