Two Feet in the Dirt

Summer moves on, peach season is upon us, and while not having a garden of our own is always a bummer, it is actually providing us with a great reason to check out all of the local food options in our area. We’ve ventured out to multiple farmers markets, the nearest food co-op, and are even lucky enough to have an on-farm market just 3 minutes from our house that is open six days a week. Not only is it nice to have access to so much great local produce, this is also helping us do valuable market research in advance of running our own farm next season. It’s helpful to see what other farmers are growing, what seems to be selling well, what prices are, and what types of farms (organic, conventional, fruit, veggie, meat, etc.) are frequenting local market. All of this will help us to come up with an ideal game plan- what products might be needed at markets, what markets might be a good fit for us, and what could we possibly add to our operation that we aren’t seeing already represented in other nearby farms. 

Otherwise, the on-site work continues. It has been a weird summer in terms of weather, to say the least. Temperatures haven’t gone above the 80s this month and nighttime lows have been dropping into the low 60s most nights, a true oddity for August. As a result, we’re waking up to fog many mornings and the grass, which is usually brown and dry by this point in the summer, is growing like crazy, meaning Mike is spending a lot of time on the lawn mower. The next biggest task is getting the property tilled up so we’re ready for planting next year. Because we’re breaking new ground, we plan to pay someone with a big tractor to come in and do the tilling for us this first time. I am concentrating on getting our crop plan together now that we know the exact space we are working with. Consequently, I’ve spent a lot of time walking around the fields with a really long measuring tape! It’s definitely stressful seeing the summer fade away and knowing all the work we still have to do, so we’re just trying to plug away day by day.