In the belly of a whale...

Yes, it's been a long time. I'll admit it. I haven't written or even thought about writing in a couple of months. It's just that we've been on matrimonial leave. Even though we've been working hard prepping the farm for the coming year, at the end of the day, I just don't feel like sitting down at the computer...I'd much rather cook a nice dinner for my husband and enjoy his company while doing something other than shovelling. I'm back, though, so you need not worry about whether we've disappeared.

Our primary task over the last week has been building a new greenhouse. We've been feeling pretty cramped in our first greenhouse and really needed additional space for starting all our transplants. After hashing out a multitude of ideas, we finally decided to just go for it and build another full size greenhouse. We scrounged around the farm looking for needed parts and bargain shopped all around town for the best prices on hardware, spent a few days building, and wham, bam, we had ourselves a nice, new, shiny greenhouse. Now the fun of filling it begins.

Other thoughts...

A couple days ago when we went to Western Farms to buy alfalfa for our goats, we were told they were just about out of it and didn't know when they would be able to get more. Apparently, all alfalfa is being exported to China because the floods they experienced last year meant they couldn't produce their own. To top it off, it's been too wet in our immediate area for alfalfa farmers to cut their hay. I guess a global food system means sometimes, even when there's plenty of local(ish) sources, you still have to compete against halfway around the world for food. Seems like it would be a smart idea to have farms that deal directly with real people in the middle of communities to safeguard against a real food shortage.

I came across some statistics that I found really interesting. Only 1.1% of Sonoma County's agricultural production is in vegetable crops. 72.1% is in fruit and nut crops (think grapes and apples). 13.9% is in livestock and poultry products and 8% in in livestock and poultry themselves. So, even though Sonoma County is very much an agricultural county, hardly any of it is vegetable production. With so few vegetables produced, why doesn't it feel like locals are banging down the doors to buy local produce? Just wondering.