You would think that winter would serve as off time for a farmer, but that just isn't the case. Winter is the time for planning, dreaming, and crunching numbers. It's the time we take as many training courses as we can. We also never stop growing and utilize our indoor grow room and our heated greenhouse in the winter. Winter is also when we like to squeeze in some home renovations.
This winter is no different! To avoid getting burnt out by any one demanding project, I like to block my time and dedicate a certain amount of time to each of the tasks.
I have found the Airtable App to be a very useful tool this time of year. I use it for keeping track of seeds and what needs to be started, sowed, planted and when. It also organizes any succession plantings for me also. I have a separate base in the app for our produce farm and our flower farm. Since dahlias are our main crop, we handle everything that has to do with them completely separately. We utilize an Airtable base to plan where each and every dahlia plant will be planted and how many of each variety to grow. We plan digitally and then transfer the information to paper map pages that can be taken into the field in a 3 ring binder. My advice: If you get stuck figuring out how to set up your Airtable base, AI is a good resource for directions.
Winter is also the time we grow rooted cuttings that we pre-sell in our winter cuttings sale. By the time Spring comes, our 16x40 heated greenhouse with be bursting with dahlias! The planning and database setting up ( we use Google Sheets) for managing cuttings numbers and keeping track of virus testing has to be set up as soon as the tubers are taken from the field and divided. So there is no downtime at all at that time!
Every year I vow to use this time also to learn more about anything that is related to our business. Sometimes it's flower farming learning, sometimes it's business management learning, sometimes it's marketing learning, sometimes it's technology learning... the list is just endless.
Finally this is also the time of year that we dedicate some time to home renovations. We have been working on re-doing our flooring, trim, and doors in our home. My theme in my house leans toward the industrial look, so I didn't want perfect flawless hardwood floors. I wanted to see the knots and the imperfections. So, we went with an unfinished utility red oak hardwood. This is the cuttings off the boards of the perfect hardwood flooring you can buy. Each board varies in length and some have knots and holes. We painstakingly laid each board in a group of rooms at a time. To keep the look of the knots and the holes, but have a smooth finished board, you then have to fill each and every knot and hole with epoxy. Next comes the huge industrial sander you have to rent from Home Depot. It is very large and a little intimidating, but it does a wonderful job of smoothing out your boards to perfection. We chose not to stain our wood, keeping the natural look and varied tones of the red oak. We simply added 4 coats of high traffic poly. We have about 70% of the house done.
Also this winter is a very special winter because amongst all of the things above, I am also having both of my knees replaced. I am having the surgeries 2 weeks apart from each other. This will enable me to be healed in time for planting in the Spring. It has been a rough few years of battling complete cartilage disintegration in both knees. I have had to keep moving and carry on by putting mind over matter and pushing through the pain. Right now I can't imagine a life without pain, but it's looking like I will have the opportunity to experience that soon!
Best of luck with your winter activities, and I hope that you can accomplish everything you set out to for the winter to prepare for Spring.
God Bless!
Sandy
