Yesterday, I came home from a bike ride to an odd sight. A piece of row cover was stuck in a tree top, looking like a giant had tried to TP the farm as a prank! I was perplexed, as it hadn’t seemed that windy on my ride. I was also a little annoyed that I would have to get out a ladder on a Sunday afternoon to extricate the row cover. But my slight annoyance became overwhelming when I walked behind the tree and saw that the wind had also ripped most of the plastic off of one of our high tunnels! Soon the priority switched from getting the row cover out of the tree to fully cutting down the rest of the plastic before another freakish wind gust could catch onto it and cause lasting damage to the structure.
It was a stressful moment, but it was only one in a long series of unexpected stresses this year. The strong winds this spring ripped a significant hole in a different high tunnel in April that we were fortunately able to successfully patch mid-windstorm. Our loader tractor was in the shop for a month longer than expected, right as we needed it for unloading supply deliveries in March. Our 23 year-old truck was out of commission for road driving for about two weeks, just as we needed it for picking up irrigation supplies. One of the tires on our tillage tractor popped in late April and it took over a week to get new tires, setting us back in field preparations and planting. A persistent woodchuck dug it’s way into one of our greenhouses and decimated microgreens and many of our seedlings. We’re also in the midst of a dry spell with unusual heat in the forecast and not much hope of rain. Dry, hot weather is always a challenge, but it is especially difficult when it comes at a time with large and critical plantings of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, lettuce, flowers, green beans and greens scheduled to go into the field by the 25th. Setting up field irrigation usually takes several days with Melissa and multiple crew members fully dedicated to the tasks. Needless to say, putting new plastic on one of our high tunnels is not something we wanted to add to our to-do list at this time!
It feels a bit like we’re being tested, but given everything that’s happened so far this year, we’re still proud of what we have accomplished and how well many things have gone. We had vegetables available starting at the beginning of April - earlier than ever! We had a great tulip season and the asparagus harvest really picked up last week (no more limits!). After our tillage tractor was fixed, our crew pushed through transplanting a huge amount of plants and we caught up with our field transplanting schedule. Two of our high tunnels are now filled with peppers and tomatoes and with timely irrigation are already growing well! We are getting close to completing two important grant-funded projects to improve food safety and fully automate the ventilation in both of our greenhouses and two high tunnels. Though these projects come with a deadline and their own share of unexpected problems, once they are completed they will be significant time-saving improvements!
This week we are adding arugula, radishes, ranunculus flowers, baby bok choy and more seedlings (tomatoes!) to our farm stand offerings! We will continue to be open for self serve purchases Tuesday-Friday 11am - 6pm and Saturday 9am-3pm as well as for online pre-order pick-ups Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (online ordering at https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop opens at 6pm the day before pick-up). The farm store will be staffed starting June 1st and the CSA will start June 8th! Wish us luck!
Farm store week of May 18th:
Asparagus- Coming in strong so no per customers limit! $5/bunch
Arugula - Our first field planting is ready! $4/bag
Ranunculus flower bouquets - very limited quantity this year as we are still testing out best practices for growing these beautiful spring flowers in our high tunnel! $15/bouquet
Mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm - Farmer’s mix $9/bag and shittake $5/pint
Double B Honey from hives on the property
Microgreens - Available Wednesday and Friday for pre-order pick up and walk up sales. $5/bag
Radishes and baby bok choy- Ready later in the week. $3/bunch
Seedlings - we’ll continue to have herbs and we should also have some tomatoes as well for online orders.
Ranunculus flowers at different stages of opening while growing in the high tunnel