Our farming year starts in January when Farmer Bill has a little time on his hands and comes up with new schemes for spending money, er, expanding the farm. This year he is opening up a small storefront on the farm to sell his produce & planted 800 blueberry bushes. Last year he put up two hoop houses, using a low-interest loan available from the MN Dept. of Agriculture, and bought a plastic layer and a planter to plant through the plastic to expand his cantaloupe growing. We started with 8 apple varieties and about 1900 trees. We now have 12 apple varieties and about 2500 trees. The original farm was 30 acres, but last year Farmer Bill finally talked the widow who owned an adjacent piece into selling it to him, so now we have about 50 acres.
A back bedroom was turned into a greenhouse last year & this, but I can definitely see Farmer Bill wanting to put up a 'real' greenhouse before too much longer. He planted hundreds of tomatoes -- grape tomatoes as well as slicers, and will soon be starting some melons. The first set of tomato plants went out into a hoop house weeks ago. The next batch of tomato plants will go soon out to hang around in the hoop house until the frost danger is gone & will go in the ground outside after that. Sugar-snap peas will go in the ground soon -- to be available during strawberry season -- they're quite popular with our PYO customers.
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