Farming...

As we approach our busy season and it seems there is not enough time in the day to cook, clean, weed, organize, do laundry, kiss skinned knees, deal with 3 year old, supervise workers, read books with the kids, play lego, get ticked at hubby and actually take time to smell the coffee and I wonder if it is worth it. The wind up has started and we have soooooooo much to do, yesterday we planted 3 rows of garlic (very important!) and weeded strawberries. Don finished narrowing the strawberries with the tractor and our kids ran wild..... At least I'm home and can see my kids, but I feel like I have soooooo much to do I don't have time. I hate the feeling. The little guy at 3.5 still needs us and constant supervision.....I don't have time to see my friends, do playdates, make easter eggs and play....I'm taking 3 minutes to work on this while the kids snack on sliced ham. And I didn't finish my ideas, it's now 3 days later, now they are all in bed and Don has left to return the lime spreader...I haven't read my blogs for days and my back hurts from weeding. Oh, I understand herbicides, $100 worth would solve this problem, quickly.....

Now we hear a farm down the road has purchased enough strawberry plants to plant 3 acres. Long story but the short version is that we supply their farm market, but never can supply them enough (we sell out daily) so their son called this winter and said he wanted to plant "a few". We assumed enough to supply their market. So many local farmers helped us when we bought this farm we returned the favour (especially as I grew up next door to this family and with these kids) Back to the story....Don gave him our plant supplier's name, the best variety to purchase, offered our transplanter and offered to have him up here to run through our operation. I called to discuss labour needs (sometimes we share) and she tells me her son has 16000 plants coming. To put this in perspective we have 3000 coming and the most we have ever had is 6000 at a time. Lets not even get into whether he realizes how much work it all will be ... and the fact that a "smart" farmer would start with .5 acre (3000 plants), and then plant another .5 and then another .5 each year as commercial strawberries have a 3 year life span......but he never did come up for his primer on our farm.....EEEEEEAnyways we are a little ticked.....This is not a few berries, this is opening in direct competition with us.......

The WWOOFs are working out well. We have a family of 4 now, they are from Germany and have two children 1 and 3, and they are SOOOOOOOOOOO nice. Every night there is enthusiastic discussions around here and I have learned so much......The kids get along and after a couple of days figuring out a bedtime routine that worked for everyone, everyone is settling in well. But there are a lot of people here, and chaos, but fun chaos.......