13/06/2021
This carrot may not look like anything special but it's special to us. Sharon has named it the unity carrot.
Back in October of last year we started this venture known as Grateful Farms. We leased the land, had 100 cubic yards of organic compost delivered and started the journey to plant a market garden early this spring. November and December was spent laying the groundwork for a business that would provide nutrient rich, chemical free vegetables to our family, friends and community. Everything seemed great until December 30th when we were both diagnosed with Covid and we were very sick for about 3 weeks.
On the first day where I felt good enough to get back to work I severely broke a finger building my deer fence and that sidelined me for another couple weeks. Next was the great freeze of 2021 and even though we didn't have anything planted yet, the freeze caused me to be stuck at work for most of the next three weeks and got further behind. The fourth setback came when all of our starter plants being shipped from North Carolina took 11 days to be delivered rather than the three days as promised. Needless to say, plants that spend that much time in a box with no light or water will die.
Thankfully, Sharon's brother, David Heiser, came on board to help me get back on track. He and I basically spent every spare moment available to get the garden going. We were a bit late but we finally had it growing very well. The last couple months have seen larger and larger harvests and we've been working tirelessly to get all of this beautiful produce to market. For the last month I've been working about 90 hours a week on straight nights for a shutdown at work and spending every spare minute trying to keep up with the garden. Sharon has been picking up the slack and doing an amazing job at cleaning, packaging, processing and marketing lots of veggies for our weekly farmer's market and online orders. She and her mom spent most of a weekend making some amazing pickles that have been wildly popular. This week was really crazy trying to get back to a normal schedule and getting ready for the weekend market. We barely got any sleep last night and today's market was a huge success despite being extremely hot and humid. We got home exhausted and spent.
Just as we were winding down for the evening the phone rang and David told us we had to come to the garden right now. It's been raining for most of the last month and the farm was starting to look more like a jungle. We pulled up to the gate and to our amazement David and his wife, Liz had spent the entire day, in the heat and humidity, mowing, w**d eating, laying w**d barrier, moving rocks, cleaning up and making the place look awesome. We were at a loss for words and Sharon was in tears.
When you go to the market and all of your customers, many of whom are already regulars, rave about your vegetables, your parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and friends stop by and show their appreciation, and then this. Wow, just wow!! This really takes a community and we are blown away by all the support. So yes, this twisted carrot is the unity carrot and we are proud to do our part to make this community a little better. We'll keep growing it and we are really truly Grateful!
