A visit with Farmer Roger

It is now coming up on two weeks since my last entry here.

Seeds are starting to arrive. Territorial Seed came first, then Johnny’s, and, yesterday, Seed Savers Exchange. I’ll spend some time on variety choices some other time. Our drip line also came last week. We drip irrigate almost everything. It saves a lot of water and also saves a lot of time. No more spending hours dragging hoses and sprinklers around two or three times a day.

Claire & I still have a myriad of things to work out for production this year. We met for several hours yesterday and decided to schedule a weekly Tuesday morning meeting until we get to the point where short spontaneous discussions work better. We are working on a number of ideas new for the farm this year. Here are two: We’re hoping to be able to deliver to a number of restaurants. We will be at a Farmers’ Market this year. We haven’t yet decided on which one to apply for, so if you have a favorite, let me know.

We will also be recruiting someone to apprentice with Evert & Claire to become the Veg lead next year, responsible for growing & harvesting veg, flowers, & herbs.

There are a couple of beekeepers who want to keep bees at the farm this year. I’m hoping we’ll see over 1000 pounds of honey in the farmstand.

Faron, our black alpaca

Sabino, our white alpaca

This time of year the farm is not very photogenic, so I took a few photos of our alpacas. Here are Faron (black, a Huacaya alpaca) and Sabino (white, a Suri alpaca). These two guys were instant crowd favorites when they joined the farm last June.

I’ve been researching blogging software and got sidetracked into Twitter. I am now microblogging on Twitter at http://twitter.com/FarmerRoger.

If you don’t know Twitter, entries are limited to 140 letters, so they must be short, but I can quickly add a Tweet anytime I have something to share. I’ll write what I am focusing on that day, and what is going on at the farm. Follow my Tweets to be one of the first to know when tomatoes are finally ripe. I’ll also be entering the day’s weather and changes during the day since a few miles distance from the farm can make a huge difference in the weather. You may want to check before deciding it is too rainy outside for a visit to the farm. You don’t have to join Twitter to follow my day, but you do if you want to write back.