April on the Farm!

Farm Update

Here are some of the wild ramps Fred harvested
over the weekend.  They have been so delicious!

Hi everyone!  

Wow!  What a crazy last few months it's been!  On one hand, life feels completely different right now.  Our kiddos are out of school and I'm working from home, and we're doing the social distancing thing.  My usual frenetic pace of life has slowed way down, and I don't remember ever having this much downtime or flexibility of schedule in my adult life.  So naturally, I've painted my whole house, done a bunch of repairs and projects I always said I'd do "when I get some time", and started training for a half marathon in September that hopefully won't be cancelled.  I've also learned how to homeschool. (Kind of.  Let's face it, it's really my kids' actual teachers who are doing the real work here, gathering and posting materials and recording video lessons.  I'm just supervising.)  And yet, life at the farm feels pretty much like every other April, except for I'm not out there working alongside Fred this year.  (Sadly, social distancing includes our beloved grandma/baby-sitter, so I'm home with the kiddos instead of out in the field.)  

But nature doesn't know there's a pandemic going on.  Fred and a few employees have been planting like crazy, putting in onions, potatoes, and transplants that we started in the greenhouse.  And they've had a great attitude about this ridiculous weather too, not even complaining that much about planting onions into actual snow the other day.  Planting time is the first of the annual work frenzies, and this year is no different.  Fred's usually out at the farm every day from just after sunup to right around sundown, excepting when he pops in for lunch, and that will likely be our schedule for the next few weeks of planting.

We just had some beehives delivered to the farm
to help out with pollination.  

We're starting to transition our coldframes from early spring veggies (like radishes, spinach, spring mix, and arugula) to planting the hot weather items like tomatoes and zucchini.  Fred and our farm workers just started planting zucchini in one of the hoophouses so it can get a good start growing, and it will be ready to harvest and eat way earlier than zucchini from the field.

We also recently had several hives of bees delivered to the farm to help pollinate things, and they are buzzing around all over the place looking for food sources!  Alas, the bees (and the honey) belong to someone else so we won't be able to include honey in the CSA, but we're glad to have all those little pollinators out there!

Aside from planting, we've also been harvesting a bunch of stuff for our local stores.  We've been delivering things like spinach, spring mix, arugula, carrots, and microgreens to Greentree Co-op in Mt. Pleasant and Argus Farmstop in Ann Arbor, as well as contributing veggies to CSAs run by The Farm at St. Joe's in Ypsilanti, the Allen Neighborhood Center in Lansing, and Red Haven's Harvest Boxes in Okemos.  (Don't worry, we're being really careful, wearing gloves and masks, and not standing near anyone!)  In fact, Fred went out and harvested ramps in our friend Willie's woods over the weekend, and we took a pretty large order of wild ramps down to Ann Arbor and Ypsi this afternoon.  The woods were just going crazy with ramps, and although he harvested 165 pounds, you could barely tell afterward that he had harvested anything, there are still so many left!  

Normally we deliver to many of our favorite local restaurants in April as well, but that hasn't been the case this year, for obvious reasons.  Fortunately, the sales we haven't been making to our restaurants have been made up by our stores, who are finding that they need a lot more produce than normal.  It's encouraging to see that so many people are taking this opportunity to make some excellent meals at home, and that they're supporting smaller local shops!  For all of you who are going to Greentree and Argus and getting local farm products from us or other farmers, THANK YOU!  That supports the whole local food community, and that is awesome!  

If you're hoping to line up some great free range chicken over the next few months, we can help you out with that too!  Some folks in the Amish community near Blanchard are raising free-range, non-GMO, non-hormone chickens, and they're currently taking orders.  The chickens will be ready in about 8 weeks, will weigh around 5.5 lbs, and they'll be $12 per chicken.  You can buy a whole chicken, or they can cut it up for you for free, whatever you want.  If you're interested, you should check in with Corina Thomas at 989-304-0077.  She's not actually the lady who raises the chickens, but she's a neighbor with a telephone (since the producers are Amish) who agreed to take phone calls regarding chicken orders.  So you can check in with Corina for more information about the chickens!

All sorts of radishes, packed up and ready to head
out to the Allen Neighborhood Center, Red Haven,
the Farm at St. Joe's, and Argus Farm Stop earlier
today.

It's also really encouraging to witness the surge in popularity that CSAs are seeing right now!  There's a convergence of factors occurring that has caused many people to sign up for their first CSA this season, or to jump back in after taking a few years off.  Because many farmer's markets are closed for the foreseeable future, and I've heard that grocery store produce has been generally sad lately, a lot of people want to make sure that they have access to good fruit and veggies this summer.  We're expanding the number of shares that we offer so we can accommodate all of the interest, and also because it seems unlikely that we'll be selling much to our restaurants this summer.  So thank you for supporting local farms, whether that's us, or any of our friends with CSAs, or any local farms who are transitioning from farmer's markets into the realm of Community Supported Agriculture.  You guys are helping keep so many farm families in business during this time of uncertainty, and while I can't speak for any other farms, we definitely thank you from the bottom of our hearts! 

And as always, if you want to sign up for the CSA and haven't done it yet, just send me an email!  Full shares are $560 for the season, and half shares are $305 if you pick up at any of our regular drop-offs, and we also offer home delivery if you'd rather stay home.  Just let me know your address, and I'll get you a quote for the delivery fee!  We're planning on being flexible about that too, so if you want to have your share delivered at first, and then jump into picking it up at the regular drop-off if/when the Covid threat diminishes, that's totally fine.  We don't know exactly what the future will bring, but it's likely that we'll start the season with all prepacked shares (even at the Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland drop-offs), and then transition back to our regular setup when it becomes safe to do so.  We'll let you know as soon as we have an official start date (probably the second or third week of June), and in the meantime, we'll keep you posted!  Thanks so much!  We can't wait to see you (whether that's figuratively or literally) in June!