2 acre farm: First Harvest of 2010

2 acre farm

The experiences, trials, and lives on a small farm in rural Illinois.

Monday, May 10, 2010

First Harvest of 2010

(Backpost 2 for Friday, May-7-10) It’s nearly 2:30 Saturday morning (that’s right folks, 2:30am) and we are finally packed up and ready to crawl into bed! Only 5 hours until the market opens at 8:00 and 3 hours before we hit the road. We started picking around 6:00 this evening and due to the fact that a minimum of crops are ready this time of year we anticipated the harvest moving more quickly. This turned out to be a huge mistake! Despite the actual harvest taking 3-4 hours, we have spent the last four hours washing, bagging, and bunching. On a brighter note, the weather conditions outside turned out to be ideal. The wind has remained strong but we have officially escaped the possibility of rain and although quite unseasonal, the temperatures have dropped into the low 40’s… almost better than keeping everything in a walk in refrigerator and perfect for preserving the produce.



[Pictured Left] A while back I was able to purchase twenty something milk crates for only fifty cents apiece at the local Catholic Charities. I thought they might come in handy for something, and they did. As it turns out they make exceptional picking baskets. They also sped along the rinsing because the spinach, which just needs a quick dunk in cool water, got dunked while still in the milk crate which of course drains beautifully. Since we picked six milk crates worth of spinach, approximately 9 lbs, I imagine that this saved us an extra hour of rinse time. Now if we could just develop a more efficient system for cleaning and bunching the radishes and onions, after all I do like my sleep!

Harvest Totals – Week 1
Spinach – 9 lbs.
Green Onions – 150ct.
French Breakfast Radishes – 126ct.
Purple Radishes – 48ct.
Turnip Greens – 6 lbs.
Baby Turnips – 3 lbs.
Cilantro – 18 bunches



[Pictured Below] The French Breakfast Radishes and Green Onions have been rinsed, cleaned, bunched and are ready for market!

5 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Good Idea on the mil crates!

May 10, 2010 at 10:22 AM  
Blogger Nathan (2af) said...

Thanks! I am pretty proud of this discovery. I also forgot to mention that they stack on eachother as well. I guess this is somewhat obvious but it is another great feature.

May 10, 2010 at 8:47 PM  
Blogger James Taylor Properties said...

the kid looks cute nathan. love the t-shirt! enjoyed reading your harvest totals - hope you keep posting those. excited about how big the numbers will get!

May 18, 2010 at 3:54 PM  
Blogger Nathan (2af) said...

Thanks, The Garden of James. Aimee made up shirts for all of us to wear at market, we're just not as photogenic. I took you up on your suggestion regarding the harvest totals. We'll keep and post current harvest totals at the top left of the blog screen.

May 19, 2010 at 11:56 PM  
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