We are very much relieved and happy that three of our foreign professionals have just been released from quarantine and are doing what they do best; getting things done!  They are Pascual, who has been with us enough years that I’ve lost count.  He is a very quiet, reserved person, at least around the “patrone” (boss).  He is a very dedicated employee that everyone likes to work with because he always pulls his weight.  He also plays the accordion.  My kids got their hands on one for him last summer; not sure if he took it home or left it here.  Artemio (Timo) has also been with us for a number of years.  He is very clean cut and conscientious, he helps Leon with the Forum market quite often in the summer months so some of you have met him I am sure.  He spends most of his time in the packing shed working with Leon to fill orders and generally keep things rolling there.  The third guy is new to us but we know members of his family well.  His name is Pablo and he is 18 years old and on the biggest adventure of his life.  His father, Adrian, has worked us here Elmridge for a decade and has helped out at the seaport market many times so many of you would also have met him.  I would have to say Adrian is the most concerned, caring person I have ever met, period!  That is why we have worked to get two of his sons here to work with their father.  Pablo’s older brother, Estaban (Teban), 21, started work here last season, went home for two weeks at Christmas and then came right back.  He did his two weeks in penitentiary (that’s what we call quarantine, really) and has been working since late January.  Leon, from Jamaica, who is the most known to many of you, has been with us for 14 years now and has grown into the role of packing shed operations manager.  He knows more about what goes on in the packing shed than anyone, including me.  The Forum market is his baby and he will do anything in his power to beat his old high sales record at the market.  Believe me, that kind of dedication is something we do not take for granted. So that’s our crew of five to this point.

We will need more guys very soon but it isn’t clear how that is going to go because Ottawa keeps changing the rules and, every time, seems to not anticipate the effect it will have on agriculture.    We were just ready to have Pascual and Artemio arrive when the federal government changed the rules and shut down almost all flights in and out of Jamaica and Mexico.  And then the three day Toronto quarantine happened.  They were supposed to have started nearly a month ago.  A third guy was to have started a couple of weeks ago.  He still isn’t here but we managed to get Pablo here in his stead. The three guys who start this week were spared the extra three days in Toronto because Elmridge farm is considered a government approved quarantine facility.  And, believe me, we’ve earned that designation.  It’s been a very long bit of red tape.  And now the rules have been changed yet again, any of our employees arriving right now will have to quarantine three days in Toronto….and then another 14 days here…or maybe 11 days…no one knows, and the rules change continuously.

March 25, 2021

So on to the anticipation of spring and what that brings with it.

On Wednesday we filled about 1000 trays with 25 pounds of seed potatoes each and put them in the greenhouse to sprout.  Ideally we should have done this about a week ago but we just didn’t have the crew to do it.  We did however, put them in the sweet potato storage for the last two weeks where the temperature is maintained at 12-14 Celsius which woke them up so I don’t think we are behind very much.  The sprouting tray design is very open so that light can penetrate and keep the potato sprouts from stretching as they "look" for light.  My maternal grandfather lived just a km from here and sprouted some potatoes to grow for early harvest and originally designed and built some trays in the 1960’s.  Some of those trays are still being used today.  To give you an idea of the difference in scale, he may have had about 40 trays.  We would require about 2500 trays to hold all of our seed potatoes this spring.  I am going to explain why and how we green sprout seed potatoes.

For most farmers the only reason to sprout potato seed is to make them earlier for harvest to capitalize on a better price. We do that too but we also sprout all of our seed potatoes so that they will come out of the soil faster than the weeds and we can use non-chemical forms of weed control.  Mechanical weed control is a game of timing in potatoes.  The first flush of weeds usually accounts for about 80% of the weed pressure for the season so it is essential to win this battle in order to have any hope of winning the war on weeds.  We need the potatoes to be poking through the soil before the weeds are more than an inch high.  We can then go through the field with our flame weeder and quickly and efficiently burn off all of the emerged weeds (I’ll do a rundown on our flame weeder one of these days).  The protruding bits of potato plant get burned as well, but because of the size of the potato seed piece they come back in a matter of a couple of days and grow like crazy.  From there we watch the growth of the weeds and the potatoes closely and will partly hill them up when the second flush of weeds emerges (it is essential not to hill them up completely at this stage or there won’t be the opportunity to bury weeds with a second hilling).  The second and final hilling is done just before the potato leaf canopy closes the rows.  Again, timing is critical.  Hill too soon and sunlight on the soil will produce yet another flush of weeds.  Wait too long and the large potato plants will get a lot of damage.  Not doing the second hilling is not an option because the mess of weeds escapes will cause more yield loss than the damage done to the potato plants by hilling and harvest will be a nightmare unless we spend an ungodly amount of time and money on pulling weeds. Weeding creates plenty of jobs but they don’t pay our bills; not my favourite scenario.  If for one reason or another we get a poor stand of potatoes, the canopy can never fully shade the soil and we will be fighting weeds all the way through the season for a small yield potential.  Also not a profitable scenario.  Fortunately I am an unflappable optimist when it comes to crop potential so I go back at it year after year mostly undaunted…..I think that is part of the popular definition of insanity…..

Yet another reason for us to green sprout our potatoes is to get them to grow and mature as early in the season as possible.  Disease pressures build during the growing season and in order to be exposed to as little disease pressure as possible we want our crop to grow and mature quickly.  We do not use any conventional fungicides on potatoes so we can’t just keep the plants alive and “healthy” by pouring on more chemicals.  We rely on biological controls that compete with the fungal spores (mainly early and late blight) and various bacteria that can attack the plants.  They aren’t as effective per se as the commercial chemistry but combined with earliness, a healthy soil biome, and the application of foliar micronutrients we are able to harvest crops as big as the conventional growers but in a healthier more sustainable way.  It’s taken us 25 years to perfect our techniques but we are now successful much more often than not.  I would also just like to mention that the conventional “crop protectants” used are continuously being switched out for newer, less harmful alternatives and some of the very newest products actually meet organic standards.  So at least the world of pesticides is moving in the right direction.  Big companies like Bayer and Monsanto are pouring many millions of dollars into developing new, better alternatives then has been used in the past.  That’s good news for everyone on the planet.

The how.  We use a unit of measure to calculate the best amount of time to sprout the seed before it becomes counter productive and just weakens the seed and reduces yield in the end.  That unit is “Growing Degree Days”.  It is measured by taking the average of the day’s high and low temperature and subtracting five (5).  When the accumulated degree days reach about 250 we need to remove the seed to somewhere cool so that it becomes partly dormant again.  The seed just thinks the weather has turned cold again and it is waiting for the right conditions to grow.  It is naturally evolved to do this.

Most farmers opt for artificial light to sprout potato seed.  We don’t.  We are running greenhouses anyway and the sunlight in a greenhouse is far superior to what can be produced artificially.  On top of that, greenhouse plastic is engineered to produce what is known a 'diffuse light'.  That just means that there will be virtually no shadows, allowing the light to penetrate the stacks of seed trays and prevent the seeds in the middle of the pile from producing long sprouts in search of light.  We want sprouts as short as possible so that they won’t be broken off during the planting process. Another advantage of using a greenhouse is that the seed potatoes (that cover only about half of the greenhouse floor space) absorb vast amounts of heat during the day and release it at night resulting in a considerable savings in heating fuel.  It’s like having 40 or 50,000 thousand pounds of porous water that air can travel through and exchange heat efficiently.

Generally the seed will be in the greenhouse for about two weeks and then planted or removed to cold storage depending on whether the fields are ready to go.  For management reasons we don’t plant potatoes the very first day we can get on the fields in the spring like many farmers do.  Our first priority is to get the carrots, beets and peas planted during our first window of opportunity and then potatoes in the next opportunity after that.  We have found that the potatoes actually mature sooner if we wait just a bit for slightly warmer weather before we plant.

Keep eating your veggies.

Greg

So; how to continue to exist and stay profitable as regulatory costs soar and the price we get for product creeps up at a much slower pace?  I’m going to give you a short rundown on how the industry and Elmridge got where we are today.
Disclaimer:  I know this next bit is going to seem like doom and gloom but I just want to give you the full story.  We remain optimistic about the future but very much frustrated with our single biggest roadblock; one-sided government regulation.  Ie. Pile on the regulation for “the good of society” but give us no way to recoup the associated costs.  My hope is that by telling my story to all of you, someone is going to be in the position or have the connections to help create positive change.

I was born at a very early age……wait; too much detail….start again….  (I’ve always wanted to use that line)

March 18, 2021

During the summer of 1991 between my third and final year of my bachelors degree in plant science I grew my first vegetable crop, an acre of sweet corn.  I’m not sure where I got the energy from.  For four months I worked full time at the Kentville Agriculture Centre, another 40 hours a week on the farm (that’s part time in farming terms) grew an acre of sweet corn, some carrots and some peas.  I also spent way too many nights out late with my friends……In a period of four months I took home over $14K (that’s about $27K in todays dollars).  Tuition and residence with a meal plan was about $7K so I had another $7K for fun.  Beer was under $20 for a two-four.  Gas was forty-something cents a litre.  Life was sweet!!  I graduated with zero debt and pretty much zero dollars…..it was a great final year:-). It’s a good thing I had no debt because the next 11 years were going to be really tough.  Had In known in 1992 what lay ahead I’m sure I would have taken up an offer to continue on to my masters degree.  Don’t get me wrong; I am happy with what we have accomplished over the years but, in the words of a local farmer back in the 90’s, "I wouldn’t wish it on anyone”.  Let me say that I understand what he said much better now than I did then.    At one point in 2002 Suzanne was at home with a two year old and a baby, I was working 80-90 hours a week.  My take home pay was less than $11k and we paid $6000 in rent on our house.  I was making much less than poverty wage in an attempt to build equity in the farm.  In fact I’m pretty sure that put us at just a fraction of the poverty line income of those days.  Thankfully that was rock bottom for us.

Talk at the end of the 80’s and early 90’s had been that agriculture was just going through a tough patch and things would quickly turn around and everything would be back to optimism and prosperity.  Well that certainly didn’t happen.  I think it’s completely fair to say that agriculture in Nova Scotia has been in recession for 30 years now.  I’m 50 and I have never farmed without facing an uphill battle and daunting odds.  The worldwide industry has managed to continue mostly through consolidation of smaller farms into ever larger units that capitalize on the efficiencies of scale.  The bigger the operation the better use it can make of mechanization.  The bigger the area you spread the cost of owning equipment over the lower your cost per unit of food produced.  Very simple math.  The human cost of this consolidation is hard to fathom.  I know too many former farmers who went through hell trying to survive and in the end shut down before they lost everything or just lost it all.  The same economic forces have no concern for nutrient value and environmental footprint of food either.

The critical mass of agriculture in our area just isn’t big enough to compete in the race to the lowest price with most food producing areas of the world.   In Nova Scotia there has also been a lot of consolidation but in Nova Scotia the game of getting ever bigger to offer the lowest price is mostly a fools game we just aren’t big enough to compete on those terms. Elmridge Farm is no exception to the consolidation game.  My grandfather farmed maybe 80 acres of land to make a living for a family of 12.  My parents started out very poor, worked very hard to build the farm to more than double that and saw their standard of living for a family of seven improve drastically during the 80’s.  In the early 90’s my parents were able to sell their milk quota and put enough aside that, along with the sale of the farm to Suzanne and I in 2003 allowed them to retire (although, to this day, my father’s interpretation of retirement is just working 10-12 hours a day on what he wants to instead of what he has to….not a bad interpretation actually).  Already in the early 90’s the economics of dairy farming were such that one could not buy both the farm and the quota and make the cashflow work.  You had to have enough money for one or the other already in your pocket to be" viable”; that’s not really viable.  I never really loved cows so I opted out with the resulting loss of some sense of financial security and the start of anxious dreams that continue to this day.   Suzanne and I have built the farm to a cash flow of 10 times what my parents best year was.  With inflation taken into account that makes our operation six times what theirs was; and it’s still growing in the name of staying in business.  In 2018 we did double the cash flow for the same net profit as 2009.  The last three years have been break even depending on how you calculate it.  That makes me very nervous.

As I have mentioned before, Nova Scotia has lost the vast majority of its processing ability (mostly in the 90’s and 00’s). There were significant acreages of peas, beans, pickling cucumbers, beets, tomatoes etc. grown for processing.  All of that is gone now; and that’s just vegetable crops.  Most dairy processing has left the province, a lot of chicken travels live into New Brunswick and Quebec, there is no longer large scale beef processing, and the pork industry is, at most, just a few percent of what it was less than 20 years ago.  In the 90’s we grew up to 10 acres of green tomatoes for green tomato chow that was made at a processing plant in Berwick.  We modified an old plum tomato harvester to harvest the green tomatoes.  It worked so well that we could harvest enough tomatoes in about four hours (30,000 pounds),with a crew of six , to keep the processing plant running for a full 24 hours.  The plant management was quite taken with the ability of the machine and came out to look and take some pictures.  The next year they gave our contract as well as pictures of our modifications to a grower in Quebec near the parent company and then shut down the local plant.  It’s a dirty business.

The loss of local processing ability is one of the major factors that has continued to put local agriculture at a disadvantage on the world market.  The bright spot, however, is that there are many small processors popping up that are not playing the game of lowest price.  Instead they rely on higher quality products that deliver value to the customer that goes beyond a low price point.  The most obvious examples are the breweries and wineries that have opened for business.  It’s interesting to see that there is money to be made on the non essentials but the essentials are still a tough sell.  That’s human nature; we want a bargain on the essentials so we can spend on the extras and impress others or make ourselves feel better.  There is also some small scale processing of grains, oils etc. popping up.

In order to make a profit we have to take a product and value add (ie. run a second business to pay our bills).  To grow only the ingredients for processing is still only marginally profitable.  We at Elmridge have been working with a rather notable consultant for the last year and a half to do a whole farm analysis to see where things are going wrong and where things are going right.  This analysis along with the existing need for more capacity to produce Suzanne’s dog treats (notice it’s a luxury item of sorts) has led us to look at dehydration of cull products as a new revenue stream.  The dog treats are made mostly of sweet potatoes that are cosmetically challenged in some way and do not retail well.  With a bit of pruning they can be turned into a profitable product with something that’s magical to a fresh veggie farmer; shelf life!  So the thought was “why not see if we can also dehydrate other cull produce into ingredients for both human and pet food?”.

As I have mentioned before; with only a fresh market available to us it is very hard to grow just the right amount of vegetables to fill demand without overproducing or running short and sending customers home empty handed.  In fact it’s impossible.  Even with the tightest of management practices and reasonable weather the yield will swing by 20% either way every year.  When we get weather anomalies that swing is easily 50% or more.  Running short of product hurts our dependability and requires our customers to look elsewhere for vegetables.  That’s frustrating for consumers and causes us an inevitable loss of customers.  To have too much product is not the blessing one would think either.  To leave unharvested product in the field for lack of market is a soul crushing experience that we deal with far too often. Instead, because we firmly believe that avoidable waste is wrong we end up donating $50-100,000 worth of product to Feed NS every year.  We get a 25% tax credit which is better than nothing but we are still at a net loss on that product.   To benefit from the tax break also requires us to be profitable and hence taxable to gain any advantage.  So the last three years have seen surplus product become almost a 100% loss to us.  Ironically, because we grow our food differently from conventional it very often doesn’t meet size, shape or colour specs for the big grocery stores.  It is better quality from the standpoint of flavour, nutrient value and freshness and has a smaller environmental footprint but it doesn’t meet their “quality” requirements; mostly size, appearance and paper trail.   We cynically joke that their primary quality standard is a new box with pretty colours….unfortunately there is a lot of truth in that.  A hard nosed business mentality would have us leave it in the field and cut our losses but a hard nose business mentality would also have us working in a completely different industry.  Let’s face it; if money is your sole objective then you most likely won’t be happy growing food.

In November 2019 we started to look into what might be involved in scaling up the dog treat business and using the equipment to add to our product line.  We weren’t long figuring out that there is plenty of business to be had in the pet food and pet treat market; and it’s a growing market.  Then we widened our focus to which products we could dehydrate for human consumption and, "how does that look financially?”.  Our conclusion;  it’s not going to be simple or easy (nothing worth doing is ever simple or easy), but there is a profitable opportunity in dehydrated products.

Best of all; we can use the vast majority of cosmetically challenged cull product to make various powders, soup mixes and food ingredients.  It also helps us manage supply.  We can consistently grow more than we think we need for the fresh market and dehydrate the surplus.  The storability of dehydrated products is the secret tom managing supply. Assuming that the demand for dehydrated product is enough that we use up all culls and surplus product plus have to grow at least some extra acreage of each crop solely for dehydration, we can adjust that extra acreage each year depending on how much dehydrated product we have in stock.  We are also hoping to help use up some of the surpluses from neighbouring small farms.  It’s a small step in the big picture but it’s a step in the right direction to rebuilding our local food security and, maybe someday, food sovereignty.

Here comes spring….oh! Wait…maybe not…..well….maybe….
Keep eating your veggies.
Greg

As I have likely mentioned before, I am finding that I really like going down the rabbit hole of the socioeconomic issues facing our industry and Elmridge Farm in particular.  I have seen many things happen to the industry over the last 30 years and have often burned with a desire to make my point of view known to the non-farming public  My weekly “blurb” has become that to some degree.  I hope I am not abusing your attention; and please feel free to forward any of my writing to anyone you think would like to, or should, see it: or let me know your thoughts.  I have received some interesting feedback from number of you and it is an email I received last week combined with a link that was forwarded to me concerning the state of the Cornwallis River, that starts near Aylesford and empties into the Minus Basin, that sent me down today’s rabbit hole.  The fact is that we are being inundated with new demands and regulations on a weekly and sometimes daily basis….it is anything but relaxing.

February 25th, 2021

The following two paragraphs are directly clipped from the email of an Elmridge subscriber.

“As the pandemic hit I was struck by just how food insecure most of us are, not to mention the multiplier effect of poverty for other.. (if things go so bad the usual sources of food aren't available I simply don't know how to find food!)...I should have established a more local and mutually beneficial relationship with farmers....if so, what, in addition to being a "customer", might that mutually beneficial relationship look like.....etc. etc.....without being unjust or me first in nature....anyway, again, it's your newsletters that make me reflect on such things so keep'um come'n.....best,"

"In that context I firmly believe we should be willing to pay more not less for local produce. I also think that one possible road to food security could be a simple credits or loyal customer points system.....we buy from a given farm, say you,and the more often we buy the more "credits" we earn. Credits then might allow us to have some form of "security" in times of scarcity... thereby gaining a food security status......I haven't finished my thinking and I know there are pros and cons...but, for example. We could pay an annual "membership" fee in a specific farm, over and above whatever produce we purchase. The membership would then have their orders filled as priority.....the ethics of this might be addressed by using a share of total "membership" fee income towards the food security needs of the  marginalised /poor. Anyway, I'll keep thinking and learning and be ready to be a "member" if ever I can get a clearer notion in share. For now, food for thought?"

MY response and then runaway dialogue….monologue….:-)

Definitely food for thought.  I have never thought of it from the a angle before.  I’d like to hear your ideas once you have incubated them a little more.  My initial reaction is that it’s maybe a bit too socialist; not that there is anything wrong with socialist ideas as a concept, but selfish human nature has always managed to ruin the best intensions or at least keep them from advancing beyond a certain point.  Capitalism works with selfish human nature to give us what we have, which is by no means perfect.  Our current lack of food sovereignty and resulting food insecurity and is evidence of that.

Honestly, another whole level of government intervention (I think that is what it would take to make the credit system work) or even just complexity doesn’t appeal to me, although it could be the answer.  Just about every problem we face in agriculture right now comes down to dollars and cents.  Obviously we need to be profitable to survive.  As an example; what about pesticide use and the resulting degradation of soil and surrounding ecosystems?  Farmers use pesticides because it reduces production costs and delivers a higher yield of cosmetically perfect crops that our society demands.  It costs more to grow crops in an ecologically sound way; a lot more at first.  Farmers do not have the cash reserves to ride out the transition and then once they have fully transitioned they need to get a higher wholesale price for their product on a continuing bases because their production costs will be higher.  At Elmridge we have been doing our best to grow in an ecologically sound way for more than 25 years.   We have get more for our products than large “conventional” farms do and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.  We, and many other ecologically sound  growers (for lack of a better term) have stayed profitable not by growing food but by taking on a second enterprise; retailing.  Because of our chosen way of growing at Elmridge we have never made money growing food, we have made money because we take on the second business of retailing.  Even if money is the only driver and we decide to buy all four products from other farmers and retail only it wouldn’t work because vertical integration is a big part of why we have been successful.  (Retail is just the necessary evil we have to engage in to allow me to keep playing in the dirt….don’t tell Suzanne; the retail end has become her responsibility)   The other big problem is that there is very little consumer appetite for paying more for food regardless of the positives so conventional growers would be crazy to try because there wouldn’t be market enough to sell it all.

If we were even to just have a level market playing field it would go a very long way toward improving our food security.  Our society presents us, as farmers, with more and more requirements in the form of food safety, environmental stewardship and labour code requirements that we legally have to comply with.   If taken on their own, with few exceptions, each and every requirement makes good sense by our social standards and is righteous in its intent.  The problem is that in agriculture (I’m not even going to try to comment on anything outside of agriculture….I’m sure we aren’t the only ones) we pull the line on these social values without protection from outside competition that meets fewer of or none of the value based requirements.  The values all come with a monetary production cost. At this point I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that well over half of our production costs (and maybe a lot more than that depending on how you look at it) relate directly to the social responsibility we are expected to take as farmers.  If the world was a fair place and we insist that we need to maintain the standards we have set, the answer is to block entry of every product that doesn’t meet our local standards and let the free market run its course inside of our borders.  Of course that wouldn’t necessarily even work.  Humans are crafty and if there are products that cannot be produced here still allowed across our borders (like bananas) and they don’t carry the social costs we have here they will be a cheaper source of food/ calories than what’s produced locally and their consumption will rise at the cost of local production.  Another huge problem is that the very most basic infrastructure requirement, farmland, has been lost over the decades and, even with perfect economic conditions, it would take decades to overcome our lack of food sovereignty.  Our first world economic status makes us pretty food secure because we can outbid and take food from poorer countries, that selfish comfort allows us to be nonchalant about our lack of food sovereignty.

I am very aware that these kind of trade imbalances affect many manufacturing industries as well; that’s partly why so much of what we buy today comes from Asia.  To stir the pot a little; our incredibly poor work ethic in the western world and lack of pride of accomplishment in the work we do and general reluctance to get our hands dirty is also a very big part of this in both manufacture and agriculture.  It’s the reason for bringing so many foreign professionals in to Canada to grow our food.  If a few Canadians do in fact come to work on the farm the majority of them are not really focused on accomplishing anything.  Whenever we interview potential employees for summer work the most common reason given for wanting to work on the farm is “to learn”.   Maybe we need to charge tuition…..  Very often every hour they work becomes a net loss to the farm.  That is because to become proficient enough to justify the present minimum wage they need to build a level of competency and then come back for multiple seasons.

Examples: 

Our Mexican employees tell us that we pay approximately 12 times as much for their labour as they would get at home in Mexico.  On Elmridge Farm labour consumes more than 50 cents of every dollar we bring in and the number is climbing.  That leaves us at a huge competitive disadvantage with Mexico.  (Ironically the amount of spending power back in Mexico that they gain as compensation for each hour of their service to us is more than most Canadians get and way more than Suzanne and I get.)  

In some countries it is Ok (or at least they get away with it) to completely alter the course of a river if it suits you; to weight a sprayer, dump the chemicals in and then back it into the water until the water gushes in the top and then some chemical spurts back out into the river; or to let empty pesticide jugs and garbage accumulate into huge piles.  I think every farmer in Canada would agree that we have to do better than that in Canada and the cost is very much worth shouldering. 

Another example of environmental cost:
My brother in law, a DNR biologist, sent me a link on a group that wants to “save" the Cornwallis river.  It’s polluted in many ways, and the watershed has been altered to the point where it no longer even resembles its natural ecosystem and state.  Would it be better in its natural state than in its current state?  Of course, no one is going to argue that.  Should we work toward that goal?   Most people think that it would be unthinkable not to enthusiastically scream “YES!!”  Well, as a farmer, I take pause.  The usual way of going about these things is to regulate, legislate, monitor, demand and then penalize and shame those who don’t comply with the new demands (compliance is on a very short list of my most hated words).  Reasonable compensation  for financial losses is the last thing these groups ever want to do (there are some compensation models but they fall very, very short of fair compensation).
So as much as I would like to see the Cornwallis river in better shape I cringe at this proposed initiative because it will invariably result in some of my fellow farmers shouldering much more than their share of this social burden.  Elmridge Farm is not in the Cornwallis water shed so this particular project will not directly affect us.

This is the link to the new Cornwallis River Watershed Alliance.  (It’s interesting that to the untrained eye (me) and from above it still looks beautiful.)
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/5362f4797b46435b8f4fdfe7acbd4f57?fbclid=IwAR2MZOeGmIy4O8gn6jVIldVBfADUpJ7uCXqRpBFY6oi-8Rz-CtFr17JgiCA

To be continued.....

It looks like winter is already starting to subside so enjoy the warmer weather and…

Keep eating your veggies!
Greg, 
Elmridge Farm