The latest Farm Notes is online! Continue meeting your farmers. Also, the roadside stands are open for business!
In 1971, the Newcombs built the roadside stand on Leesburg Pike. It had a concrete floor, one room with three rough walls and a second floor with a steep roof. We sold corn and tomatoes, seven days a week, from 9 - 9. Behind the stand they poured another concrete slab and installed a used walk-in cooler. The cooler was essential to the sweet corn business, since sweet corn started to turn to starch within hours of picking if it wasn't cooled. For 50 years we have filled that cooler over and over and over, week in and week out, with greens and apples and flowers and cider and root crops. The door has been repaired many times, and the front wall has been reinforced from so much door banging.
There have been repairs over the years but last Thursday it finally stopped working and the repairman declared that it would cool no more. This is bad timing, but there is no such thing as good timing for a sudden death, especially for a refrigerator. He said that parts and equipment are nearly impossible to acquire these days, and that a four month wait is a possibility.
Of course we have a Plan B, and C, and probably D if necessary. We have coolers in Loudoun and we have one more small cooler in Vienna. We have started to shuffle and shift and transport, keeping track of inventory as well as we can. This is taking Vegetable Tetris to a whole new level. We pick fresh vegetables every day and we get more from Sunnyside and Sassafras Creek Farm and Fireside. Seven days a week, piles of crates come in and piles go out. It's a new way of thinking, having our main refrigerator 45 minutes away.
The repairman is working hard to find us some equipment. He hopes to have some good news within a week. In the meantime we will keep trying to be more like Toyota, keeping our inventory lean and picking on demand. By some crazy coincidence, two of our farmer neighbors in Loudoun also have cooler problems. The cooler gods are not happy.
Questions about your vegetables? Take a look at ID That Veggie! For more recipe ideas you can find us on Pinterest!
