I Get By With a Little Help from my Friends...

I want to take this time to acknowledge all of the different people who make One Acre Farm what it is.

First of all, I'd like to acknowledge myself (ha!).  Without me, you wouldn't have this amazing blog, a lot of the Facebook pictures that are uploaded (Michael takes a picture and then texts it to me...I then surreptitiously (perhaps not so surreptitious now that I am outing myself) log on to Facebook at work to upload the photos, so that our friends have contemporaneous pictures of the Farm) and perhaps a grumpier Farmer Mike, who I have to talk off the ledge every once in awhile!

Okay, so enough about me.  Let's turn to our good friend, Rob.  He is trying to figure out his next gig and, as a result, we are the lucky recipients of his time and energy at the Farm. He and Michael work really well together, banter back and forth and are generally good at getting sh** done! Without his help, it is virtually impossible that Michael gets done all that it takes to run the Farm, produce a great product and still has time to spend time with our new family.  It is our luck that Rob's hiatus has coincided with our summer season! We are tremendously thankful for his hard work.

We'd be remiss if we didn't give a shout out to Cyrus, who is a friendly Farm neighbor...who comes out to the Farm when he can to do whatever needs to be done..including the awesomely and amazingly task of weeding! Equally as important, Cyrus has kindly donated the use of his garage for Monday distributions, while we are waiting for the permission to allow pickup at the Farm. So, without Cyrus, I am not sure what we would've done to accommodate our new "Farm" pick-up location on Mondays! On a related note, Michael's parents provide their garage (and lunch for Michael) every Thursday for the Potomac pick-up location.

There are also many people who have come out to volunteer...including Sarah and her farmer-in-his-prior-life dad (who both work diligently and with great conversation), Michael's mom (garlic-cleaning and onion-weeding extraordinaire), Kevin (hand weeding...seriously, do you see a theme here?!?! Farmer Mike must really loathe weeding!), and Sarah, Patrick and Jocelyn (without who you wouldn't have onions in your share).  [Note to our reaaders, there are always volunteer opportunities at the Farm. We won't turn any one away!]

Finally, we have a network of "professional" friends who Michael calls on all the time for advice, answers, and general venting.  We have our local "fix-it" man, Carl, who fixes just about anything and everything that needs fixing (take it from me, Michael breaks A LOT of things!).  We have Michael's mentors, Joan and Drew (who just so happen run Maryland's largest organic CSA north of Baltimore), who we have called upon for transplant seedlings (when ours didn't pan out), to purchase vegetables (if we've had a crop failure), and who Michael calls just about any time he has a problem that he cannot figure out a solution to.  There is Lewis Orchards, who we have also bought extra crops from (corn, peaches, apples and pumpkins -- things that we cannot/do not grow but want to offer to our Members for purchase) and who recently supported us by purchasing some garlic!  There is also Neal, the Farm's plumber, who got the well and irrigation up and running and who we've called a bunch of times to troubleshoot water issues.

I am sure that I've left out some people. Trust me, it was not on purpose.  The point of this post was really just to give some shout-outs and let you all know that there are a lot of people that (knowingly...or in other instances, unknowingly) support our humble little venture.  We appreciate the efforts of everyone, including each and every member.  Just be being members you are a bigger part of One Acre Farm than you ever could know!

This week's share includes: tomatoes, eggplant, onions, leek, beets, carrots, potatoes, garlic, bell peppers, hot peppers and squash.