On your mark… Get… set…
We’re so close. It’s just before go time, and it shows. I’ve never driven in a race, but I imagine that this week we were caught in that tense moment where a driver double checks to see if their car is in drive for the fifth time, when the fourth time happened like five seconds ago. Because there’s tension, and we’re excited drivers (farmers)! And the race (CSA) is about to begin!
By the way, in case you missed our first post of the season, my name is Alex Yarrish, and I am not a race car driver. I am a farm hand over here at Hawkins Family Farm. I’ll be posting weekly updates, hopefully shedding some light on the behind the scenes you never thought to think about. For a look at an introduction post, check this link out.
Now, if I can get you to go a bit further along with me in this race metaphor… The farm hands were like a regular pit crew this week. Not tires, though. Bins.
So. Many. Bins.
Erin, Michael, and I spent the majority of our Monday hauling, shuffling, washing, and drying 400 gray bins in an effort to get ready for a big season of farm shares. We loaded up two big vans and took them to our friend Nate’s place over at RiverRidge Farm, where he and his family introduced us to their new state-of-the-art washer. They use it to wash veggies, but said we could just as well run our enormous pile of gray bins through it. For a couple of hours we got your bins all fresh for the farm shares before reloading and shuffling them back over to Hawkins Farm.
Thanks, RiverRidge! You can expect to see many of their offerings when you are customizing your share each week.
Four-hundred gray bins is a lot of bins, which meant that we had to stretch the drying process over a couple of days. And just as we were setting up the final round of bins to be dried out, we were snapped back into reality by a very timely Zach visit in the washroom.
I speak for myself when I say that I had some serious bin brain going on, so when the freshest onion I had ever seen in my life was placed in front of me by Farmer Zach, I was reminded of what these bins were about to do next week.
They are going to hold your groceries! Woohoo!
And, with your permission, to bring that racing metaphor back around: On Friday, we removed our hoop house end walls, opening them up to better ventilation, and it was like the flag waving, saying, “go!”
If you are unfamiliar with the hoops, give “hoop house growing method” a search on Google images, or just come to the farm for a pizza night (they start up in two weeks!) to check them out. Hoops are a really neat way to get plants started earlier than the outside weather might allow by trapping heat in a transparent, enclosed area.
We suspect that the sun is ready to keep Indiana nice and warm for good this growing season, which means that the hoops were officially opened up, revealing row upon row of brilliant colors, growing all bunched up together. To me, it felt like a real flag-waving-at-the-starting-line moment. An indication that all of our training (growing) had come to the moment we have all been waiting for. A grand debut of fully developed onions and lettuce and beets and much, much more.
See you next week!
-Alex
