Apologies for the hiatus.

Over the past month, my weekdays have been full of farming and my weekends full of traveling here, here, and here. But I'm back now, at least for a little while.

In the time since my last post, the operations here at Trillium have become significantly more complicated. Aside from a handful of succession plantings for vegetables like scallions and lettuce, work in the greenhouses slows down at this point in the summer. All our attention is in the fields, as it better be by this time of year. We still have some transplanting to do, as well as some direct seeding. Though almost all the tomatoes are staked, they'll need to be strung as they grow. There's always cultivating and weeding to be done somewhere on the farm. And harvesting. Lots and lots of harvesting.

Since we're no longer working in the greenhouses on a large scale, my responsibilities have shifted from there to the wash station. I'm responsible for cleaning the produce as it's harvested, packing it in crates, and stacking and organizing it in the cooler.

The final touches have been put on the new, larger produce cooler that we assembled last winter, and we switched it on a couple of days ago. Glory and hallelujah, it's nice to have it up and running! Since I started working at Trillium a little over two years ago, the number of our shareholders has doubled. We've felt the growing pains of this increase each year. First, the trailer was too small to make the delivery to the Fulton Street pickup. That problem was solved when Michael bought the new delivery truck. Then, we maxed out what we could fit in the old cooler. That made the farm pickup tricky. At the high point of the season last year, everything simply wouldn't fit, and I had to get creative with keeping the vegetables cool by spraying them with water now and again as they sat stacked in the wash station. Again, tricky to do in the heat of August. Now that the new cooler is on line, there's plenty of room to keep the produce organized and accessible, and that makes things run so much more smoothly.

Managing the wash station also means that I get to help run the on-farm pickup on Thursday afternoon. This is the high point of my week. It's been great seeing the returning members and meeting the new ones. I also enjoy answering folks' questions about some of our goofier vegetables. Everything we do is oriented toward these pickups, and it's satisfying to lay the fruit of our labor out on the tables for the members to receive. It closes the long loop of the week's work, and it makes me immensely happy to be a part of it all.