First Market of the Year - June 2, 2009

It's a beautiful day for the first Shoreview Market of 2009. We'll have great baked goods including carmel corn, molasses cookies, pies, date cookies, and sweet bread. The beekeeper has taste tested all of these items and can vouch for their value and flavor.

Obviously this whole farmer's market thing started as an outlet for our surplus honey so we'll have a good selection of liquid and spun honey...perhaps samples, as well.

It's a bit early for produce but our onions and radishes are doing well so perhaps next week on those. Most of our planting for the season is done and we're already seeing the emergence of squash and sweet corn. Spring is always quite a challenge. We have late freezes in MN so plants such as tomatoes are at risk deep into May. The better half continues to take this spring gardening as a 'teaching moment' to remind me that 'it's too early' or 'this needs to get planted right now or we won't have anything to sell.' As near as I can tell, that translates into about ten days of frenzy. I'm not sure how it can be 'too early' if the weeks are growing but that's why the better half does the planning and I claw at the earth.

We're pretty low-tech on the agricultural side. Currently we use about an acre of space which is a combination of raised beds and open gardens. We attempt to do minimal tilling and supplement the soil with our own compost and a bit of natural fetilizer. On the beekeeping side we remain small and focused on good tasting limited-source honey.