The Entrepreneurship Program

Today, I leave for The Entrepreneurship Program and the first Module is in St. Louis. I will be touring four farms on Wednesday and am super excited about that. I hope I survive this heat wave while out touring. The rest of the module will be spent analysing Agricultural food trends, Entrepreneur opportunities, and finances.

This is a program I've been so looking forward to attending and wish my husband was traveling with me. He deployed a week ago and I miss him so much already.

Keep checking in on the blog for traveling updates.

Organic Cerification

The inspection went great and now it's a matter of the paperwork to be completed. Yes...............This is a relief that after 4 months of preparing the soil and documentation that it has became a reality. As of April 9th 2012 all the berry plants will be organic as well. Since they were bare root, they have to be managed for one year before the certification is complete. So for now the veggies and crop ground is certified. Now to begin the marketing challenge for Spring.

Hoop House part duece!

Boys working hard! The frame went up the night before... Jake and Kurt worked from about 10:00pm to 4:00am!

oh. my. gosh. It is so hot outside my camera is starting to fog!

Jake sweating...and delegating! How he memorized the entire packet of directions still baffles me.

Jake Ismert teaching the youngins' how to use a hammer and nail :) It was so extremely hot I had to go inside... At 104 degrees, the camera was fogging up!

Thank you so much for all who helped! I know it was an exhausting weekend for all invovled. You will never know how much I appreciate the love and support from my family and friends!

Stay tuned for more pics to come!!!!! 

Urban Farm Tour

Get your grow on. This farm is Adams' Osage Ridge Aronia Community Farm. This couple was so great. He gave us a complete tour of the Aronia berries that were planted and we viewed the hoop house under construction. I sampled an Aronia smoothy (yummy) and a day flower that had some cheese stuffed inside. I was so hungry I would have eaten anything at that point. Great tour and great time.

Berry Workshop - Higginsville

 Marlin Bates is such a great guy and so full of knowledge about grapes and any kind of berry for that matter. He is giving us a demonstration on pruning of the grapevines in order to let the light show under the grapes. The gentlemen with his back to us is the owner of the organic farm.

 This is a side way picture of me so you'll have to turn your head here. I'm walking thought a hoop house that is full of Red raspberries. The sides are open on this house thank goodness. It was 101 that day. I was so hot.

This was tomatoes that was growing in an open sided hoop house.. This was a very workshop

Cass County Fair

 The fruit entry of course was Blackberries.

Pie entry was gooseberry...............

 Just some peppers (jalapeno) to mix things up...

The judges said.......Blackberries took a 1st place, peppers 2nd place and the Prized Pie a 2nd place. The gooseberry pie was very disappointing. My daughter Holly who had never made a pie in her life made that pie. I wasn't even home when she did it. I'm so proud of her and she really deserves a 1st place. They told her in the commits section that it was bit sweet. Well after the pie had sat there for 3 day's, I tasted it and it wasn't too sweet. Can you tell I'm bitter about this.

Hoop House

Wow this is a lot of work. My two son in laws starting working on the frame part at 12:00am by the light of the moon and head lights from their cars. They came in around 4:30am and slept some. I got up and looked out the window in shocked. I didn't hear a think. Everyone was back at it on Saturday morning and boy was it hot. We still have a ways to go here but the frame looks great. My foreman on the job was Jake Ismert and his attention to detail is awesome.