CSA Success!

I don't know where to start. This week has been so incredibly busy. Every day, we have a million things to do, and these things have to get accomplished or else the whole schedule is thrown off. So what ends up happening is we start working first thing in the morning and we finish when it's been dark out for an hour. I think I can say for both of us that we don't mind - Jeff said for the first time earlier in the week, "Finally! I'm tired enough to sleep well at night again!" We both like the fast pace and hard work. It's good for our constitutions...and as my mother would say, "It builds character."

One of the main sources of our increased business is our CSA. This was the first week of our CSA and it took a lot of planning, preparing, picking, and packing. But survive we did! I feel really good about the bags of food we sent home with people. They truly are artisan CSA bags - we hand pick every item in them, we hand wash, and hand pack. I even find myself becoming involved with how aesthetically pleasing the bags are and how well the veggies look together. I firmly believe in the power of intention and I put so many good intentions into what I do on the farm. When I plant, I give the plants encouragement and my blessing. I ask for them to grow big and strong and bare us lots of fruit. When I pack our CSA bags, I wish for the food to help those who eat it, for it to satisfy, nourish, and maybe even make people faster and stronger. I so firmly believe in the power of intention that when I show someone how to plant, I include the step where you have to think good thoughts so the plant can grow well.

Other farm news: this morning we discovered some new additions to the farm. As we were working in the barn, we heard some little peeps coming from way back behind a shelf on a stack of old newspaper. We peered in and found a mama hen with four baby chicks and eggs still to be hatched! Jeff relocated the little family into a super safe pen (he chick proofed it...he's good at that) and gave water to the babies and mom. The hen had been sitting on the eggs for so long that she was visibly weak. Now that's she's had a drink, she can finish hatching those eggs. We think these chicks are Cuckoo Maran crossed with Americauna - Cuckoo American. No, that's not a real variety, but if we breed it, we get to name it.

We've also had a lot going on besides the CSA. We're trying to finish planting our upper areas so that we can get into our bottom pasture and then finally get to our new piece up the road. Meanwhile I've been seeding in the greenhouse and trying to resuscitate cold and rain weary crops, Jeff's been driving the tractor, weedwacking, and mowing, and we've both been trying to settle a lot of administrative mumbo jumbo. On top of all of that, it frosted two nights this week! Good luck trying to figure out what the weather's going to be like - it's looking like it's going to be a year of gambles and adaptation. No matter what, though, it's bound to be fun and exciting.