February Farmer's Perspective: Jenn
February is the shortest month of the year. But it always feels really really long. February, for me, holds a lot of premeditative work to set us up for peak season’s harvest, packing and distribution. It’s a month to ‘mend the nets’, as one of my teachers says, and get everything in order with a clear head and grounded perspective. It’s a time to take note of where we are and where we’re headed. Like any well-oiled organization, this season is necessary for healthy growth.
My role at the farm this winter has involved more and more time at the computer, sifting through all of the metaphorical weeds. Yes, even in farming there must be some computer work! Day by day, I’m spending as much time as I can getting clearer on the farm’s finances and making sure the steps we are taking are sustainable and scalable as we continue to expand acreage on the new property. This includes focusing in on how much of each product we’re sending to farmers markets, and refining the delivery range for current and upcoming wholesale partners. We’re excited to both expand our wholesale partnerships up to the San Francisco area and stretch our CSA deliveries further south to Monterey, Salinas, and Hollister. One new wholesale customers, Good Eggs, is a locally-sourcing food service that we’ve been looking forward to partnering with for some time. It’s exciting to see it finally come to fruition as we dot I’s and cross T’s on the paperwork, and look towards beginning artichoke sales with them.
Spring garlic looking and smelling fresh!
Of course, my time hasn’t been solely dedicated to logistics. We’ve been experiencing a warm spell this month that brought on early crop growth and all the spring time feels- all to be abruptly halted with last week’s cold snap. Such a bummer! Before the cold hit hard, we had enough sun to do a large snapdragon and spring garlic harvest. The snaps are part of our first-ever winter flower harvest (planted last October), and garlic is my absolute favorite commodity that we grow. I always end up hoarding the fresh stuff throughout the season, chopping up as much I can, freezing it, and using it far into the summer, fall, and winter. I call it the eternal spring!
Along with garlic, snaps, and wholesale logistics, we’ve been spending time cleaning and separating hundreds of dahlia bulbs from last year’s planting. Two beds of these strong-stemmed award winners were simply not enough last year, so this time around we’re growing 6 beds. Under the ground for 8 months, each dahlia bulb has produced at least up to a dozen new ones! We definitely have our work cut out for us and are excited to share all the extra bulbs at our 3rd annual transplant sale this year.
Farmer Nick and Chicken Caretaker Daniella exploring our “coop” before the baby chicks arrive. Can’t wait to give this sucker a paint job!
The most exciting news of the month, though, is not in the sweet smelling garlic or the abundant artichokes finally filling up our shed cooler. It’s the anticipation of 220 baby chicks arriving any day now. They’re being shipped via good ‘ol USPS at not even 72 hours old. I couldn’t be more thrilled. I’ve had a personal dream, for many years now, to own chickens - mainly so I can name all the little ladies antiquated French names, like Bernadette and Claudine, and Mathilde. Don’t think I’ll be able to come up with 220, and I don’t think the rest of the crew would agree with the choices, but alas, we’ve got chickens coming, and that is stellar. It’s definitely going to be hard for anyone to focus this week as we await our brood of baby squeakers!
Ahh, BROOD. That’d be a good Wordle word!
To spring!