Deserter's Dessert

Happy first day of spring everyone!  It was a beautiful, but slightly somber day on the farm today as it was unfortunately Forrest's last with us here at Our Table.  Due to some scheduling conflicts and a busy life outside of farm work, he had to make the difficult decision to fly the coop (co-op) and utilize his talents elsewhere, for now at least.  But, of course we weren't going to let him leave without a party, so we made it a dessert lunch party with lots of different sweets for everyone to try!  Everything was delicious, but with a hint of bittersweet coming from the fact that we knew we were losing one of our own.  So, this post is dedicated to Mr. Forrest Scott in the hopes that he'll one day be back again, or at that least he won't make himself a stranger around here. 

Changing gears here a bit...A big package of pre-made roof trusses was delivered to the farm stand today and dropped in from a crane.  They come as a big single unit all strapped together, and after they're flown in via the crane it's our job to cut the straps and peel the trusses off one at a time like the pages of a book and slide them over to their final resting places.  We don't have any of the blocks that will be put into the spaces between the tresses (there's a lot of them) so we didn't open up the package yet, but after it was dropped we took the time to nail a bunch of 2x4 bracing all over it so it will stay up there until we start taking the package apart.  Other than that this week we've just been putting up all the plywood sheeting on the walls, and getting the site ready to start working on roofing.  I'm still loving the work, it's hard not to feel good about something where you can actually see the progress you're making on a daily basis, it's awesome.

And in farming news here's an updated view of the farm from on top of the scaffolding as of today.  The garlic is very pronounced in the beds on the right, and you can see the newly planted beds on the left.  Not only have lettuces been transplanted over there, but all of the same stuff that was seeded in the hoop house (carrots, turnips, radishes, mustards, etc) has been seeded into those outdoor beds as well.  Josh was hoping that both the seeding outdoors and in the hoop house were going to happen at roughly the same time to see how well each did comparatively, but with the weather not giving us a window it didn't happen until last week.  But Oh well, that's how it works in the farming biz.  Fortunately the stuff in the hoop house is doing well, and now that the soil is a bit warmer and drier, the stuff in the field should do just fine too.  I also saw the seed potatoes chitting in bins in the green house (many different varieties!).  What is "chitting" you ask?  The "chitting" of seed potatoes refers to a method that prepares the tubers for planting.  They are left out in a warm, light place for a couple weeks to allow them to sprout and get their juices flowing before they're put into the ground.  I love potatoes, so seeing that makes me very excited for what's to come.  It will be a while before we'll have the tubers on our plates, but we can dream can't we.

'Til next time,

Louis