(Psst its Nathan’s Birthday today, feel free to send him a Happy Birthday Wish!)
Just as January comes to a close the weather seems to have caught up with the season. So far this winter we’ve been absolutely spoiled by having warm days when we wanted to wash storage crops, so it’s about time reality caught up with us. We’re thinking either we dress up in lots of layers, or maybe get creative to figure out how we can bring the root washer inside. Moving more of what we do inside has been a long term goal, but we aren’t sure about the equipment we have, or the space we currently use for making that work, so there may be some creativity required. But that’s a job for tomorrow.
Today is a bit of a change of pace for us. We are working on our five year renewal on our Environmental Farm Plan. Doing this allows us access to some government funding to improve our farms environmental footprint, but at the same time is a time for reflection on the last five years of where we have been, and the next five years of where we hope to be. So today, and next Monday, we will be learning and planning, and finding out what help is available for doing what we do better.
This is the first week of the winter/spring CSA season. Welcome to our new and returning members. We look forward to providing you with veggies in the coming months! This week will have Carrots, Delicata Squash, Huckleberry Gold Potatoes, Arugula, Parsnips, and Onions.
Again this week we are planning a pickup and delivery only Wednesday. Get those orders in for tonight if you want something!
For those of you following the ongoing saga of our manure spreader, we actually made some progress this week! Well, we managed to take more of it apart anyway. Still a few more parts to torch off of it before we can start putting it back together. Still enough work, but progress is progress. But since there is always something that needs fixing, on Thursday when we went to clear snow, the tractor wouldn’t start. It has been off and on problems for years, especially when it is cold, but this time it just wouldn’t go. An hour of diagnostics and fixing later, we had the plugged fuel line cleared out and the air back out of the fuel system. It runs way better now with no trouble starting to clear the snow again on Saturday. It still needs some work so this doesn’t happen again, but for now it is at least better progress than the last few times we have sent it off for repairs.
Last fall we installed a new controller for venting one of our greenhouses. While we have the venting turned off for the cold season, the controller still runs the heat, and collects more statistics on the recent temperatures of the greenhouse as well as daily furnace run time than we have ever seen. Not that we have figured out how to use all this data yet, but even just having a look every now and again gives us more to work with for management decisions than we have had before. But that’s just one greenhouse, and this controller has capabilities for two. So we’ve started pulling control wires to a second greenhouse for the temperature probe, furnace and alarm. There is lots of work to go, and more greenhouses to do another year, but after 11 years of manual venting and mechanical thermostats it is way more than we’ve had.
We finally have an applicant for one of the jobs we’ve had posted. Still looking forward to meeting him, but it is somewhat encouraging anyway.
Well that’s about all the time I have today. We need to get chores done before heading off for a day of learning.
Until next week,
Happy ordering!
Nathan and Aleta Klassen
https://www.localline.ca/nith-valley-organics
