Congratulations Sammy!

Thank you all for your love and support and votes for Sammy to win AgConnect’s Chester County Woman in Agriculture award. My wife is very well deserving of this recognition. We started farming in 2011 as volunteers and Sammy has become a real professional at growing vegetables. She does all of the research into the varieties we grow selecting for flavor first and performance second culminating in our annual seed order that sets us up for a year of growing. As an artist Sammy is amazing at making our produce look spectacular from meticulously removing cotyledon leaves while bunching radishes, to setting up the market table, and especially taking photographs. If you don’t follow Sammy on social media make sure you do because her photography is great and she keeps everyone in the loop of what is going.

But what Sammy has really excelled at, and why I think she is so deserving of this award, is creating a sense of family. It is the best part of our job to get to know all of you who show up to support the local food scene even if it isn’t as convenient as the box store. If you know us, you know you are like family to us, and Sammy puts in a lot of effort to remember names and what your favorite crops are. If you have ever reached out to us, you know that Sammy is going to get back to you lickity split with whatever answers you may need.

I am so excited to welcome our baby girl into the world and be able to teach her how hard working and well loved her mommy is. We are so grateful for you all for your support and excitement for us and for Adelaide. She will be here in about 1 month, and we look forward to introducing our sweet Adelaide to all of our farm family.

Thank You, Friends

It is truly a blessing to have such a wonderful group of people supporting us week after week. I wanted to take a moment to tell you all how grateful we are that you take the time out of your day to visit us at the farmers markets and help us to do what we love. I certainly miss my time at the markets visiting with you all, but I am glad to know my wife does a great job and you have all grown to love her as much as we love you guys. Thanks to her hustle and your patience I am able to go back to the farm to do some work, and entertain Pepper.

I’ve been asked this past week how long it takes to harvest. It varies as the seasons change and the crops wax and wane and overlap and peter out. But for example, it takes 3 man hours to pick just the cherry tomatoes… and we pick them 2 or 3 times per week. When it’s really hot, we have to start as early as possible to get the tender crops harvested, hydro cooled, and into the walk-in cooler before they begin to wilt and quickly lose shelf life. Cucumbers and squash can take us 2-3 man hours each as well, and they also need picked at least 2 but better to be 3 times a week. So we’ll get our heavy crops on opposite days, say Sunday, Wednesday, Friday for tomatoes and Monday, Thursday for squash and cucumbers. Tender greens like our mix, head lettuce, bunching greens, and herbs are always picked the day of markets. When all the crops are bumping, like right now, we are harvesting all day Wednesday and Thursday up until market set up, and all day Friday and finishing up final picks at 5:30am-7am Saturday before loading up. Thursday and Friday are guaranteed 12 hour days and most other days we work 6-10 hours depending on how much recovery time we need. Often we split the day into 2 shifts of 3-6 hours so we can avoid the heat and eat lunch. Pepper likes to have lunch and take a nap, like me.

Bringing in the harvest

Many of you are there early and see us setting up, but some of you may not know, we get to market 2 hours before it opens so we can set up our tables and box up quarts. When we first started markets we had 1 or 2 tables, this time of year now we have 7 tables and probably should have brought 8 tables. We had so much bounty we almost used every harvest bin we have on the farm. When we have time, we do our best to pre-box items to make our set up easier. Even when we have everything lined up nice and smooth, it’s a lot of work especially Thursday when we start setting up our display after already working for 7 hours. We appreciate all your patience when we are running around right before market starts doing our last minute touches and lovingly sassing each other.

It’s so nice when we have time to pre-box things. Sammy works hard to get each variety into each pint as equal as possible so everyone gets a fair taste of the bounty.

While Sammy keeps up with the heavy fruits Monday and Tuesday I do my best to get ahead on field work. There is never enough time, or energy, for all the weeding and mowing and bed flipping and planting. But slowly enough of it gets done that we can call ourselves farmers and share the fruits of our labor with you all. Lately we are removing the brassica field (with some help from our friends Hans, Ken, and Dom), composting and prepping for winter squash and late zukes and cukes, composting and prepping for lettuces and direct sown greens and roots, continuous sowings all month for fall and winter crops.

Finished beds on the right, almost finished beds on the left. Final steps: rake out piles, wheel hoe walk ways, rake out walk ways, shovel walk ways, rake out beds.

Pepper noticed I missed a weed, thankfully he pulled it out for me. What a smart dog.

Good luck 500 feet of hot peppers for hot sauce… They are loaded!

Thank you for supporting your local businesses and farmers. We love you and we’ll see you at market.