February, usually means the bitter cold dead of winter. For us it means we need to start getting serious. we had our 6-8 weeks of causal work. February means we need to kick it up a notch and get ready for our spring, which is march 1st in our greenhouse. Our CSA season ended the 2nd week of December, then Christmas, then a deep breath to refresh and relax with. We do however have a lot of work to do in the dead of winter, this year has been an absolute gift. The warm sunny days and lack of snow has enabled us to spend a lot of time outdoors working with our horses and cleaning up the farm from last season's torrent. Brian even dug 3 foot deep holes in January!  We also have our dreaded indoor book work to do every winter. We have to balance our books from last season, do our complicated self employment taxes, create our entire planting plan for the following season, order seeds, and plan and research equipment and methods. Our planting plan is very detailed, we use a chart, and everyday that we start seeds in the greenhouse we have each variety of vegetable, how many seeds to start, when to put them into our field, and projected yield date with quantity. We take our job as a CSA farmer very seriously. We pride ourselves in offering a steady and large variety of high quality produce to our members. That takes planning. Then after our planting plan is done we need to order our seeds. Seed ordering also comes at the time of year between our incomes, the end of the last season's funds and a bit early for the next season's. Every year we spend thousands of dollars on our seeds. It is absolutely amazing how something so tiny can cost so much, they are our diamonds. After seeds are ordered, we need to order our potting mix supplies. We use a whole lot of peat, vermiculite, perlite, and compost for our potting mix. Hundreds of thousands of plants are started in our greenhouse. We also need to plan and fix all of our equipment up. In an effort to balance capital investments, living expenses, and building our business, we spend a lot of time working on broken down and dilapidated equipment that we have pulled out of the tree rows. The old equipment has been a blessing and a curse. Brian is our mechanic. He has patience and perseverance long after I elect to "just bring the thing into the shop". Industriousness is a word that really applies to the farmer. Especially one who runs a CSA. You have to do everything from be the business manager, to intense physical laborer, marketing rep,  sales person, public speaker, and the friendly hostess. It is very challenging and rewarding.

So all of this needs to be done by March 1st, because March 1st is the day we start seeds in the greenhouse. We need our supplies ordered, our greenhouse cleaned up, books done, and our outdoor greenhouse ready, this year we will be building a new one again for the third year in a row. This time we are upgrading to a ND windproof version.
This year we are also going to become more mechanized. Not in the modern sense of the phrase but more traditional, horse powered. We will be plowing our field, discing, transplanting, cultivating the weeds, and well, adding fertility to the soil if you know what I mean ;)  Creating a sustainable farm system run on sweat and grass. Horse powered vegetable production is having a bit of a Renaissance all over the country right now. Many young and ambitious forward thinking farmers have been drawn to this system. They have proven through example that the horse powered small farm is an extremely successful and useful system. We are very excited to participate in this "modern way of farming".

But, we do have a lot of equipment to fix up before our spring so I better go
Sincerely your farmer
Angie McGinness