The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly....

So I had an idea to start listing some of the greatest successes and struggles of the farm thus far and decided on this format. I'll post everything that's been going well under "the good," everything that's been rough under "the bad," and one of the most ridiculous and hardest moments we've gone through under "the ugly." Here's the first post.

The Good:
    The MANY varieties of lettuce all are looking GREAT
    Beautiful and numerous varieties of Kale
    The Beets are bulbing up
    A lot of nice cabbage plants
    Our 60 hens showed up in fine and healthy form
    The potatoes are growing like gang busters in all this rain
    We've had lots of support from the local community
    The Pick-your-own cut flower patch
    Lots of healthy (though late) peas
    Our 2-wheel tractor does a pretty good job of weeding
    We've had a nice balance of wet and dry weather since May ended
    The tomatoes are all staked!
    lots of very nice looking pepper plants
    Our chicken coop pulls smoothly and looks like it'll be easy to manage
    The turkeys are finally over the hump

The Bad:
    Pests!!! Squash bugs, flea beetles, potato beetles, and some unknown yellow and black beetle that also likes squash related plants. As our first year farming here we were hoping for a honeymoon from these guys, but I guess they found us right quick...
    A really really really wet May
    The Spring Broccoli got put out into the field a bit too early and bolted right off resulting in a lot of small heads of broccoli that we have to freeze instead of eating fresh
    Quack-grass!!!!
    A finicky seeder that doesn't plant densely enough
    Turkeys are really hard to raise from poults
    This last storm knocked over a good 10% of our tomatoes breaking the stems at the base. Fortunately we saved all of our extra's after planting, so we can at least still go out and replace all the ones that don't make it.
    Dealing with biodegradable plastic...
    Not having sold quite as many shares as we'd hoped
   
The Ugly:
    Jesse, Caitlin and I all running around frantically in the middle of the last thunderstorm trying to collect all of our tools and bury the exposed plastic we'd been working with while lightning was touching down about a hundred yards off. I've never felt more like a lightning rod than when I was running to the greenhouse through a wet puddle filled field with rain pouring down on me and three scuffle hoes balanced on my shoulder.