Visitors to Taproot

On Friday for about an hour I had the pleasure of meeting with a group of researchers from Ethiopia. We toured the farm and talked about various crops including garlic. The garlic that is left in the field will be forming bulbils that we will harvest, dry and plant in the fall. This will increase our garlic harvest in a few years and does not cost as much as purchasing mature bulbs from the seed or bulb company. We will see how it works.

Canning Days

Just wanting to touch base around the canning days.
August 29th and September 19th.

Please email to sign up for one of those days. If you have already indicated you are interested, please do so again just incase.

Also - Kids are welcome. We can accomdate help from little hands.

Valley Cloth Diaper

Valley Cloth diaper is a family owned small business specializing in wonderful diapers and other great items to care for your little ones.

Angela's business in just down the street from Taproot Farms and as a way to reach out she has provided us with 10 coupons to offer out to any of you.

I would be happy to provide you with a coupon if you are at all interested.

First email first serve:)

Organic Inspection

Wow - what an afternoon. The organic inspector was here today. It is so much work to do everything right. It is also a lot of work to not beat yourself up when you don't have it all right. I just want to have all the correct systems in place for tracking and recording and have it all come together.

During the inspection the inspector asks me to trace the carrots that were in your share last week. I have all the info of when they were picked, who planted them, when they were planted, but I don't know which variety they are out of the 4 we purchased. That is not cool. I need to know the seed. Of course it would happen with the one item that I knew I didn't know. I guess that is why we have these processes. We need to keep improving.

Have a good Monday.

Rain Rain Go Away

I try hard to not complain about the weather. I am usually happy with a bit of this and a bit of that. Even in winter I enjoy the days of endless snow storms. However - now that the soil is saturated with water, and now that it is causing us to lose crops and making it impossible to weed - now I am concerned. Below is what it should look like. This was taken this morning. It is right beside the picture below it that has been wet for weeks and we have not been able to access it. Kayla was weeding close to here one day and had to be pulled out because she was so far stuck in the mucky soil.



Above are rows of head lettuce. Some are beginning to bolt - but we haven't been able to work in here.

I thought you might find this compost tea brewer interesting. This is on the farm in Canard. Josh uses a lot of compost teas to help build the soil and produce healthy plants.


Here is Josh, yesterday watering the last planting of zucchini.

I couldn't resist adding this one. This is Frank. He is playing hide and seek with me at the table.

And of course - one evening meal of Taproot goodies.

Enjoy the week. The crew is here this morning and the harvest for Tuesday has started. Everyone is wearing rain gear :)

Monday July 27 - real summer

What a wonderfully hot day. Nicole and Lydia are here finishing off the beans. We had the "girl power" crew at it today. Sarah, Leah, Kayla, Lydia, Nicole and harvested a pile of beans. Purple, Green and Yellow. The yellow beans are not quite ready yet. The farm is beginning to feel the real weed pressure now. With all of the rain and the difficulty in cultivating with wet soil the weeds are catching up.

Gerald and Louise are just heading off for their break. Louise has been bunching radish and Gerald harvesting.
Today we have the plumber here to get the sink hooked up in the new kitchen. I can not wait to be down there cooking, canning, freezing away food for the winter. It will be so nice to get it out of my own kitchen.....last week we stewed 3 trays of sweet cherries that had split from the rain. I made 50 bottles of sweet cherry conserve and had double that left to do frozen in the freezer.

Other news - there is a lot happening here but no much to report on. The crops are growing well. The weather is good today and now I must focus and get a newsletter done for tomorrow.

Enjoy the day!

What a day......

Everything seemed to be getting done and everything was calm, until it started to get late and the onions weren't picked yet and the swiss chard was still coming in from the field. That was all doable, but then we ran out of boxes and the van broke (power steering problem), so we needed to sort out how to get the shares to the city. On top of all that we didn't have enough room in the boxes for both heads of lettuce (so much lettuce is ready that I wanted you to all share in the bounty of lettuce). Anyway - I am sure that some of you might be thankful for no extra lettuce.

With such a great crew: Louise, Lydia, Leah, Nicole, Nickle, Kayla, Sarah, Valarie, Jillian, Chris, Gerald and Josh - it all got done. Thanks to Nicole for taking a trip to the city. And so sorry to one new shareholder who didn't get a box because I didn't have my list correct. All in all, looking back today was a challenging one. What I do love about today is that such a wonderful crew of people were helping out, working together to provide the food. That feels just great!