On September 23rd I set up a booth at Steuben Farm City Days at the Karr Dairy Farm in Hornell. It was a hot day and my dad came to keep me company. Our immediate neighbor to the east was the working cow barn. I am not a dairy person but after watching for the day this was the holding pen for them going to get milked.  I assumed that the cows were confused about all of the people at “their” farm. This one kicked he heals up, sat back and watched us as much as we watched her.

Back to the onions. I had purchased onion stress balls that were a huge hit! Mostly with the adults as they felt more stress than the kiddos. Everyone was interested in the small black onion seeds in the jar. People don’t really know a lot about growing onions. Yes, you can start them from sets. Yes, if you leave them in the ground for the next year they will grow again but then will produce onion seeds. Yes, you can plant them from seed in this area.  Yes, they do make you cry. Lots of questions from the young and old.

This will be our 18th planting season in Prattsburg and it’s time to starting the juggling act. We are still packing out last years onions. It might surprise a few people, but we work all winter packing onions. Greg is still driving to Orange county just about everyday to deliver the onions.  SO the juggle is,  when to start fitting the land and when to plant. This brings me to the one thing that farmers do.

WORRY.

If we plant them now and we get a frost in early May the whole crop could be lost or badly hurt. If you wait to plant then you take the chance of a late harvest and miss part of the best marketing.  If we wait and we get heavy rains the planting is delayed and that effects the crop insurance, as they give us dates that we have to plant by or we are penalized.

With all of that said we will start turning the ground over soon and the planting will start and be fast and furious! After it is done. We will wait for them to grow and do a little more worrying.

In the mean time, enjoy the sunshine and let’s do some cultimulching!

Bagging used to be 3-4 people at the end of the line filling 50lb bags, tying them, and stacking them on pallets. This year we are going Hi-Tech! We are leasing  a Htech AR25 packaging machine and a Verbruggen Palletizing Machine.  Greg, Jeff and Mark are all becoming experts at Hi-tech! So much for talking… watch what this does! Mark was so excited to take the video!