Giving Thanks

2018 Crew plus Dermot. Serious pose

With the production in our greenhouses and sales at the Warehouse Market going year round, the farming year has become an endless loop. Nevertheless, we are entering into a season of completion and thanksgiving. We are spending our days harvesting, putting in the last plantings of late fall and winter greens, cleaning up fields, and getting ready for winter.

For me, this kind of work lends itself to contemplation. In the spring and summer, we are moving at near optic velocity to get everything in the ground and tended to. I find that in this rush of work, I’m fixing or setting up infrastructure and equipment constantly. In contrast, this afternoon I’m looking forward to several hours of slab wood stacking.

We have so many decisions to make and have learned that it pays to think through them carefully. For instance, this year we hired three full time farmers, plus several part timers. On average, we hired 28 person-days per week. Looking back, its clear that we should have hired another full time farmer.

Everything worked out fine, but some jobs went undone, even though our crew worked as quickly as possible. The core issue was that our volume of sales was much higher than expected. In April and May, when we are usually focused on getting crops planted and other spring start up jobs, we were busy harvesting greens from the new heated greenhouse.

When the Farmshare program started in June more people signed up than ever before. In addition, our walk-in business at the Warehouse took a big jump. So our harvests got really big, and they got even bigger in July when lots of fruiting crops came in.

This tremendous response has been exciting and a cause for big thank you to everyone who has supported us. We hope to build on this season’s success by improving our production and service for the coming year. We have already hired more staff for 2019, and are planning to increase production volume and diversity.

Is there something you want us to grow? Perhaps there is a change you would like to see, such as different hours of operation. If you have any ideas that would make the Warehouse market and our Farmshare program better, please let us know.

We are thrilled to be your farmers. Bringing the bounty of the land directly to appreciative people is a wonderful thing to do. Thanks again for supporting our farm, and happy thanksgiving!