Over the past few years, I’ve worked on many moves - parental moves, our own moves, and now my daughter’s move. At this point, everyone in the family is ideally situated for the next phase of life. I can only hope we’ll have a decade without any more moves!
We’ve had a very unusual May with high heat and high humidity. That caused the lettuce in the hoop house to bolt so we’ve harvested all the Boston, Bibb, and Romaine lettuce, replacing it with peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil and eggplant. We’ve increased irrigation and kept the hoop house sides maximally opened. Even the geese are using our water features as drinking foundations.
We have our final inspection for organic certification next week. Once that is done, we’ll be able to use “USDA organic” label on all our products.
We’re starting two new businesses on the farm that will enhance our profitability. We generate about 10,000 pounds of finished alpaca compost every year. We’ve found a local market for organic compost and will be using the product name “Unity Farm Llama Beans”. I built a compost screener and we've purchased one cubic foot poly bags so that we can cleanly package our aged/fully mature compost. The only ingredients are timothy hay and alpaca/llama droppings, all aged 2 years after 140F composting and monthly turning. Who knew you could turn poop into gold?
We’re also selling organic seedlings to our local farm stand, Tilly and Salvys in Natck. You’ll find cucumbers (slicing and pickling), tomatoes, and eggplant seedlings from Unity Farm ready to plan in peat pots. This weekend, we’ll deliver 50 basil seedlngs, ready to plant.
Over the weekend, we’ll harvest Shitake mushrooms,lettuce, kale, and eggs.
It feels like Summer, but in just a few weeks, we'll start our Fall seedlings. A farmer never rests.
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