This Week
We are nearing the end of this Summer's farm share season, so some of you on bi-weekly deliveries, this might be your last week. I hope that you will auto-renew for our Fall season! To celebrate this season, I added mayhaw jelly and elderflower jam to the farm shares, two of our absolute favorites! 3 Board Farm's chickens are molting, so we will only have enough eggs to keep them as extras for this week. Stowe Creek Farm is pulling late summer honey right now and it's dadgum good! Summer honey is a bit darker, and in my opinion, has a bit more of a savory taste.
Farm Update
Y'all, it's a struggle out in the fields right now. It hasn't rained here at the farm for over 8 weeks now. It takes almost 25,000 gallons of water to irrigate one acre to a depth of two inches. In September, we had our highest water bill to date. The farm has been affected in several ways. If we prepare a field block that has not had any irrigation, I have to run the system for days in advance to keep our germination rates high. However, rainwater is the best for the seeds, so even with perfect irrigation, seeds just don't pop up the way they do if you can plant before the rain.
While the grass grows slower now, the dust clouds grow with even greater enthusiasm. I'm so covered in dust after mowing or prepping beds, that I could be the main character in a Louis Lamar novel set in the American West. To combat the drought, we have made the switch to all overhead irrigation, and added an extra hour of watering allotment to each timer. We are also making use of our tarps, terminating an old crop quickly, then covering it the same day to lock in the moisture while the old crop smothers.
It seems like every season is busy, but even more so in the Fall. We have a huge market in Alley Park in West Monroe in a couple of weeks, and I've got about 200 jars of jam to make. This year, we are going to come awfully close to reaching the sales maximum that qualifies us for the cottage food laws. Once we pass that sales max, then we can either maintain our jam sales, rent a commercial kitchen, or invest in a commercial kitchen here at the farm. I never thought that our jam would be responsible for getting me thinking outside of the box and has played a large part in my ponderings over the future.
Right now, I'm beginning to lay the first bricks in our path towards organizing a cooperative made up of local farmers. I think that Monroe could use a grocery store that carried local vegetables, fruits and products. If there was a storefront where every dollar spent went back into the hands of local farmers, I think it would be a big success. If I could find a building with the potential for a commercial kitchen, we could have a jam shop, and a space to grow the value-added side of our farm business. We could have workshops, events, and farm-to-table dinners that can really make big strides in building a sustainable and fun community around locally grown food. In the next five years, I think this vision will grow into a really big asset for our community. Being a farmer takes perseverance, creativity, and hard work, but the faith farmers all share; that the seeds yet to be sown will one day bear fruit, is one of the biggest reasons America loves a good ol' farmer.
