Everyone has probably experienced first hand, or at least heard of a story where a parent realizes their child is evolving from a kid into a teenager. A few weeks ago I decided to surprise my son Morgan by visiting him, unannounced, for lunch at his school. Well after a brief visit at the lunch table, my soon to be thirteen year old son, looked up at me and remarked “… okay dad, you can leave now. I want to spend the rest of my lunch with my friends.” Well my jaw about dropped, but I understood. So thinking he was now maturing to another level, I decided that Morgan was probably ready to learn how to drive a tractor. When I announced to him later that week I was going to put him in the “tractor seat,” his boyish grin surfaced ear to ear. A few days later, the late afternoon learning experience went according to plan as we took our largest tractor out to a frost withered broccoli patch which was far away from water pipes, trees, fences, chicken coups and anything else that could likely be a potential accident. After several passes in a large circle, I decided to join him and sit on the fender well, which is above one of the rear tires and parallel to the operator’s seat. “Okay,” I said “…let’s go over there to that ol’ corn patch” and so off we went. The tractor had an implement called a “disc” attached to the rear end, which is used to rip up old plant residue and mix into the soil. After making several practice runs, I told Morgan to drop the disc. Well Morgan lowered the tractor hydraulics lever and down went the heavy implement crunching the dead corn stalks along the way as they rolled underneath the numerous steel discs, churning the soil along the way. To his delight, Morgan would occasionally find the need to press the tractor throttle to assist pulling the heavy implement through the soft damp soil. In doing so, a big black puff of smoke would exit the exhaust just as the engine would momentarily get louder. To make things more eventful, every so often we could look down from our vantage point and see field mice scurrying out of the path of the “steel beast!” As the sun was beginning to set, I told Morgan to “… let’s head to the house.” He lifted the hydraulic lever, which raised the discs up from heavily stirred soil, and carefully began steering down the tractor path towards home. With the tractor now “purring rather than roaring,” Morgan looked back at the field that we had just disced and remarked “…wow dad, we really did some destruction!” I just smiled as I remembered what Art Linkletter used to say… “Kids Say The Darndest Things."
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| Morgan makes his debut at operating a tractor. |
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| Yikes! Harvest time for some of our broilers. |
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| Yep these birds are pushing ten weeks old and pretty big. |
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| Above pictured is bed shaper, a fantastic tool that uses discs to form our soil into nice uniform raised beds for planting. We first have to till the soil so that it is loose and then we pull the bed shaper with our tractor to from the beds to a specific width and height. Here we are making beds for our tomato and pepper plants. Before we plant tomatoes next month, we will add drip irrigation and mulch to keep our transplants cozy. |
What’s Growing? What a difference a week makes huh? Almost 80F here at the farm yesterday. Remember those four days at 19F hit us hard, so except for warm weather veggies, almost everything will be transplanted in the ground this week. Most of these crops take 45-65 days from transplant to harvest, so our mid March time target to begin our spring CSA may be a little one-sided on certain veggies, if not postponed a few weeks. Still sowing tomatoes, peppers, with squash and zucchini happening this week. Cantaloupe and watermelon not too far behind.
New Pick Up Location Added & Changes: This past week we were fortunate to add a new location, The Beans Café & Coffee House, located in the Energy Corridor of West Houston. This is going to be a great location as it has great parking access and is only about one mile south of the I-10 Katy Fwy on Eldridge Pkwy. The pick up times are set to be Wednesdays between 5 & 7:30, possibly earlier. We’ll keep you posted if the times are adjusted to earlier in the afternoon. We are still visiting with prospective locations down near Pearland and Clearlake, as well as in Spring. For a list and map of when/where we deliver in Houston visit CSA Pickup Locations . We need to find an alternate pick up location for those of you that live in Katy as the elders at the Presbyterian Church we were using had a change in heart about us using their facility as a pick up location. Let us know if you have any ideas. For inquires email us at csa@woodduckfarm.com or call us at 713 876 8645 for more details. As mentioned last week, you can get an idea of what size volume a full shares is by viewing some photos on Our Farm Blog (You'll need to scroll down a tad from the top.) FYI Partial shares receive about 1/3 less than full shares and are geared towards the two member household. Our Spring CSA registration form can be found at this link Spring 2011 CSA Registration . We think we have simplified the registration process to be just a few clicks and some of contact info and then pay with your credit card. If you’d rather mail in your registration, you can go to this link WDF CSA Mail-In Form We have added an Alternating Week option to our Full share size. The Alternating Week option is for those not wishing to receive a full share every week. So with the AW option, a farm member receives a Full share every odd week of the ten week program, i.e. weeks 1,3,5,7, and 9.
Customer Survey Results & Comments: For those of you interested in hearing what some of our CSA members have said etc, please visit this link Customer Comments & Surveys
Grass Fed Meat/Egg Subscription Program: Visit this link to register online CSA Registration. Scroll down to middle of your screen. We listened to your comments and have created two options, 1) our Full Share priced at $210 for a three-month program and/or 2) our Poultry Share priced at $165 for three months. You can add on a dozen eggs with either program (a dozen eggs for the entire 3 month program for $15.) You can go to this link Meat Subscription Svc to read more. Too much meat for your family? Consider splitting a share with a friend. The first month will likely be March, which should coincide with our Veggie CSA deliveries
Twitter?: Find us @WoodduckFM.
WDF has facebook page, but this link will take you to Van's page, from there you need to search for Wood Duck Farm. Go figure huh? All the Best,
Van Weldon
Cell 713 876 8645
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