The day before the first CSA harvest is a bit like Christmas Eve...from what I imagine to be Santa's perspective. As the farmer responsible for the day, I can relate to the stress that Santa must feel on Christmas Eve! This past Sunday was our First Harvest Eve at Old Plank Farm. I spent the early part of the evening making packing lists and checking them twice. And three times. And four times. And then printing them, with minimal swearing at the printer this year.
Then I checked the lettuce out in the field to make sure that Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen weren't chowing down on the next day's harvest. No deer in sight and everything looked good with only 8 hours to go.
Next I made sure the sleigh had a full tank of gas and the Anne Murray cassette was in the tape player. Our delivery vehicle doesn't need Rudolph or Christmas spirit to run, but it does need to be playing that old Anne Murray tape. A few years back, when we took the cassette out for the first time, the vehicle promptly broke down. Now I don't take any chances, especially on delivery days. There was plenty of fuel and Anne Murray was singing Snowbird for the eighty-millionth time when I turned the vehicle off.
When I went to bed Sunday night, I was so excited for the first harvest I could hardly sleep. I got up at dawn and ran out to the lettuce patch first thing. The lettuce was still there, without any deer damage. Off to a good start! But looking at all that lettuce I suddenly felt that I was the Santa who would be giving everyone socks and underwear instead of the Red Ryder toy they really wanted. No tomatoes in the first harvest?! Not at our farm, no. Just lettuce?! Pretty much.
Happily, it'll be like Christmas every week now for 20 weeks, with a different variety of veggies in each week's box. We still won't have tomatoes next week, but soon enough the season will change and with it will come new and different veggies to harvest.
Oh, and it wouldn't be Christmas without a tree-falling disaster. In this case it was not a tree falling in a house. Nor was it a tree falling on a house. Rather, early Monday morning I discovered that our tree-house tree was falling. The floor of the house had collapsed and one of the main tree limbs had shifted and was leaning precariously close to our packing shed. We managed to add "harvest giant and dangerous tree branch" to our Monday morning list. (But no, we didn't put it in the CSA boxes!).
All in all, it was a good first harvest here. Now, on to the next one!