Our planting plans (if you care to browse!)

Just to give you all an idea of how busy we will be starting seedlings, here is the document that some of the students and I put together, which will help us plan when to start various crops in order to have them ready to plant outside at the right time:

2013_37GYVF_seedingTransplantingHarvesting_Plans

We're trying not to have to rely on other farms or plant growers, but rather to grow all our own stuff this year. Its ambitious -- we may even be partnering with an aquaponics researcher to expand in how many plants we can raise up from seed at a time (hopefully to get into the 500-600 range, which is what we'll need given what we hope to grow...)

If you look closely at the plans, you may also notice a pattern -- there will basically be five BIG transplanting days: Apr. 20, Apr. 27, May 11, May 18, and June 1. On these days it would be very helpful to get many extra sets of hands, so we can get all the baby plants in the ground before the sun rises / the day warms up. Leading to my next point: you may also have noticed that I've arranged for all of these GIANT PLANTING days to be Saturdays. I did that to increase the chance that share members would be able to come out to our plot and lend a hand! ;)

These transplanting marathons will basically be the first 'volunteer' events for shareholders. With them, we'll also pilot a new online system for signing up / staying informed. Look for another post in the next few days that shows you where to go to register, and how the process will work. I think I've come up with a way that we can organize group events like this with little to no headache... but we'll see :)

I'm getting excited about fresh, local food, and teaching students about how easy it is to feed ones' self given a back and hands that work, a healthy piece of land, and the right tools. Hope you're also gearing up for this joint adventure!

best,
Mr. M