Week 4, 2012

Things are going well this season so far.  The veggies are looking better than they have in the past.  Our beans and broccoli are some of the best we have grown.  The weather has been warm but good to grow in despite the lack of rain.  We just planted in beets, more collards, cabbage, red mizuna, and a variety of herbs.  I would also like to thank my globe trotting, techie cousin Gavin from Ireland who made a guest appearance at Steed Farms and helped to plant a row of broccoli with my brother Pat.  Out of all the things he could have wanted to do in Central Florida, working for a day at the farm was up on his list.  I wasn't able to make it to see him work as I have had a crazy busy end of the year with my day job and being on leave with the newborn as well as tending to a sick wife but I very much appreciate the time he gave in planting the crop.  We will keep you updated with the broccoli.  I'll even call it Gavin and Pat's row.  Thanks for your help guys.    

 I am trying to pot the herbs into pots this year to see if I can get a multiple year harvest off them.  I transferred the mint into three gallon pots to better find it year after year from the weeds that grow in the fields.  Once I mow the mint and the surrounding area down after the fall it takes me hours to extract weeds from the mint and control it again to be able to harvest.  So I figured that maybe growing it in pots might help with the annual problem of mint management.  We will see.

We have been having some aphids pretty bad in the diakons and the turnip greens but I hate to spray them.  It is somewhat counter productive, but when the aphid population builds up there usually is a massive build up of predators that takes place shortly thereafter.  This year the predator response has been late in arrival but finally this week I was starting to see some really strong numbers of lady bugs and parasitic wasps doing their jobs.  I hope you guys are hungry!

Our first delivery went well and I am thinking that this will be a big area for our future.  It is a little logistically challenging at the moment for our size but we will grow into it.

I have been rooting some cassava I got from a friend from my church missionary trip.  She was growing some at her house and gave me a cutting last year.  Apparently you just stick it in the ground and it grows.  It will not survive the winters at our location so you harvest before the cold.  I planted it last year and we had one night of a freeze and it killed the plants to nearly the soil line.  They bounced back and it grew all year.  We harvested and boiled it.  Not bad at all.  It tastes a lot like potato but you will need to change out the water a few times as you boil it.  We sent in the cooked roots to Anna's class that was having a lunch on root crops in science class.  It would make a nice addition to our line up of veggies with a starch crop for the beginning of the season.

Here are some of the pictures I have been talking about.

Gavin, Pat, Me and Catherine Rose (she didn't help plant anything yet).

Passing through the plot with Nate.

Picture of the field.

Another angle.

The north plot.

Veggies and nutsedge weed problem.

The "new" bean/corn seeder.

My truck was totaled by a person on a call who drove through a red light.  Please drive with total attention and leave hand held electronics off in the car!

The demolished greenhouse after the bad windstorm.

A baby bunny at the farm.  It wouldn't move even after I told it I could see it hiding in plain sight.

Season Start 2012-13

Its hard to believe but the new season is upon us.  I have been somewhat reluctant to start the first blog post of the season this year.  I guess time is at a premium and leisure time to sit and write a blog is scarce.  Anyway, the first season pickup is tomorrow so I thought I can't delay it any longer. 

This summer I have converted out previously ornamental producing ground that has just been holding plants for the past three plus years into new vegetable ground.  I used the frontend loader to scrape off the plants and then ripped up the groundcover.  I then cut out the irrigation and converted it to drip lines.  It was very heartbreaking to see our plant blocks reverting back to bare ground after all the work and money we spent to put groundcover and irrigation lines in to grow plants.  But now it is being utilized to produce food and better yet, is that these vegetable blocks will be on a timer so I can set up the irrigation without being there everyday to turn on and off water.  I used tree and leaf litter from the prunings along the power lines that was done nearby and  placed a couple of inches of the organic matter on top and tilled it in.  I then planted cowpeas and surghum x sudan grass and tilled that in.  We then had tons of rain and I watched as nearly all the cowpeas nearly drowned.  I have never seen that much water standing for so long at the farm.  Eventually the waters subsided and I was able to start our season off.  I had made a plan B thinking that I might not be able to work the ground for planting but things worked out alright. 

We have had an interesting summer to say the least.  Our farm was burglarized twice and my shop was broken into with almost all my tools that were worth anything stolen.  My work truck was totaled after someone ran a red light and T-boned me.  Then a windstorm knocked a tree into the mobile home and smashed out a window and the high winds ripped off the plastic on a greenhouse and crushed the roof frame.  All this happened in the span of about a month.  We have not taken care of the damage to the greenhouse yet but it is somewhere down on the list of things to do.  My Dad asks how can I deal with all this and keep going.  My reply is faith, prayers, and grace.  I readily accept the good things from the Lord, I should try just as readily to accept the trials.  Our bible memory verse for a while was from Job.  "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; Blessed be the name of the Lord."   But summer is now behind us and the season is starting out looking good.  And there are always blessings to enjoy like the birth of Katherine Rose, our #4, born on 11/4 at 10:44 weight 7 lb 4 oz. 

The weather since things have gone into the ground has been great for growing minus some light rains which always is better than many irrigations.  I'm not sure why but one rain event is like the effect of a dozen irrigations.  The plants are growing fine otherwise and the breaking of new ground helps.  This year I used the tractor to form beds with the wheels.  I am gearing up for tractor use later on and practicing making rows.  I will need to use less hand labor if we want to do more with less.  Over the summer I bought a tactor mounted bean/corn seed planter from a retiring farmer.  I used it to plant the beans in the bed and it worked like a charm.  I was able to offset it on the tractor and went down one side of the bed to plant a row and turned around and finished the other row in the bed at just the right spacing.  I am super excited to plant beans now and can't wait to try it for the corn.  I also bought an antique looking transplanter a the same time.  I tried to use it with my brother and broke the chain that drove the wheel.  I let him take it home to work on during his spare time.  When it was working it was doing a good job when it planted a plant (which was about one in ten times).  We need to tweak it and get some practice in with it.  I think it will be ready for next year's season and if working properly it will save tons of time.

We have planted beans, cucumbers, turnips, arugula, broc. raab, diakon radish, bok choy, komatsuna, carrots, kohlrabi, mustards, mizuna, tomato, kale, collards, cabbage in the field or greenhouse.  Everything but the cucumbers are doing great.  I really need a downey mildew resistant cucumber.  I haven't found one yet. 

We are looking forward to meeting with all the old and new supporters showing up tomorrow morning and starting twenty four weeks of fresh, local, organic produce.  We are also starting a delivery route tomorrow for the first time.  We will see how that goes.  I'll blog about it with lots of pictures from the summer that I didn't include with this post.

Last Pickup 2011-2012

Well here it is already.  It is in some ways hard to believe that 24 weeks have elapsed from the start of the season and in some ways I am ready for the end of the season.  Overall it was a pretty good season aside from the weather which was very squirrely, but it proved good for the end of the season with dry weather.  We didn't get as many fungal diseases as we usually do.  Some things from this season to take forward are to plant a bunch of veggies in excess of what we need.  Never ever take more than a two day vacation in the middle of the season.  I really need to reevaluate my fertilizer plan.  Seems like things are running out of steam towards the end of their cycle.  I learned that planting beans behind bok choi is a good thing.  I learned that is a lot of fun to have volunteers out at the farm during picking time (Thank you very much John-Carlo and Dali for your help).  Next year I am going to try strawberries again but I will need to adjust their fertility.  I will need to do something different about the chickens.  We did manage to catch two racoons but only after they killed all the hens.  Here is a picture of the crime scene and the killers.   We used the dead chickens to bait a trap and caught a small raccoon the first night.  Nate was really excited because he got to go with me to pick up the trap and set it up at night staying up until 9:30 on a school night.  But he got to spend some time with Dad and it was an real adventure for him.  I thought there might be more than one culprit and we set it up again and caught a much bigger raccoon.  One that liked to growl.  Handling the cage was difficult because there were no hand holds were the critters couldn't get to you.  The small raccoon we just used a towel to hold on to the cage, but the big one I used the loader on the tractor to get him in the truck.  I then drove down to the river and let them go.  I hope that is the last we will see from those two.
The veggies are finishing up the pumpkins turned out nice and we have two weeks of picking with them.  the corn struggled this year due to fertility and pests which erupted when we were away.  That is why we will not be leaving the farm during the season.  The zucchini are awesome this year and so are the Roma tomatoes.  We will be getting ready for our cover crop which will be cowpeas and sorghum x sudan grass.  We will also be looking forward to a little easier weekend.

Thief in the Night

I arrived at the farm to a terrible sight.  The chicken coop door was open, a few chickens were outside, and a bunch of white feathers everywhere.  Something got into the coop and killed five of the chickens.  Including one of my favorites, the little white leghorn.  That was such a curious, good laying chicken.  All but one of the chickens were eaten down to the bones and dragged away from the coop.  There was one of the original Dixie chicks left inside the coop half eaten.  This is really bad and we have got to do something.  I moved the coop, buried the chicken, and am formulating a plan.  I am going to borrow a live trap from a friend to see if we can catch whatever is doing this.  In the meantime I reinforced the coop.
It was nice to finally get some rain at the farm.  It has been months since we had a drop out there.  But that hasn't been a bad thing with keeping disease at bay.  The weeds are quickly taking over as I usually can't keep up at this point in time with only three weeks left before we begin plowing everything under.  I will keep the weeds down where it matters like the peppers and basil but let them have there day in the sun everywhere else until the tractor and disc are called in to prep the fields for the cover crops.  The okra is starting to form flowers.  The pumpkins are almost ripe.  The corn is struggling this year.  The cucumbers and the yellow squash  are shutting down.  I wish I had planted one more rotation of squash and cucumbers this season.  I figured I could keep them going for the last few weeks but I may have been wrong.  It is a little too early to tell.
The pictures didn't make it again this week as the battery died on the camera while uploading for this blog.  Maybe next week.

One of the special attributes of our farm that we like to cultivate is the community portion of the community supported agriculture operation we run.  I think it is great that some of our farm supporters interact with one another at pickup and beyond.  I mean really, we all see the same people every Saturday for 24 weeks.   It is nice to get to know each other in the community and see where we have common interests or learn new things.  Since I don't have one of my own pictures for this blog post, I do have a picture of one of our supporters doing cool things in the community.  Here is a picture of Danielle with her bowling team raising money for Big Brothers/Big Sisters.  Go Danielle (blue shirt holding the ball)!  Another great way to build community!

Harvest Week #20 2012

A big thank you goes out this week to John-Carlo one of our more adventurous supporters who spent the morning helping me and Nathan harvest the weekend pickup.  It was a lot of fun from my perspective having someone to chat with while you work.  I hope John-Carlo had fun too.  At least he said he did.  Nate did a great job of picking the beans, zucchini, and he even got to use the clippers to harvest the eggplants.  I was impressed that he could do that.  My favorite quote of the day from J-C was "This is a lot of work!" as we finished up harvesting and then started to wash everything.  It made me smile.  Thanks for noticing.  It sure is...but I like doing it.

The pumpkins are ripening nicely.  The corn has been attacked by European corn borer.  This is the first year that we had them that bad.  Things are terribly dry.  The orange trees are shedding all their leaves to stay alive.  The dryness that we have been experiencing has been good for the pumpkins and onions during ripening and in general we have seen less disease.  I am starting to see hoards of stink bugs.  More than past years.  Those guys are a terror.  I haven't found a way to control them yet.  I am not sure where they come from either.

Something ate all our stone fruits.  They were almost ripe and I only harvested  a handful of nectarines, a few plums, and a couple of peaches.  The nighttime menace got everything else.Very disappointing this year.  I think it was a raccoon.

Cucumbers are looking bad.  Kidney bean trial looked OK.  I might do a bigger trial next year.  I will wait for them to dry out before I harvest them.  Just a few more weeks to go.  I will post some pictures with our next post.

A Season For All Things

My full time job, while not farming, is not very far afield.  As an extension agent I have the privilege to serve our local producers of ornamental plants and sod to their own productive ends as well as procuring environmental and economic benefits to the citizens of our county.  I am tasked with educating them in methods of conservation and efficiency towards increasing farm productivity and minimizing wastes.  In the course of my wanderings for information I came across a fellow by the name of Liberty Hyde Bailey.  He was also an agriculture educator based in Cornell and his ideas inspired the Extension System.  He was a prolific horticulture writer and poet.  Here is an exerpt of his writing I thought you might enjoy and to which our farm supporters can attestify to.  Take note of the date at the end.  I wonder what he would think about our produce stream now found in our nation's food system.
"As millions of people do not have gardens, so are they unaware of the low quality of much of the commercial produce as compared with things well grown in due season. Most persons, depending on the market, do not know what a superlative watermelon is like. Even such apparently indestructible things as cucumbers have a crispness and delicacy when taken directly from the vine at proper maturity that are lost to the store-window supply. Every vegetable naturally loses something of itself in the process from field to consumer. When to this is added the depreciation by storage, careless exposure and rough handling, one cannot expect to receive the full odor and the characteristic delicacies that belong to the product in nature. We must also remember the long distances over which much of the produce must be transported, and the necessity to pick the produce before it is really fit, to meet the popular desire to have vegetables out of season and when we ought not to want them. There is a time and place for everything, vegetables with the rest. Modern methods of marketing, storing and handling have facilitated transactions, and they have also done very much to safeguard the produce itself and to deliver it to the customer in good condition; but the vegetable well chosen and well grown and fresh from the garden is nevertheless the proper standard of excellence. It is a surpassing satisfaction when the householder may go to her own garden rather than to the store for her lettuce, onions, tomatoes, beets, peas, cabbage, melons, and other things good to see and to eat, and to have them in generous supply." -L.H. Bailey, The Principles of Vegetable-Gardening, 1921

101st Blog Post

I can't believe that I have posted 100 blog posts since I started blogging 5 years ago!  I kinda feel like confetti and streamers should be dropping out of the ceiling and those crazy New Year's Eve horns should be going off.  Yeah!  OK, settle down.  Back to posting the blog.

We had something attack our hen house and then get three of our chickens.  It must have been something pretty big because it ripped the bottom of the door off and pulled the screen and the mesh off the door.  It also rolled the pressure treated post away from the door to start the process.  It must have been really mad and hungry.  My bet is that it was a bobcat.  I have seen one out just up the road in the pasture and one of the loquat trees that I planted had the bark shredded and I assumed that was from a bobcat as well.  One of the chickens we lost was the Amerucana that laid the double yolk, blue eggs.  What a shame.

I visited an organic grower in another county (Magnolia Gardens in San Antonio) today and it was nice to see his field.  His plants looked great.   It was interesting to hear him talking about his variety choices and they were very similar to mine.  He had a different red beet which seemed to grow well and he also had a couple of melons that I might try.  He didn't grow as many varieties of veggies that we do but what he did grow looked great.  In fact, it made me really understand how much better I hope to do next year.  He had a few ideas that I hope to try in the field.  He plants all his scallions in bunches instead of rows.  I like that idea and it will save a bunch of time.  He uses plastic mulch in his rows.  I don't think that I will do that but it is interesting.  He brews coffee for repelling ants.  It didn't seem to be working as I saw ants, but I will give it a try as they were eating some of my seedlings.  I will be using a few ideas I picked up.

In our field the corn is growing nicely.  The zucchini and the squash are doing better than ever.  The beans are just starting to ripen.  The greenhouse tomatoes are starting to go downhill.  The lettuce is trying to finish off.  The field planted tomatoes are green and ripening.  The pumpkins are looking good. The peaches/plums/nectarines, what little we have are almost ripe.  I wish we had more of them this year.  A few more weeks to go until the end of the season.

Here is a few pictures from the farm.  A lettuce going to seed.  A lemon tree with some fruit for next year.  I am very excited about this one.  It might be the first lemons since I planted the tree in 2004-'05.  The last picture is of a leaf with lady bug larvae that were all over the eggplant eating the aphids that were running rampant in there.  The ladybugs ate them all.

Hot, Hot, Hot

It is dry and hot out there.  But things are still growing.  Our lettuce plants are starting to bolt again because of the heat.  The greenhouse eggplants are nearly ready and some of the cucumbers from the house have been harvested.  We really missed/stuggled with the lettuce growing window this year but I am very proud of the fact that we have an entire salad ready all at one time.  Lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, scallions, onions, carrots, radish, and spinach are all ready now.  I've been trying to do that for a few years and the seasonality has been off for the cool to warm season veggie transition.  This year with the greenhouse we have much earlier tomatoes and are catching the tail end of the cool season veggies.  Next year hopefully I can start things a little earlier in the greenhouse and also add peppers to the mix.  I was thinking about my tomatoes and keep remebering that my Grandad in Ireland grew them in a small glass house and sold them to the city folk.  My Dad had to go water them by hand with buckets and wanted to move far away from the farm.  It is funny how things came back around with me and my tomatoes except for my Dad who moved far away again from the farm.  
We planted corn (two types), beans, more brocolli, flowers, peppers, a kidney bean trial, and more cucumbers all in the field.  The green beans are starting to flower, and the leeks will be ready soon.  I've been mounding up the soil on the stems to get more soft white stems from the harvest. 
I got a couple of cuttings from a tropical raspberry called mysore raspberry and have potted them up into 1 gallon pots.  They would be a great addition to the mix.  We love raspberries!  I am hoping to plant blackberries, a few grapes, and the raspberries out into the field this year. 
I am starting to think about growing the herbs in pots under the shadehouse.  It might be a little more manageable especially the mint to grow it in pots.  We might also extend the harvest time a bit.
Here are a few pictures of the happenings on the farm.

tropical pumpkins started from seeds

red mustard being killed by downey mildew

greenhouse tomatoes

Mysore raspberry rooted cutting

Mid Season

Another wacky few weeks of weather.  I finally planted beans and then a few days later we had lots of patchy frost on the ground at the farm.  I know this first hand as I camped out Sunday night with the kids and a friend with his kids.  It was literally freezing in my sleeping bag.  I've never been so cold that my legs hurt.  The kids were well bundled but I thought that my sleeping bag was more insulated and didn't bring back up.  So sometime in the middle of the night I needed to put jeans over my sweat pants just to stay warm.  My head was kept warm with a hat, hood, and my sleeping bag which I pulled over my head to keep from freezing.  It really made me think about what the homeless might do to keep warm.  We had a nice little fire and did the hot dogs, marshmallows, and we even had fresh eggs and cut up some oranges for breakfast.
This season has been tough for our cold season veggies.  It has been way to warm and "usually" we get a slower warm up and transition into our hot spring.  This year we have had a very warm transition but still too cool to plant warm season crops outside.  Especially like last week's freeze.  At least I wasn't ready to take the risk.  So there is sort of a production gap from the cool season crops to the warm season ones.  We should be fine harvest-wise but our cool season crops are stopping short this year.
The late frost a few weeks back has impacted all our stone fruits and loquats this year.  Some of our peach trees are still in hibernation mode and waiting for the right amount of chilling hours until they "wake up."  It was so warm that they never got their required amount of vernalization.These will hardly produce a crop.  The other trees that did break dormancy had their young blossoms freeze and fall off so we will get little to no fruit on them. I'm not exactly sure what happened with the loquat this year but it has very sparse fruit on it.  Maybe just too dry.
Our greenhouse trial with tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers looks good.  The tomatoes seem a little sparse and maybe a pollination issue or low light from the white plastic I used.  I'm not sure which or maybe both.  But I have been hand pollinating and it doesn't seem to affect the fruit set.  So I am leaning on light conditions which should get better with the longer day-length.
Jennifer is eagerly awaiting the carrots...Her favorite crop.  If I had to pick a favorite based on taste I would have to go with the peaches.  Looks like I will miss out this year.
I've got some pictures to show soon as I haven't posted some in a while.  Next blog will have them.

What is a Normal Winter?

I'm not sure I know what the answer to that question after growing plants in this area for 11 years.  Maybe the answer is "abnormal is the normal winter"  We have had a frost followed by 80 temps again.  I am glad that we get the frosts, it gets rid of some of the new spring weeds that are just popping up.  The potatoes didn't like it though and the regrowth we had is gone again.  We did cover up the Swiss chard this time and protected them.  Also, for the first time on the trees life, I see lemon blossoms and we were able to save those so hopefully we might get some lemons next year.  The tree has been there eight years and the cold weather steals the blossoms off.  We will see if we can keep them on this year.

Tomatoes have produced one fruit so far and it was delicious.  The excellent vine ripe, old-timey tomato taste.  There are a bunch more ripening up.  I can't wait.  One of our supporters mentioned that his dad prayed over his plants and they produced well.  I figure it never hurts to pray.  That might just be the key ingredient needed to produce abundant fruit. :)

We planted eggplants, more lettuce, more carrots, more collards, red mizuna, more kohlrabi, cilantro, tropical pumpkin in the field and cucumbers in the greenhouse.  I again held myself back from planting beans.  This is the second time I got close to planting green beans and having them froze to the ground.  I'm not taking anymore chances and will wait one more week.  Then I will plant them with corn.  My favorite crop to grow!  I love to watch corn grow.  I'm not sure what it is but I really enjoy watching the crop.  We will be planting some cabbage, leeks, peppers, more tomatoes, bok choi, to the field and some basil in trays to transplant later.

The loquats are starting to ripen.  There is not much on the tree this year.  The stonefruits are blossoming.  Maybe there will be no more freezes...Maybe I could plant beans this weekend.

We would also like to welcome our newest and also our youngest supporter. Congratulations to the Pridgeon's on the arrival of Ethan. 7lbs 10 oz on Feb 1st at 1740. I know his momma is glad he is here at last! What a beautiful little baby! Congratulations guys! I hope he likes red mustard greens :)

Week 6&7 2012

Steed Farms set a new time record for fastest harvest-2 hrs.  That is the fastest we have ever harvested.  We had to sprint the whole way as I went out to the truck on Saturday and found a flat tire.  The bigger problem was that thieves broke into my truck to pull their truck out of the mud as they were stealing my metal about two months ago causing about $1700 worth of damage to the truck.  I didn't realize until I tried to change my tire that they also stole my jack handle (which was also metal along with my battery that was mounted under the hood) and I couldn't lower my spare tire.  So we all piled into the van and ran to our local tire supply (McGee Tire) and had to buy a replacement.  Then make a mad dash to the farm and pick.  We managed to finish up just as our supporters were arriving.  What a crazy morning. 

We have been having up and down temperatures lately and things seem to be just sitting there.  My strawberry experiment is not yielding like I had hoped.  The tomatoes are looking great and I just planted eggplant in the greenhouse and will be adding cucumbers shortly. 

This last week we planted spinach, beets, more carrots and diakons, turnips, leeks, more onions, and broccoli raab (which I love).  The regular broccoli is starting to bud and should be picked next week along with kholrabi.  Lettuce is slowly gaining size and will be picked either this week or next. I am not sure if some of the potatoes we planted are going to grow back or not.  We had some that were just breaking through the soil and froze back to the ground.  They are starting to regrow but I'm not sure they will make a crop.  I hope they do. 

I was happy to see one bag of the red new potatoes left after the pick up last week.  They were a hit in our house.  Anna even wanted to take them to school for lunch!  That is the Irish side of her.  I'm the same way.  If I had to pick between fresh eggs or potatoes as our members did last week, potatoes would win out every time for me.

Some of our members had asked about the roselle jam we made so I thought I would include the recipe.  I took the roselle buds (about 2 cups) and removed the seed pods.  Then I put them in a blender just to get bit size pieces.  Then I added about 2 cups of sugar and boiled it until it was frothing.  I then added the sugar free pectin and allowed it to cook in.  Then just follow normal jam making proceedures and place into jars.  It was absolutely delicious.  Here is a link to more than you probably ever want to know about roselle.  http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/roselle.html

Season's Greetings and Happy New Year 2012

We would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  We started off the new year with a critical cold event.  We lost two crops of potatoes that were just maturing and the other one was just breaking through the soil.  I will probably get to harvest the first planting and we can have small new potatoes but it is not what we hoped for.  The roselle is history and it looks like the Swiss chard which was going to be harvested this weekend got frosted back.  We will see how they come out.  I was just thinking a few weeks ago that this might be an extraordinary winter with no freezes and was just about to plant more beans.  I am certainly glad we didn't.  They would have been just about 2" tall and frozen to the ground.  This is why we plant winter veggies during the fall and winter.  Summer veggies would all be frozen out.  Everyone longs for tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, etc. but eating seasonally is about adjusting our recipes to what is available and able to grow.  It is also about taking advantage of the greens that we have now by making dishes and freezing them or blanching and freezing them for the summer when they won't be available.  I know our supporters will balk at the idea of craving bok choi in May and June when there is none available when the last thing they probably want more of right now is the same.  But it will happen and you will be glad when you open the freezer and pull out that frozen bag of greens.  Here is a great story of how trying to do the right thing at the market place turns out bad and how we not only need to eat responsibly but also locally and seasonally.  We thank our supporters for having that same mind set.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/science/earth/questions-about-organic-produce-and-sustainability.html

I am trying to grow some tomatoes in the small greenhouse as an experiment since the space wasn't being used but it is a risky venture and so far they are doing fine.  My little strawberry experiment in one gallon pots are doing fine but the yield is too low yet to do it on a large scale we have been getting about 2 pints a week with about 80 plants.  I also moved them into the greenhouse to protect the fruit and blossoms. 

I struggled to get the plastic on my greenhouse on Monday with 10-20 mph winds.  I was trying to put a new roof of plastic on the greenhouse.  I could only bring the greenhouse poly up and across the greenhouse into the headwind.  So I had a giant parasail that I thought might rip or crush the house frame when I was trying to tack it down.  I was considering how the Lord calmed the winds on the sea of Galilee and was wondering if He would do the same at that moment.  Instead, He sent a person with a problem that needed my help.  I offered to help with the problem and he offered to help on the greenhouse.  Interesting how the Lord works sometimes and both problems got resolved!