Piling up and piling on. Isn't it funny how you can go from a mid-winter snail's pace to being tossed about rag doll fashion by the Everest-like to do list, all in the course of a few days? Old man winter certainly had his hand in the soup bowl, inundating you with rain or snow, mud or frozen ground. The lack of good early spring days means compression. Time compression, planning compression, sowing compression, and any other compression you can think of, all squeezing you hard and tight, and then when the grip is released you tend to fly off helter skelter, like leaves in a stiff wind.
Heisenberg had it right. If you remember your high school physics, Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" stated in layman's terms there's uncertainty in the relation between mass and velocity, that if you know where you are, you can't know where you're going and vice versus. In farming terms the uncertainty is between your plan and where your plan is going. If you know what your plan is you don't know where it's going, if you know where it's going you don't remember your plan.
Down at the farm, compression and uncertainty are alive and kicking. Here's some news and stuff for you:
Planting is going in fits and starts, depending on the weather. We have peas, spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, turnips, cabbage, and radishes in the ground, although on a very small scale in some cases.
Starting transplants is in full swing. We have watermelon, melon, multiple winter and summer squash varieties, and pie pumpkins under the grow lights. We're having fellow Cherry Street vendor and pork producer, Rae Blakely, start our tomato and pepper seed since they require a good deal of heat.
The pigs are putting on the pounds, and we start carrying the first of our fall pigs to the butcher Monday evening. I made a short video of what we use to get them on the trailer:
Also, our Brat cart arrived, now I have to figure out how to use it.
We're thinking about cooking brat burgers (I prefer them that way) and calling our cart the Bratty Patty Wagon. Corny, huh? Let us know what you think, and thanks for reading!
Pork & Greens