Weeding

Today is Wednesday.  Todd is working with a couple of worker shareholders out in the field.  Looks like they are …weeding.
WEEDING
We are doing the best we can to resist weed takeover. Cover cropping is the first strategy.  These are crops that might suppress certain weeds and/or that build the soil in some way.  The latter fall into the category of green manure.
Researchers have all kinds of theories about weed control with cover crops.   This year, as part of a grant through the U of I, we will add sudan grass to our cover crop menu.  It is being studied as an antidote to Canadian thistle, which has a ridiculous root structure and is one of the scarier epidemics.  To rattle off some others: ground cherry, dandelion, lambsquarter, quack grass, Johnny grass, burdock, bindweed, creeping charley, pennycress, horseweed, prickley lettuce, purslane, wild carrot, milkweed.  Later in the summer I’m sure I’ll remember more.
BAGS
While everyone is outside toiling in the sun, I’m typing and awaiting arrival of our tote bags, which we will print and sell for cost at market.  I cannot guarantee the sustainability practices that went into the production of this bag, but I feel better about these bags than the plastic ones.  They ARE made in the United States.  They are cotton. 

Spring Frenzy

Todd is overwhelmed tonight.  Yesterday less so because he had our new (and only!) wonderful employee Johanna working with him.  Two worker shareholders arrived later in the day (hello Megan and Alex).  It was a beautiful day.
Today he is trying to muddle through crop rotation plans and other things on the list.  Did you know that green manure crops also need rotation?  And then there’s weed management and a chicken coop to build and carrots and seedlings to thin and fertilize and skateboarders coming over tonight.
As far as the chicks are concerned, they might as well be sorority sisters.  Passing out at the watering hole, running around squealing when we try to pick them up, etc, etc.  They can completely trash their box in minutes.  Thankfully no one has “poopy pasty butt” or any other signs of despair.  Todd plays heavy metal for them all day (Danzig?) and they appear to be thriving.
Don’t worry about us; we are thriving, too.

Chicks!

It is about noon. We are anxiously awaiting a call from Farm-n- Fleet telling us our baby chicks are ready.  Hopefully I will be able to be here when they come, but I’ll have to leave to go work in the city by 2:00.  Once we bring them home, we have to dip their little baby beaks in a nutritional gel, their first meal since the yolk sac.  Then we place them in their brooder box where the temperature is monitored to remain at 85 – 95 degrees.  We will have 5 buff orpingtons, 5 barred rock, 5 rhode island reds and 5 polish hens.  The polish chickens are not necessarily good layers, but they make up for it by having a funny-looking mohawk hairdo.  For the first couple of weeks they will be yellow puffballs with big feet.  Then, the ugly duckling phase. Then, after 5 months, they are laying eggs.  Photos will follow shortly!

Seed Potatoes

Well, the soybeans are out of the ground.  Merle and I took a walk around the bare ground (trespassing, yes) and found our way behind a small plot of corn.  The soybean field makes an L, with the short end between corn and sunflowers.  Sunflowers!  What an eery thing to stumble upon:  a ten-acre army of sunflowers, heads down, drying.  I wonder what will happen to them…
Our own ground is a confusing mix of dried up fox millet (awaiting the flame weeder), still-green pasture, frostburnt vegetation, and stubborn lettuce seedlings.  Garlic went in yesterday.  Too wet to do anything else.
Went to a workshop on Food Safety and Defense last week to learn how to arm against fecal matter and disgruntled employees, not necessarily mutually exclusive.  Learned, again, how to wash hands properly: 20 seconds and don’t forget between the index finger and thumb.  Lock your empty barns so that a crystal meth lab doesn’t inadvertently sprout up in the night.
Todd and I are both missing the markets and the smiling faces of all our sharecroppers.  
Thanks to all,
Julia

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