Well it’s been a busy week and one we hope not to repeat for quite a while. There were ups and downs, but just way too much for one week. Between Monday chicken processing, and markets on Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday there wasn’t much time to get things done at home, and naturally since it is late May, lots of planting that needs to be done between harvesting and preparing for three markets.
Just the way things lined up it was a big week of change for markets for us. Wednesday was our last market at Montgomery’s Inn after most of a decade. It was hard to say goodbye, but with everything else going on it was also easy to remember why we had to make this decision. It was a nice sendoff of a day and I know many will miss us, but I hope this can make room for new vendors to thrive. And then right on the heals of that we had the first Dufferin Grove market of the season back in the park. And what a lovely day of reconnecting with customers and fellow vendors it was. It’s so good to be back. Saturday was a little damp, which had all of us vendors in a bit of a mood during setup, but really we did need the rain so we shouldn’t complain. It was an ok day in spite of it all.
Chicken is back in stock on the online store. We got a limited run of chickens cut in parts so some would be available before the next batch is ready. Many of you have been asking when sausages and burgers will be back in stock, and those are still coming. We’ll plan on some from the next batch, so probably in five or six weeks those should be available. Hopefully today we can move those birds to pasture, but they have a lot of growing yet to do.
The weather lately seems to be yo-yoing back and fourth between April and June. Another vendor at market says that May is a factious month that doesn’t actually exist. Well we got another dose of April and froze all the asparagus off on Wednesday night. Hopefully by tomorrow it will be back, but we lost almost a week of harvest. We saved one little circle by leaving a sprinkler on overnight, but it doesn’t amount to much. We could have done more if it was a less bust week, but such is the cost of doing farmer’s markets. It’s warm again, but we wonder how soon we can trust it enough to plant tomatoes.
Somehow between just surviving the busy week, on Thursday before market we managed to complete the automatic vent rollup wall on one side of one greenhouse. One vent down, five to go. And on Friday afternoon Nathan seeded some alfalfa for a new hayfield before the rain overnight. It is always nice when we can arrange to have the clouds water our seeds for us, so it was worth trying a little extra hard.
Our other big news of the week is we heard back on our funding for fencing improvements. All the way back on January 23rd we shared that we had applied for cost share funding for more fencing to support rotational grazing our sheep. Well on Saturday we heard back that we received the funding. Now all that is left is to decide on a fencing contractor and figure out where we are going to come up with our share of the cost for the project. So still a bit of work to do but it is exciting that we are one step closer to having better fencing for a significant part of the farm. The few hours we spent on Tuesday dealing with sheep on the loose because we try to make due with sub optimal fencing and multiple grazing groups was a good reminder of why we need this. As the flock grows, so do our infrastructure needs. It is at least nice to have some government funding to help with that this time.
Well that’s the news this week. There is a little seeding to do yet this week, but overall hopefully less insanity than last week was. Which hopefully means time to spend on things like greenhouse automation that will make things easier in the future. We shall see what the week brings.
Well that’s about everything for this week.
Until next week,
Happy ordering!
Nathan and Aleta Klassen