Greenhouse Plastic

Hello out there! Jazzed up farmer here. Things are humming right along at the farm. This Monday we got the two newly extended greenhouses covered in fresh plastic. This was quite a job. Each greenhouse gets two pieces of plastic stretched over it, and the area inside of the two pieces of plastic gets blown up with an inflation fan. This makes the plastic taut, so less susceptible to wind damage, as well as doubles the insulation. Each piece of plastic is 50'x185'. Does that just sound like numbers? It did to me a little too, until I was holding the edge of that truly gigantic piece of plastic and a gentle breeze puffed by. I was a burly sailor on the open seas in the fifteen hundreds, hoisting my sails to a powerful wind, hair snapping, and white cotton shirt billowing. I also realized in that moment why there is only one captain on a sailboat, and how you'd better really trust the guy. (I do - it was Paul. The man knows how to skin a greenhouse). There is some power in a 50x185' piece of plastic held in the wind. The crazy thing is that the wind was barely puffing. I can only imagine what it would feel like in a gust. Now I get how a big old-fashioned sail boat could really scoot along. So, we covered the two newer bigger better shinier greenhouses. Ahh, farmer bliss. Bring on the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil and European cucumbers! This week we also: Spotted up basil, hot peppers, and u-pick basil. Cut 1000 pounds of potatoes up into pieces to plant. Planted them. Cultivated (tractor weeded) everything that was up out of the ground. Seeded the first generation of summer squash. Field seeded beets, parsnips, spinach, and salad mix. Raked all the raised beds in the greenhouse flat by hand. Laid out drip tape on all of the greenhouse beds and tested it for leaks. Covered all of the greenhouse beds with landscape fabric. Planted all of the greenhouse tomatoes, basil, peppers, and eggplant. The plants look great, stout and green, and ready to explode upwards. We have not set the CSA start date. We will let you know as soon as we do. We have plenty of summer shares left. There are also going to be a plethora of other CSAs here this summer, distributing through our barn. Check out our homepage (below) for links to all of their websites. We do not handle their sign-ups. Ok, See you soon!