PREPARING AND LEARNING!!!

Even though it's winter we have been busy. Everyone always wants to know what we're going to do with ourselves once market and growing season is over, like now we're going to have all this free time! I wish!

I've mentioned some of the projects Greg's been working on getting built. He's also been busy ordering supplies and seeds. That's a chore going through all the old seed and determining what needs to be tossed and what can be kept and then what and how much we need to order and from whom! We get around 35-40 different seed catalogs and even though we have our standard ones, we always like to see what's new that different ones might be offering and of course comparing prices! My job is to go through and mark anything that sounds interesting and then he weeds through all the rest! A week ago this past Monday we went to Hummert's in Earth City to get some potting soil, drip tape, perlite and misc. and found some green house bench tops that were slightly damaged and were about 40% off, so picked up 4 of those!

Last week after it had thawed out some we got compost carted into one of the smaller hoop houses and Greg got it tilled in. That worked up real nice and deep! We still have the big hoop house to get cleaned out and worked up!

Last Tuesday & Wednesday I went to a Better Process Control School in Jefferson City put on by the Purdue University Food Science Department School of Agriculture. That was very enlightening and interesting. There were eight chapters we went over and were tested on and we had to pass by 80% to get our certification. The class covered Canned foods; principles of thermal process control, acidification & container closure evaluation! I don't think I've done that much note taking and listening to lectures and test taking since High School! I think the mental work was more tiring and wearing on me than physical gardening work is!!!

Then Friday afternoon I drove down to Cabool, Missouri for the annual Missouri Farmers' Market Association work shop and meeting that was held on Saturday. We had several speakers and heard and learned about Grants and writing grants, about using Face book, Twitter, and other social networks to promote our markets. So I may have to set up a Face book page. I haven't totally decided on that one, I thought I was doing well to be blogging!!! We also had a speaker on insurance and what we needed to know about insuring our market and ourselves as vendors. I have been on the board for about 6 years and was up for re-election and was voted back in.

The Agritourism - Small Fruit & Vegetable Conference is coming up February 15, 16 & 17 at the Lake of the Ozarks. I usually go to this one by myself as the Small Fruit & Vegetable part has always been held down in Springfield, Missouri. This year they are combining with the Agritourism and moved it. I will be going and Greg is thinking about it since it is closer we would come home at night. Always a problem for both of us to be gone at the same time and get chores done! This conference has a bus tour the first day and then on the second and third day will be topics like Growing & promoting Missouri grown blueberries; business planning basics; Agritourism; High tunnel strawberry production; planning events on the farm; Developing a Web presence; blackberry pruning; identifying potential hazards on your farm; growing primocane blackberries; vegetables; and marketing food on the farm!

So even though we may not be growing and selling produce, we are preparing and learning to be better growers and marketers!