The Big Greenhouse

Tomorrow I will be harvesting some of the greens growing in the organic greenhouse. I have contacted a couple of the restaurants that have purchased from us to see if they would be interested in these items. We don't have a lot of it so I chose only 3 to take samples to. We didn't want to over extend ourselves and not be able to provide everyone with the produce. I am so excited to be getting out of the house. Some of you may know that a couple of weeks ago I had a hysterectomy and am just now able to get out and about. Closing the farm for a couple of months actually helps in cases like this. But I am getting bored and so ready to get back to it.

Jeff has gotten the new plastic put on my small seeding greenhouse. He also put grow lights in there on a timer and we are hoping that makes a difference with our spring plantings. Hopefully tomorrow after dropping off samples I will feel well enough to get in the greenhouse and start some more seeds.

I also have to call Hoke County and see about getting in their bee class that starts next month. For those of you that have been following you know that my sister in law was supposed to be taking care of them. But due to circumstances she is not able to any longer. I don't know enough about them to feel comfortable taking care of them on my own. And I really having to call Mr. Godfrey everytime something happens. We are also hoping that the two hives we have will grow and split off so that we will have more hives. We would like to get to the point that we didn't have to rent our bees for the strawberries. It would great if we had enough hives to do the commercial farm and the home farm. But that is probably several years away. I am just hoping that I can get into that class. They seem to fill up very fast.

I am also going to be taking the canning, dehydrating, and freezing classes offered at NC State so that we can sell our produce that way. We are thinking about offering a CSA in the wintertime. We will have greens, etc in the greenhouse and I'd like to be able to freeze or dehydrate the fresh produce add some recipes and put it in a basket with the greens to sell maybe once a week or once a month. I am going to have to do some more research on it and see if people would be interested. I am hoping so, it would cut down on a lot of waste plus bring in some much needed winter income.

Now that we have the large greenhouse we are trying to figure out how to extend our season to be able to be year round. I love my vacation that I get but I miss being at the farm every day. Hopefully we can get the planting schedule handled better and next year we will be year round.