A Day in the Life of a Featherstone Farmer
It is early August on the farm.
We are coming out of what felt like an eternal stretch of hot, humid days that leaves everyone exhausted by quitting time. Watching the long lines of crew workers standing at the punch clock, with very little chatter amongst them, shows how the cumulative days of high dew points really build up and wear a person down. Thank goodness we are looking forward to a couple storms rolling through to break the relentless humidity and give us a 10+ day outlook in the mid-70’s! All this just in time for the late summer labor crunch.
All year we equal parts look forward to and dread these weeks. The excitement of our very first tomato and watermelon picks, partnered with acres and acres of carrots and beets that are just at perfect size to get big hand weeding jobs rolling through them. Here is a brief look at a day for one of our crew members:
6:00 AM punch in and head out to the bunching crops. We pick these in the early morning dew to keep them as fresh as possible coming into the coolers. Sometimes bunches of kale for CSA or Parsley for the cooperatives.
9:00 AM Switch to a fruiting crop like Eggplant or Watermelons that can handle the heat slightly more. Heavier lifting just as it starts to heat up. Just today the Gerardo crew busted out another 6 bins of Red Watermelon for this week's CSA boxes.
11:00 AM Finishing up the loose ends on harvest. A box of chard here, a few zucchini there.
12 - 1 PM Lunch
1PM - 5PM Head out to the weeds with the production crews to try to chew through some fields. Row after row cleaning up what will eventually be the carrots for our winter CSA boxes.
5PM Quittin’ Time. The ring of the field radios to head home for the day. Don’t worry the weeds aren’t going anywhere. They’ll be waiting for us tomorrow.
The work we do here in early August (as tiresome as it is) does not take long to bear fruit. Soon we will be buried in heirloom tomatoes, the carrots will have jumped inches seemingly overnight, and the peppers will ripen to peak sweetness. It’s the labor investment now, and careful decision making that will have us bringing home the big fall harvests starting in just a few weeks. Time does seem to fly on the farm, as I'm sure it does for everyone, so taking moments like this halfway through our season to pause and appreciate the journey keeps us all a bit more grounded. From way back in the winter when many of you were just signing up for this week's box, to now, we have tilled, planted, cultivated, picked and packed, and delivered SO MUCH product that we are proud of, and SO MUCH more to come. Thank you for being with us on this journey. Having our members who we know believe in what we do is at the very foundation of the business. I hope this week's box, a true taste of summer in the Midwest, is great for you. Enjoy the sweet corn, watermelons, tomatoes, etc.
Nathan Manfull
From field production:
This week we are nearing a big shift in field production, the part of the farm in charge of growing all the crops for our members and stores. We have some broccoli, cilantro, and dill left to plant for fall wholesale picks as well as some quick growing CSA crops. August is pretty much the last chance we have to plant for fall harvests. Finishing most of the planting means Antonio's group will be spending a lot more time hand-weeding. We now have all 14 acres of carrots planted as well as 3.5 acres of beets. All of these direct seeded crops can be labor intensive for hand weeding since the seedlings are really small and slow growing and do not compete well with a lot of weed pressure.
We've also been irrigating like crazy! After the wet wet spring, we've turned a corner and it has been very dry. Jose and Lupe have been working 7 days a week to keep water flowing on all of the sensitive fruiting crops, all the direct seeded carrots and beets that are germinating, as well as the sweet corn which needs to stay wet especially during its tasseling phase. Each crop has very specific needs for water and Jose and Lupe do a great job monitoring and keeping the water flowing! We've worked our butts off up to this point to get all these crops established and well cared for and now it's time for the big harvest ramp up! We hope you're excited as we are to enjoy all the fruits of our labor!
Cheers,
Abby