Our summer field crew started this past week, and it has been incredible! It's so nice to surround ourselves with hard working, nature loving, keen and funny humans. It not only means that the work gets done and done well, but it also means that we get to have fun doing it!
No one would call us a crack-a-dawn kind of farm, but we do start at 7am, which is early enough for this farmer... First thing on the list is a morning meeting with the three farm managers. Mostly we discuss what the day will look like and how we can set ourselves up for success, making sure everything is setup for the crew, which roll in for 7:30am. Half an hour is not much time to get our ducks in a row, but that's all the time we got and we better be ready, cause once the field crew arrives it's go, go, go time!
This week we tackled a lot of spring cleaning - removing old trellis, moving landscape fabric and prepping beds. We actually haven't planted anything in the field yet. We decided to focus our attention on getting everything nicely cleaned up before filling our fields with seeds and seedling.
This week also marked our first lettuce and spinach harvest! We are super excited about the quality of our greens this spring. They are soooo thick, crunchy and sweet (...if I do say so myself!) There's really nothing like crunching on fresh spring greens. I often associate this freshness with the end of winter. We're turning the page on hearty wintery meals, and moving on to lighter, juicier and fresher delights! Hooray for fresh veggies! Yay!
Our attentions have also been focused on upgrading our farm systems. We're always trying to improve our systems - making the smoother, faster, easier and all round more enjoyable. We spent most of March and April dreaming up new ways to improve the farm's flow, and this past week sure put those new systems to the test. The biggest change (or maybe the one we're most excited about) is our new layout for the Packshed. We're really tried to take advantage of last year's renos and have everything on wheels, hoping that this will save time as well as our backs! ;) Other than a few hiccups here and there, we are super thrilled with how things are flowing from field to wash station to pack station to cooler and finally to the delivery van! This summer is going to be so smooooooth!
There are a lot of wonderful things happening here on the farm, but if I were to choose one, I think my favourite part would be hearing the field crew giggling amongst themselves after one heck of physically demanding morning! To a manager, that's simply priceless and fills my heart with so much joy!
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