For this week’s post, I thought I would talk to you about numbers - and hopefully not be too boring! Since I’m a farmer, I’ve realized people that do not work in agriculture usually don’t suspect how much we plan and juggle with numbers for our season to go smoothly.
In order to be able to propose to you a diverse and tasty selection of veggies every week, we have to know exactly what to sow, when, and how much. It is usually in the winter that the crop planning happens. All this information is gathered in a big Excel document, as well as many other details.
To build such a document, we work backwards. An example (simplified) : we want to be able to harvest fennel in the first week of the CSA. We have to look at the date to maturity for fennel, which is the number of days the fennel will take from the moment the seed is put in soil to the moment it’s gonna be ready to harvest. In this case, 77 days. The fennel will be sowed 77 days before the week 1 of our CSA. Then, we have to think about how many fennels. Let’s say we need 100. It would be too easy if we then had to sow 100. As you know, germination isn’t perfect. Then, we might also have a few casualties when we transplant the crop. Or, later in its life, the crop might get diseased, damaged, eaten by pests.. We need a buffer and usually apply 30% more to the final number we need. We will then sow 130 fennel seeds (this number will be rounded up depending on the type of seedling tray we are using).
Then it needs a spot in our fields. How long is it going to be in the ground? Of the 77 days it takes to arrive to maturity, small fennel seedlings will spend 28 days in the greenhouse, until it’s transplanted. Then roughly 50 days outside. Also, how much space is it going to take? We plant fennel with 4 rows on our beds, every 8 inches. So our 130 fennels will occupy about 22 ft in our fields, for about 50 days.
Repeat with every crop, week after week, for the whole season. I am not kidding when I tell you this is a true puzzle. This year Rebecca put together most of it and believe me, she did a pretty good job! I hope you agree with me, seeing the diversity of vegetables we can offer you every week.
That’s for the planning. Then, there’s reality. Weather, of course, will play a role on how quick crops size up (or not). We have to anticipate all the time : what is going to be ready next week? This bed of lettuce, how many bags will we get from it? We harvested 80 peppers today, will the yield be the same next week? I must say, that’s a hard part for me. I tend to be cautious because I don’t want numbers to be put in the store, people ordering, and then not having enough when it comes to harvest. The opposite isn’t great either, if products are left in the fields because we want to offer you as much as we have (and waste as little as possible).
Once our vegetables are harvested, we wash, pack and then - numbers again. On Tuesdays we have pick-ups in Bridgewater and Halifax so we are packing for 2 different locations with numbers for the basket-style CSA (we choose for you) and the market-style CSA (you order through the website). We also have to add a few veggies for our Bridgeater location as Jessie has a selling table there.
All that to say, we try to keep things square as much as possible but there are a lot of variables :) I hope I was able to give you a bit of insight when it comes to planning and predicting our growing season!
Have a great week.
Raphaëlle
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