For weeks now I have been telling myself that if we can just get to next week things will slow down a little, hmmm how many weeks have gone by now? The problem with May is that we are keeping all the balls in the air at once. We are still planting a lot of stuff, keeping it cultivated, trellised and watered and then the volume of harvesting really kicks in with wholesale deliveries and big markets. You throw in something extra like building a turkey brooder or a new market and it just tips the cart over. Soon the planting will slow down and some of the cultivating and we can get into a steady rhythm of harvesting and markets.
Good progress last week even in the unusual warmth. We put in Betsy’s main planting of Lisianthus, very important for market in July as well as the first big group of Celosias. The new Southern Village market started smoothly and looked good, we know it may take some time to get rolling but the customers seemed to be pleased to have a market out there.
We tied up and “suckered” (pruned off the lower shoots) the tomatoes under the “Big Tops”, they really look great and are growing before your eyes! I can just taste the tomatoes now! Peppers start going in today and should be finished up by tomorrow at noon, phew!
Of course the big event was the arrival of the turkeys last Thursday morning! As hard as it is believe they come to us in the mail. They hatch them in Texas, put them into a box and send them to us Priority Mail, two days later the Post Office calls. Betsy ran up to the Post Office in Graham, after they called early, while I went out and began cutting 28 cases of lettuce. By 9:00 we had dipped each one of their beaks in the waterer and then set them into the feed trays and they were off running around in the newly furnished Poultry Villa. They are just little fuzz balls when they arrive but grow really fast. Their wing feathers are really developing now and the first signs of tail feathers showed yesterday.