Archive for May, 2011
have flowers, will bike
May 26th
We had a booth at the Stow Springfest last weekend. The weather was great and we had quite a good amount of traffic (and sales). Thanks to everyone who came out and said hello. I had to take this shot of our friend Carol who was going to bike off to home with a nice bouquet of flowers strapped to her backpack. It’s always nice to sell a bunch of flowers and have a customer walk (or ride in this case) away with a smile on their face.
we got steam-no punk though
May 9th
We do steam the old fashioned way, we boil water for it. Actually it’s an integral part of our process here. We normally steam the soil at the end of the planting cycle after cutting and cleaning off tables. The steam helps kill the weeds and bad things in the soil making for a nicer material. We stopped doing it in mid-January to conserve fuel (we use our wood chip boiler to make steam). About a month back the big boiler went kaput, the cast iron step grates that hold the chips while burning cracked and collapsed. So I’m riding it out on the little boiler for now, planning to fix the bb over the summer. The problem was that the little boiler wasn’t setup to make steam. After a little google-fest I found a mechanical water filler to install and help automatically keep the water from getting too low (we did that by eye on the bb – great when your eye is on on it, but when it’s not …). We recently finished the hookup and now are back in the steam biz. The steamed soil smells great when we use it, and the lilies love it.
- steaming pile of soil
- the mechanical filler
- the sight gauge
