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If you pick up in St. Ignace, Mackinac Island or the Cheboygan cooler trailer (Wednesday pickup), please make sure to read the email we sent on Sunday if you haven't already regarding a change to pickup times. Thanks again to everyone for understanding - it's sure making a big difference for us this week already!
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Sorry for the delay in sending emails out this week - we were waiting on Harvie to finalize the delivery date changes for the above pickups (their response time has been unacceptably slow all season, as we know some of you have dealt with, so thanks for bearing with us).
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Hi everyone!
Well, we're onto fall shares and morning harvests are sure getting to be a bit more of a challenge. We typically harvest everything early in the morning and then spend the afternoon washing and processing, but this time of year, the frozen plants force us to wait it out until it warms up a bit and everything thaws. We've already had more than a handful of nights in the upper 20's, which is way more than we're used to, but we're dealing with it with minimal issues. Luckily, we're moving onto our crops in hoophouses and the remaining crops outside can handle the cold.
This week's big goal is to get the frame of the new large hoophouse built. We spent the past couple hours this morning putting up the 16' tall hoops, which I'm sure was a sight to behold - there just isn't a very graceful way to hold onto the bottom ends of something 13' tall and 34' wide (and of course, top heavy) and place it perfectly into another pipe 3' off the ground. We always get a good laugh out of the instructions on projects like this, as they always make it sound so incredibly simple ("with one person standing on each side, lift the bow into the ground post" - now doesn't that sound easy!). Nonetheless, we didn't crush anyone and the hoops are up, so we'll call that a good start to the day.
Our other big goal this week is to plant the garlic. This season, we grew around 5,000 plants, about what we expect to do next season. This requires us to break down around 700 bulbs into individual cloves and then hand plant the 5,000 cloves into what this time of year is typically wet, 30-something degree soil. It's more daunting sounding than it is, though breaking down the bulbs sure takes some time! Garlic is always the last thing we plant each year, so there's no mistaking that the year is winding down.
Well, the sun is shining, so we're going to go wrap up harvesting and get back to building before it gets any colder!
Have a great week!
-Brendan & Greta
