The seed orders are in, and now it’s time to move on to a couple of other things that are critical to get lined up before the busy spring season arrives.
The things now at the time of my priority list:
- Marketing materials. It’s time to get word out about New Family Farm and all of the fantastic produce that will be available from us this year. The website and facebook are great tools for this, but we also need to get printed materials out to people. Also, we’re now listed on the LocalHarvest.org site – you’re welcome to check out our listing there.
- Space for germinating plants this spring. Many of the vegetables we grow will be started in climate-controlled environments. With an eye to energy savings, this means I need to get a greenhouse up in the next two months. This is entirely possible, but not without challenges!
- Equipment prep. One of my fall purchases was an Allis-Chalmers ‘G’ tractor (picture below). It was made in the 1950’s. I bought it because it’s a light-weight (minimizing soil compaction) and has the engine in the rear and a belly-mount cultivator (enabling me to see where I’m going and not run over crops). It currently does not have brakes, and the cultivator is not set up for the bed system that I’ll be using. (The bed system is basically using 5-foot wide “beds”, having between 1 and 5 rows in each bed, depending upon the crop. This differs from a row system, where every row would be the same width, say 30 inches.)
There are still plenty of other things for me to be thinking about: irrigation, delivery systems and produce handling, organic certification, and the deer fence. But I think ‘ll set those aside for right now, and focus on a few others.
