Because my Friday evenings are more exciting than yours, I decided to spend one going for a run around the farm. Several weeks had passed without an up-close-and-personal view of the fields at Southern Valley, and since the weather and my inexplicable lack of motivation had kept me from getting in my routine run, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Now normal folks may just drive around with their windows rolled down to see what’s growing; but me—well I felt the need to run through the middle of it all. And since I’m usually looking for any and every excuse to stop and catch my breath, picture taking suddenly became an absolute necessity.
Things in the ground are just getting going good and tractor traffic is heating up in Norman Park, Georgia. The temperature is starting to warm up too, which is great for the plants, but not so great if every running step makes the sandy soil of South Georgia appear more and more like the Sahara Desert. On the other hand, when covered with plastic and drip-tape irrigation, that same soil, sandy or not, produces some of the finest produce there is.
While I was (avoiding) running, I saw that the cabbage planted back in January looks beautiful and is getting close to harvest.
The eggplant and pepper, which were our next planted crops, are coming along strong and starting to get some height on them.
Meanwhile, our month-old squash plants are just barely popping their little heads out of the holes.
And if I were a betting woman, I’d wager that the number of trailers I ran by loaded down with stakes means there’s gonna be some staking for our Pole-Grown Cucumbers going on in the near future.
So if one of your upcoming Friday evenings is as exciting as mine, and you happen to be driving down Cool Springs Road towards Norman Park, you might see a sight that looks a little like a runner pretending to be a photographer—or maybe it’s the other way around. But either way, you will definitely see acres and acres of Southern Valley cabbage, eggplant, pepper, squash, and cucumbers growing on new plastic. We can’t wait to see what changes the spring season will bring!