No rhyme or reason, just random thoughts that I have to get out.  Let me apologize now if I offend anyone or anything.  I hate the lettuce biz.  When we planted it, I remember thinking such great thoughts ‘Oh lettuce, may you grow and be of plenty, and feed the locals’.  We said prayers, we kissed seeds, we thanked them for what they were about to do for us, and those around us.  Now, that’s all fine and well, but lettuce is a bitch.  She’s doing us dirty right now.  Even though our lettuce is producing like mad, feeding the hungry of Fayetteville and surrounding communities, it’s so time consuming it’s almost not worth it.  Wait, strike the word “almost”.  Paul and I are stuck in lettuce prison.  We are slaves to it, washing, spinning, drying, again and again, until we start seeing imaginary things.  I just need to stop right here though, before this blog gets rated R.  Just know it’s no fun, it’s a lot of work, and we only get $4.50 a pound.  Moving on.  We had our field mowed down for the hay.  Our neighbors across the street (Bob and Wendy) break and train horses, and brokered a deal with us for the hay.  I would have even been ok with them just taking it for free because it’s tall grass that snakes like to live in, and I want it gone.  It is nice though when they offer you cash.  It was madness.  We met all of our neighbors the day it was being cut.  There were so many cars in my yard, people stopping to see what was going on.  I used the word “gang bang” to describe the chaos.  “It was quite the gang bang over here today wasn’t it Paul”.  Annoying might have been a better word.  It was annoying that everyone showed up, and kept showing up.  It was as if they had never seen hay cut before.  Well, that might not even be the right word.  It was a lot of ‘Hi, who are you?’.  A few days later they came back and raked it, and baled it, and some young, strapping bucks, and their sister, mom, and grandpa came to load the hay onto a trailer and hauled it away.  EEEEeeeeehhhhh.  For goodness sake they were all very nice people, and it’s nice to finally know more of the neighbors.  Let’s keep moving shall we?  On Mother’s Day, I planted a bunch of tomato plants and bell pepper plants.  As of today, they are all doing well.  We also bought some tomatillo starts at a local farm store.  I’m excited about the tomatillos.  Get ready Chuy.  I planted 6 dahlias, and about 50 gladiola bulbs.  I also picked up a peony.  Let’s see if they all live.  I think that’s enough for now.  Enjoy the rest of your day knowing that you don’t have to pick and clean lettuce.

hours in the hot sun, gotta get the work done

wilt spots fill my eyes, pick them out

enough to make you scream and shout:

I have so much more I need to do!

I’ve got the lettuce blues

I planted some seeds today, all over the place.  Come summer, this place will look like a wild jungle with all of the flowers and vegetables.  We are also taking some time to work on my herb garden.  Paul is filling it in with flat stones so you can walk through it.  I think he’s going a little overboard, but that’s just between us.  Don’t forget to call your mother.

So Becky came over and gave Paul and I a lesson in raising baby chickens.  Apparently they need to eat greens, and sand.  I kind of knew about the sand, because they have gizzards, yadda yadda, but I was under the impression that they get all of their good stuff from the chick starter.  I guess not.  Sorry chickens.  Now we’ve got it under control.

Today we sold 10 pounds of lettuce to Old Soul Organics a local grocery distributor.  An hour later, I was reading Oliver a story on the couch.  The local NPR station was playing classical music in the background.  Then I heard the familiar sound of the trivia quiz question music.  Usually I only play the quiz of fridays during “Film score friday” because they give out two movie passes.  But today I heard P.J. Robowski (the quirky KUAF announcer) say something about Old Soul Organics.  Today they were giving away a 35 pound box of organic produce.  This is a first for this radio station.  Usually they give away crappy things during the week like a $10 gift certificate to one of the most expensive restaurants in town, or a $10 gift card to the university bookstore.  I knew I had to have this.  The question:  What year was the peace sign invented?  1958, 1962, or 1966?  Now, being the regular NPR All things considered listener that I am, I knew the answer.  Maybe 3 weeks ago, possibly more, they did a story about how the peace sign was having its 50 year anniversary.  So I call (ring ring) I answer, and when the music on the radio stops playing and they announce a winner they say:  The winner is Amanda Wounderlich…..WOOOOOOOO!!!!  Close enough!  How about that!  It’s the first time I’ve ever won anything on the radio.  I’m so excited, so please be excited for me!

Happy late Cinco de May everyone!  We decided to have a little gathering on the 4th, because no one wants to party on a Monday.  To everyone who came (if you read this), thanks for making it a fun time on the farm.  Enough of the fun stuff, now onto the meat.  Lately we have been knee deep in lettuce.  Our lettuce is growing off the hook, so much so that we can’t sell it fast enough.  I’ve been cutting and rinsing and drying lettuce for a few days now, and let me tell you it’s no picnic.  One of the farmers we have talked to lately said he never wasted his time growing lettuce, because it was too labor intensive.  I now know what he means.  Lettuce is a weird crop.  It’s hard to grow the right amount in your backyard.  You always wind up with more than your neighborhood needs.  With our intentions to sell to restaurants, we started 8 rows of lettuce.  But, we are growing more lettuce than the restaurants need all at one time.  So I called on our friends down at the grocery distributors, and told him about all of the lettuce we have.  He said they would start taking some of it off our hands at a fair price.  The only problem is that they only need 10 pounds this week.  That’s nothing.  We have gobs more.  We need to expedite it.  I’m trying to compile a list of other businesses to hit up, or I’ll be out at the end of the driveway with 1 pound sacks trying to give it away.  So as I type this, Paul is toiling away inside rinsing and drying the 10 pounds.  It’s a lot of work.  I don’t regret planting the lettuce, we just need to re-think this for next year maybe.  Who knows though, hopefully by then we will have developed a reputation for superior spring mix, and will be know throughout the county for our crisp leaves….tee hee, only time will tell.

I thought I should also mention a few words about my chickens, and the dirt we received.  My babies are no longer babies.  They have quintupled in size since the last time I chit chatted about them.  They are all getting their feathers and eating a ton.  They grow up so fast (sigh).  Now on to the dirt.  We ran out of topsoil.  Wait, let me re-phrase.  Paul ran out of topsoil for row construction, and he put in a call about a week ago to the topsoil mine to get some more.  The woman behind the desk said ‘yeah no big deal, we can do it in the next couple of days’.  That was about a week ago.  Today she told Paul that she forgot to write it down, and now he’s at the bottom of the list, and that we would not be getting dirt for another week and a half.  She didn’t leave him there though.  She gave him the option of having another man deliver it.  Only his truck was less than half the size of their truck, and it was only $10 cheaper.  And Paul was actually considering it!  I said just wait, and they’ll try to get to you next week.  But low and behold someone cancelled their load tonight, so the folks at the top soil mine called Paul and delivered it tonight.  Hallelujah!    

So….looking at my stats, I seem to be going static every couple of days.  I’ll try to make it more interesting.  Today we sold lettuce to a new consumer.  Jammin’ Java on the Fayetteville square is the new proud owner of 5 lbs. of organic spring mix.  Thank you for your patronage.  We also received 96 pepper starts from Bean Mountain Farms (thank you Herb).  The Bean Mountain Farm is not going to be growing this year, and is only selling starts.  So we bought them to turn and sell the peppers to the restaurants that Herb sold to last year.  They are long skinny italian peppers.  I don’t know what to do with them (cooking wise) but I’ll figure it out, and let everyone know.  Oooooh, maybe I should add a recipe page.  Let me think about that, because I know how popular “vegetable humor” is doing.