Welcome to the start of our 2021 season! I can hardly believe it’s already week two. This is my 9th season here at Featherstone and I swear every year moves a little faster than the one before. We are full speed ahead down here at the farm and I just wanted to give you all a small update of what we are up to:
Our second group of H2A visa workers from Mexico arrived recently, getting us back to a full strength crew! In the winter and spring, we're a smaller group of local folks, but once June comes around, about 20 some more seasonal workers join us. Together, we get lots of weeding, picking, and packing of our produce done. These new folks around the farm have injected life into the crew, which was otherwise getting worn down by the heavy work load.
We also have a lot of new faces in leadership on the Field Production team. I’m sure you will hear from them throughout the year. They have stayed largely on track with all plantings and we are looking forward to another really solid growing year (knock on wood!). We're especially excited about our melon and tomato crops, which so far look like a million bucks!
We added more high tunnel space this spring (these are like greenhouses but taller) for our early tomatoes and winter spinach and greens, which is exciting. And there's been some other special projects which include added storage areas on the farm, portable bathrooms/handwashing in the fields, and a few pieces of upgraded equipment to help save the spines around here as much as possible! My personal favorite is the robot seeder, which we use to seed a very large portion of our transplants much more quickly.
It's starting to feel like summertime around here with full crews, mariachi music blasting through speakers in our warehouse, lunch tables filled with tired but smiling faces, and lists of work long postponed getting knocked out. Here's some photos from around the farm this week for you to get a glimpse of things:
Lots of work getting done by several crews and tractors at once!
Our high tunnel tomatoes getting trellised.
A pretty potato flower! Our potato crop looks fantastic this season!
It won't be long before we have sweet corn!
We look forward to a year of delicious ripe tomatoes, crisp cabbage heads, and sweet melons (and the sweet corn!). I really do mean it when I say thank you for your support this year. Our CSA farm share program is a foundational part of our farm that allows us to do so much around here in the spring and early summer. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Until next time,
Nathan Manfull
Operations Manager
