We weren’t born knowing how to do this !!!!

I grew up on the farm and Chuck has loads of summer time experience on gardens and farms, but neither of us has ever truly done this on a full time basis where we used a farm as an income source.  It is a new experience.

  Over the past two years we have learned so much about how to do this and what we need to change.  The biggest thing I think we both learned is to minimize loss.  The first season we had so much produce that we just threw away after the weekend sales were over.  Face it, we can only eat so many cantaloupes or eat so much corn.  We were faced with the weekly Sunday night ritual of throwing food away.  We did not have a viable plan for being better stewards of the resource.

  Last year we go much better at it.  We began to look at having a track record to knowing how much we might sell in one weekend.  We also realized that is was OK to buy less and sell out.  Granted, that means we do miss some revenue as we sell out before the end of the weekend, but that beats losing the product.

  Another addition last year was canning and drying.  The old proverb of ‘problems being the mother of invention’ is right.  We started to can some of the vegetables and dehydrate the fruits and vegetables for sale the following weekend.  I admit I had reservations that would ever work, but I was surprised how well the canned and dehydrated foods sold.  We still insured that what we were selling was locally grown, in season, and pesticide free.  The small difference was that is was in a preserved state.  Our friends and customers really like that.  We kept the costs down by offering a ‘deposit return’ on jars, which gave us the added help of not having to constantly looking for canning jars.  We do the same thing for egg boxes as well.

  This year we have built into the plan the canning and dehydrating, as it isn’t just a ‘Plan B’  income source.  Friends and customers have shown up for the canned and pickled beets and red beet eggs (by far the most popular item).  It didn’t take being smacked upside the head to know we needed to have that more and more often.

  More formally this year, in fact in two weeks, Chuck will be in the Harrisburg area for a two weekend course in bee keeping.  With the addition of our apiary we will have our own honey produced on site rather than buying it from local bee keepers.  This will allow us to be a little more in charge of quality control.  We use only apiary farmers that we know and trust, but even with that caveat we still rely on them for the quality and quantity of our honey.  We soon will not have to do that.

  Couple with that the addition of our chickens for our own free range eggs we have two areas that are new to 2010 and beyond.

   Looking ahead to 2012 and beyond is the planting of our orchards and educational center for school children.

   See you all in JUNE !!!