Holiday Weekened Happenings

Yesterday was finally nice enough that I was able to spend the whole day outside, around 75 and sunny, yeehaaa. I had two new strawberry beds marked out do thin and transfer from the overstuffed 6x24 bed, but since this weather has been so bad, I was never able to get them finished. Of course, now the plants are blooming and starting to bear fruit, so I don't want to dig any and chance killing them. So instead, I moved things around a bit and made three beds the same size instead of two. Two we'll use for potato's, and the third will be either bush cucumbers or more corn. Next year they'll get strawberry plants.

I staked out the main garden addition, adding another 4 feet, widened the blackberry bed since it's gotten to be a pain to mow around, and added a small triangular bed in front of the blackberries and beside one of the new beds. I hate wasted space and open grass, so that at least took care of the small roughly 6x9 area. I don't think we'll have a problem filling it with something, lol.

With our love of vegetable gardening and hatred of open grass, we've decided to take on yet another little venture. We're going to run a little CSA out of the place. Lisa already has two people on board wanting in, and we'll take on 2-3 more for this year, just to see how it goes. We're offering them a pretty low price for vegetables, fruit, and eggs every two weeks through early October. If the herb bed does well, we'll add fresh and tried herbs, along with some homemade teas. If all goes well, next year we'll plan on more people and more garden expansions. Right now we'll stick with the 4-5 people as an experiment.

We aren't going to get rich off of this by any means, but we'll make a tiny profit and basically get our own produce for free since the fees will cover the cost of plants and seeds. For now I won't count our time since we would be planting the same things anyway. We'll track everything we do time-wise and with production vs sales and evaluate everything for another go next season.

Today I *have* to spend the day inside finishing the things for the flea market this Friday and Saturday. It's gonna make me insane staying inside when it's so nice out already, but I have to get these done. My friend Mike and I will be there all day Friday and the wives will be with us on Saturday. Both days will be from 5am to 5pm...ugh, but I hope things go well and we sell quite a bit of items. After that, it's ALL garden time. Lisa will be off work Sunday and Monday, so those will be our massive catch-up days. I'll keep things posted on how the flea market goes and how things are going oustside. For now, I'm running Lisa to work and heading out to put in an application at a local garden center.