The Well House is Finished

Yesterday Jeffrey finished the well house. I am so excited to see it. He used one of the doors from the old house that we are going to burn. It is a simple (old) interior door so we are going to have to weather proof it. He was going to use the tin from the roof of the old house but it was simpler to purchase what was needed. The wind here yesterday was gusting so badly that it would have been really dangerous on the roof of that house trying to remove those full length pieces of tin. He did have one minor accident. The wind caught a piece of the tin as he was trying to get it up to the roof and it slid down the back of his neck. No major cuts just a scrape. Fortunately, he was looking down otherwise the tin would have caught him on the forehead and it could have been really bad. So tomorrow part of my plan for the day is to go up and clean up around the well house and neaten everything up.

The Well House With Our Niece Norah Trying To Get In

The rest of the plan is to get out in the field and get the weeding started. The weather has been kind of crazy and unpredictable around here so I haven't been able to get out there to do it. Jeffrey walked through the field and said there are a lot of plants with blooms that really need to be snipped off. We have freezing temps the next couple of nights and so the more we can snip the better.

I am also planning on carrying the camera tomorrow and taking some pics of everything I have been mentioning so you can get a better idea of what we are dealing with and working on.

One of the things that strawberry plants require is pollenation and for that we are getting bee hives. Jeffrey's sister, Robin, is taking classes to be the "bee person" on the farm. She is really excited about this and loves learning. So along with getting our plants pollenated we will be able to harvest honey and sell it in the market also. Robin is also learning about the various aspects of honey and different uses for it. She received a honey cook book in class tonight and I am really excited to see that. I can't wait to try some of the recipes and hopefully I can create some of my own to sell in the market.

On the marketing front, my hands are a little tied until we actually get set up as a business but there are a few things that I can do now. Our area is a small town but our farm is in the county seat and on a major highway. There is an old sign left by the highway from the previous business that I am going to paint over and letter with something like Opening Spring of 2010..... I haven't fully decided what to put on there yet. The speed limit going by the farm is 55 mph so the lettering will have to be bold and the wording short and to the point. I am also in the process of developing flyers with something along the same lines as the sign with this blog site listed. Here we have community boards in our grocery stores, post offices, etc. So I am planning on putting those up soon. Once we get the website up, I will change the flyers and put up new ones with more details about the opening and products, etc and include the web site. From that, I am hoping to gather an emailing list. I am also looking into various farmer's markets in other counties to participate in. We already have all the materials needed for that so the only additional expense would be the gas travelling back and forth and leaving Jeffrey one short at the farm a few afternoons a week. We may have to hire someone to help out to do one or the other. We are going to try to do as much of the labor ourselves to cut back on expenses for the first year. But we aren't going to sacrifice customer service just to save a little money.

We would love any feed back our readers would like to give. Let us know if there are any fruits or vegetables that you would like to see on the farm or if there any specific items of interest we could carry in the farmer's market.

We would really like to become known for our great tasting fresh fruits and vegetables. We have gotten off to a great start with Jeffrey's tomatoes this past summer. We received nothing but compliments on them and several of the restaraunts said they would buy all their produce from us when we open based solely on the great product we gave them in the tomatoes. I became known as the Tomato Lady all over town and there was a picture in our local newspaper of me at the Moore County Farmer's Market selling the tomatoes. The caption read "The Lady in Red". The tent we used had a red canopy which made the tomatoes seem as if they were glowing. It was a great marketing tool for tomatoes but I don't think the red will serve well with other fruits and vegetables. We may have to invest in a tent with a more neutral color for the upcoming year. I will post that picture on here tomorrow when I load the others from the farm.

The last thing for today's blog is to explain a little more how we are planning on growing and supplying our market as well as the markets in other counties. The property where the strawberries are will be a you pick/we pick type of establishment with the market. We have 10 acres there to work with and are planning on utilizing ever square inch of it. Jeffrey's father, Richard, owns that property and has been a dream come true in letting us use the proterty. The proximity to Carthage and the traffic flow by the property is more than we could have hoped for when we decided we wanted to do this. We also live on what we call the farm. Our home is situated on 13 acres of our own. It is located in the midst of family property that we will be growing produce on as well. All in all we have access to about 40 acres that we can farm. For this first year, we are not planning on using all of it. Hopefully, next year we will be so busy that we will have to use all of it.

Check back tomorrow for pictures and maybe I will be able to get Jeffrey to add to the post with some of the more technical issues of farming. He tells me he'll grow it if I can market it and sell it.