Everyone is definitely feeling spring fever at JBG. The farm is bursting at the seams with veggies, and when we say bursting at the seams, we literally mean it. We are so chockfull of produce that our giant cooler at River Road (30 ft by 30 ft and 22 feet tall) is completely packed. Can you believe it?! This means Ricky, Tim, and Tracy, who keep our coolers organized, are working overtime, moving and rearranging cooler contents to make sure we can keep up and have room for the voluminous harvests.

Sweet potato planting full speed ahead this week. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Everyone is busy, busy, busy. The atmosphere at both the River Road farm and the Hergotz packing shed is a little tense simply because the volume of tasks everyone has on their plate. Farming can be absolutely wild!

Towers of tomatoes. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Squash & zucchini, summer darlings, are at the beginning of their season. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Gorgeous chard crops. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

It's really starting to get hot, meaning our breakroom is stockpiled with all the popsicles we can get our hands on. We are harvesting potatoes like crazy, and planting sweet potatoes like crazy, too. We are picking the first green beans this week, and just starting to harvest the green tomatoes. The red tomatoes should be arriving in the next couple of weeks, so dust off those salsa recipes! We are also anticipating a wonderful eggplant crop soon. We are planting okra this week, and harvesting the first planting before long. The grapes and watermelons are starting to size up, and we will have the first peppers at markets this weekend. Friendly reminder to all of our readers that lettuce-based salads are on their way out. Eat your greens while you can!

Cleaning potatoes for markets at Hergotz! Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Peppers! It's heatin' up! Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Beautiful basil. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

This week has also been a bit of a logistical nightmare at Hergotz! Our reefer truck, which we need to do our Whole Foods distributions among other things, broke down. This truck has been giving us some trouble recently, and farm mechanics have worked their magic on this baby quite a bit. However, it has delivered its final case of kale and is now 'condemned' in our Operation Manager, Krishna's words. The engine needs replacing, which has a price tag of over $20,000. All that to say, we're going to try to replace the vehicle altogether. In addition to our reefer, one of our other delivery vehicles died on the same day that our forklift's starter decided to break... which was on the same day that several folks in the barn were on vacation! There was lots of hand-loading trucks and last-minute staff-shuffling as you can imagine. Our cooler managers were delivery drivers, our marketing managers were CSA crew members, our bulk crew helped with distribution, our drivers acted as mechanics, and even Krishna helped with market preparations. We're tired, to say the least. Come see us at markets this weekend! 'Til next time!