This week I thought I would give you a snapshot of what it is like on harvest morning when we pick all your vegetables for the week.
The night before I print off the pick-list with all of the vegetable that you chose for your bags. Then the next morning I get out to the garden bright and early, usually with one helper. We often write down everything we need to pick on a whiteboard located in the garden, along with approximate harvest amounts or weights.
In order to keep veggies fresh, we try to pick the most perishable ones first, like tender greens and lettuces. Then we move to root crops like turnips, beets, and carrots. . . bunching them as we go down the row. Finally, we may finish with tomatoes, potatoes, onions, squash, or other plants that don't mind if it is has already gotten a little hot outside.
We pick into harvest bins and stack them in the shade as we go, making periodic runs to the walk-in cooler to take loads of produce for chilling.
Later, once everything is harvested, we will wash and rinse the produce before putting it back in the cooler again to chill. Finally, we will weigh and bag everything.
To pack your bags we lay out all the different types of bagged or bunched produce in totes and use printed labels to load each of your custom orders. These then wait in the cooler until the morning of delivery when I load them up, in order of delivery, in the back of our van. One of my boys then accompanies me on our route as we come by and drop off each of your orders at your home!
We are so honored to get to serve each one of you and thank you for your support!
Your Farmer,
Noah
