Mother Nature Catches Us Unprepared....Again!

I am astounded at the difference in the perceived length of winter between this year and last year. Last year we had just moved onto the farm and had little to do but sit indoors dreaming of all of the things we would do once the weather warmed up. Of course, there was lots of snow shoveling to do and we were poorly equipped to handle it. I spent the entire winter removing deep snow from our 1,000 foot driveway with a plastic bladed snow shovel. Given all of that, the winter seemed to drag on and on.

This year has been a completely different picture. Somehow I was expected a winter like the last and was looking forward to having lots of time to relax, develop plans for the coming year and spend extra time with my family. Instead, the winter seems to be going by in a flash!

Many projects from the Fall stretched well into December and some are still waiting for more attention. Far from having lots of time to relax, every spare minute has been spent on my computer formulating plans for our first CSA season and worrying that I wouldn't get the seeds ordered in time to get them started indoors. Most of those orders have still not gone out!

Due to the purchase of our tractor, the clearing of the driveway has become a breeze. What took me as much as 11 hours of sweating, miserable shoveling now is completed in 20 minutes! In addition, there have only been two snows thus far that were big enough to justify starting it up.

The inspiration for this post is the arrival of our first major indication that the Spring season is upon us. A few days ago we had a day where the temperature climbed above freezing. That prompted a call from a friend of mine wondering if the time had arrived for us to tap the maple trees. I assured him that it was normal to get a few solitary days of warm weather interspersed with cold snaps before things warmed up in earnest.

My answer had come from my experience tracking the temperatures in the early spring last year. It may be easier to read on the Sugarbush page of our website.

Janet and I attended the Michigan Family Farms Conference on the west side of the state yesterday. As we were driving home, I was noting that the temperature had continued to be warm. I resolved to get our 2010 temperature chart started before going to bed last night. To my surprise, the chart shows that the warm temperatures are being projected to remain for at least the next week! I'm sure that a cold snap is still in our future but I have concluded that unless we get the taps in the trees today, we are going to miss out on first flow.

The problem is that I was sure we had a couple more weeks before the temperatures would climb high enough to start tapping. I have been spending my time hurriedly finishing up the planting plan so I could get the rest of the seeds on order. As a result, I had delayed our preparations for Sugaring and now we have been caught by Mother Nature with our coveralls down!

There are two major items that now have been moved to the top of the priority list. The new evaporator that we bought is still in boxes and needs to be installed immediately. As well, we have no practical way to haul the sap out of the woods so I need to purchase a four-wheeled drive ATV over the next few days.

Today is the only day in the next week when I will have enough time to set the taps. Therefore, the boys and I are now preparing to load up a couple of sleighs with taps, equipment, hanging bags, thermos of hot chocolate and snacks. Then we will head off into the woods for a long day of measuring trees, installing taps and collection bags and creating tapping logs.

I'm going to do my best to slow down and enjoy the day. If all goes well we might even get back home in time to start assembling the evaporator. In any case, it's clear that whatever time the winter had offered for rest is now over!

Master Gardener Class

In the interest of honing my gardening skills and increasing my involvement in the local gardening community, I signed up for the Master Gardener Program offered by the Extension Office. After paying the program fees, being interviewed by the Extension Agent, providing three character references and having a police background check, I was accepted into the program. The program involves 48 hours of classroom time plus 40 hours of field work.

The date of the first class finally arrived to find me excited to get started. Unfortunately, that was also the day that we got our first major snow storm of the season. From my office at work, I checked the weather forecast and watched the flakes stack up outside the window. My commute from my office in Livonia to the classroom site would normally take about 45 minutes, but I decided to leave early to allow for slower traffic.

Little did I know what an incredible snarl the traffic would turn out to be. As soon as I turned onto the freeway, I could see that it was crammed to capacity and making extremely slow progress. I watched with mounting frustration as the estimated time of arrival on my GPS ticked the minutes away past the start time of class. At one point, I exited the freeway in the forlorn hope that I could find a quicker way through side-streets and back roads. Unfortunately those routes proved even more backed up than the freeway! I merged back into the freeway traffic and tried my best to relax and tell myself that it just couldn't be helped.

After nearly a three-hour struggle, I arrived at the Extension office about 30 minutes late. I found the packed classroom and took a seat along the wall. To my relief, they were just concluding the introduction to the course and I hadn't missed any of the lectures. The Extension Agent who was teaching the class knows me from previous courses and said she was confident that I would show up eventually.

The first class covered plant physiology and classification as well as an overview of major epidemic pest infestations and devastating disease outbreaks in the region. I found the topics fascinating and picked up many new facts that I did not know. We were also provided with a huge textbook roughly five inches thick. I'm looking forward to reading my way through the assignment in the next day or two.

Among my classmates were two of our CSA members. It was nice to see them and it's good to know that we will have so many well educated members to help and advise us. I also made acquaintance with another woman who is establishing her own CSA in the region and was eager for us to work together sharing ideas and helpful resource contacts. Her enthusiasm for her project was a good match for my own. We stood out in the parking lot talking excitedly until snow-covered and cold. We decided to continue our chat the following week.

It feels good to be getting to know so many people with similar interests in our region. The feeling of excitement among this growing network of farmers is infectious. Everyone I have met has been helpful and supportive, with effusive information sharing and offers of assistance in one way or another. The impression that we are all part of something new and exciting, a movement that is growing by the day does wonders to shore up my own energy for the massive amount of work we have ahead of us in our first CSA season.

Wrestling With Ambition

I know that I will look back at this post a few years from now and laugh at myself. I am currently engaged in a wrestling match with my enthusiasm for our new CSA and am struggling to balance practicality and business sense with the overwhelming desire to do it all!

For the past month I have been spending every spare moment pulling together the planting/harvest plan for our little farm. We have had wonderful success in attracting and signing up a great group of people to participate and now we just have to deliver the goods, on time and in the proper quantities. Figuring out just how to do that is proving to be much more complex than I had imagined.

It all began with a survey to see what our membership would like us to grow. In my typical overly exuberant fashion, I put together a series of seed catalogue files containing well over 600 varieties of plants from which to choose. Amazingly, a large selection of the membership actually took the time to pick through all of it and provide me with feedback. With the help of that information, I winnowed the selection down to 90 vegetable selections that are currently on my not-so-short list of things that I would like to grow.

My next step was to lay out a schedule of starting, transplanting, harvesting and distributing each vegetable. Using the information from my survey, I developed a weekly plan for the entire year. I started with the most popular vegetables, maximizing the time they would be available and then working my way down the list filling in the schedule with progressively smaller amounts of the remainders. At this stage, I have a plan that shows us providing up to twenty items per week at the peak season.

This is several times the number of varieties that most CSAs grow for their customers. My understanding is that seven or eight items is more the standard. I know that I need to pare it down considerably but I just don't want to. We normally grow a large variety of things just for our family. Last year we grew 53.

According to my time-table, this task was supposed to be completed by January 1st. To buy myself a little more time, I went ahead and ordered the seed for those things that needed to be started indoors in January. Now I just need to get the rest of the plan out of the way so I can move on to preparing for the maple sugaring season that is looming just around the corner.

I am aware that there are numerous risks of growing too much. Besides the obvious risk of having production costs exceed income, there are also concerns with annoying members by overloading them with more than they can use. We have come up with a plan to deal with this and are arranging to sell/donate anything extra outside of the CSA. There is also the risk of creating unrealistic expectations which you can't practically support in future years. I know all of that but I still am just so excited about the whole adventure that it is hard to be practical.

I'm sure I will get this thing whittled down to something reasonable ...eventually. It is just much more fun to add things than it is to take them away. Whatever shape the final plan takes, I'm anticipating being far wiser at this time next year after spending a year trying to make my crazy plans work out.