Reefer Madness!

So we bought a 40 foot reefer the other day. Its awesome! The interior and exterior are sheet aluminum and it has 3" of insulation in between. This will soon be half walk-in cooler, and half wash and pack facility. You might be wondering why we call it a reefer - actually we didn't come up with that name, that is what refrigerated railcars used to be called and it later got applied to refrigerated semi trailers. This one was used by Safeway to haul produce and frozen foods around Oklahoma. It would have had a gigantic diesel-powered refrigeration unit on the front where that little rectangle is. We are going to rig ours up with a regular electric-powered cooler. We priced lots of different options for coolers: above ground, underground, strawbale, portable, but this was by far the cheapest, most portable, and most durable option there was. Since we are on leased land we feel that portability is a major benefit. We bought it from Charlie's Trailer Sales in Tulsa and if you feel like you need one they have two more.

Right now we are struggling with a gap in our harvest schedule because of the whole irrigation fiasco in February. Since we didn't get any rain and our irrigation was ineffective, our crops didn't germinate on time. If they had, we would be harvesting kale and lettuce and turnips right now. Instead, we still have at least two weeks to go on those items. All we have right now is the spinach that we overwintered. Unfortunately it is starting to bolt so its quality is sinking fast. We will have some at the market Saturday, but we will make it clear that it is definately not suitable for salads - but it will work great for steaming or sauteeing.

This is our next crop on the harvest calender - green peas! We should also have snap peas and snow peas, although their germination was not as good as the Alaska Green Peas.We just ordeed a small pea sheller too, so we will be selling some of them already shelled. Since we broke down and bought a pea sheller, that also means that will will grow extra Purple Hull Peas and maybe even some Pintos and Anasazi beans for fresh shelling.

Here is a little friend of mine. Now that the weather is warming up we are starting to see lots of honeybees. I let the turnips bloom to attract them and it sure did work. I think every colony within 4 miles has found our farm, each turnip plant has a bee on it. It is really exciting because the person who was going to park some hives on our farm lost too many hives over the winter and doesn't have any bees for us. Oh well, looks like we'll be okay. There are also lots of wasps and mason bees for pollination.