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February at the farm.
Winter used to be a relatively quiet time for us at the farm. These days it is anything but. As we have moved more and more into the fresh market and value added products winter has become a very busy time. Already we have attended three Farm Market annual meetings - Orono, Brewer and Waterville and we have three more meetings in each location to consider new market members. In addition we have attended several meetings in Bangor to plan for a new market to be formed there. Tentative plans call for it to be on Sunday from 12 PM to 3 PM in a downtown location.
This is also the time of the year when farmers get together to learn about new diseases, herbicides, and pesticides and attend meetings to renew our Private Applicator licenses. This month the MPG (Maine Potato Growers) will hold their annual meeting for blueberry growers and next month UMO will hold their 2012 Wild Blueberry Spring Meetings. They cover new blueberry related research being conducted at the university as well as deal with a variety of ways to control unwanted weeds, pests etc. in blueberry fields.
This is also the time of year when we make decisions concerning what craft fairs and other events we will be attending throughout the year. The biggies are the American Folk Festival in Bangor, The Blueberry Festival in Machias and the Seaplane Fly-in in Greenville. In addition we participate in some 20 other events and craft fairs. All of the applications and deposits need to be forwarded in a timely manner or we risk losing our slot.
Lee has also been working hard to expand retail sites where are products are sold and also working to expand our wedding and office party favors business. Not to mention that she has totally revamped our web site and connected it to a Facebook page.
I have plans to build a new processing plant at our home/farm location in time for blueberry season so am involved with permits, building style options, and a host of other items. We want to become USDA approved and our old plant just had too many issues. It sure is nice to slow down in winter!