Bloom Where You're Planted Farm

Eleven days until our Sept. 19th opening day!  The hayracks are built, the water lines are completed, the schoolhouse kitchen is almost finished, and the displays in the gift shop are coming along nicely.  We don't sit down long this time of year!  When there's daylight we're usually outside working, and when the weather is bad we've been trying to get some of our errands, like shopping for supplies and ordering new t-shirts for our employees, out of the way.

At the moment, our "to-do" list seems like it will be managable.  But that can always change!  One of the more stressful things about a business like ours is that so many things have to be done last-minute.  We want everything to look nice on opening day, and that requires waiting as long as possible to decorate, mow, mulch, set up attractions, and pick pumpkins.  Don't let us fool you, though -- we love (almost) every minute of it! 

Opening weekend is also Military Family Weekend.  We invite service members and their immediate family members out to the farm and treat them to free admission.  This is our third year for the event, and we've really enjoyed it.  We've got a big party scheduled for that first Sunday, too, so we'll be starting off with a bang!

We're lining up a crew to pick pumpkins this coming Saturday if the weather is good.  It will be fun to see what all is out there in the patch!  We hope to see you soon at the farm - enjoy this beautiful weather and all the changing colors!

We had a productive weekend and are looking at a busy week ahead of us.  Things are really happening fast around the farm these days!

The health inspector stopped by Friday morning to look at the Schoolhouse Cafe kitchen and help us make sure we're heading in the right direction.  We learned of a few code requirements we didn't already know about, but overall there were no big surprises and it went well.  After a visit to three different home improvement stores in Lincoln on Saturday evening, we now have most of what we need to really get rollin' on the kitchen project now!

On Saturday morning we painted most of the barn loft floor a nice, bright shade of tan.  This really lightened up the place and will hopefully show less dust.  It is all finished except for the corner of the room where we stacked all the furniture.  We probably won't get up there to finish for a few days, as the temperatures are forecast to be in the high 90s with heat advisories issued by the National Weather Service.  A stuffy hay loft is nowhere to be in those conditions!  After lunch Saturday we got all the flowers planted/transplanted into our new butterfly garden.

Sunday we celebrated my aunt & uncle's 40th wedding anniversary in the early afternoon and had my family over in the evening for a Father's Day supper.  It was a fun day.

As for this week, we really need to tend to the weeds in the pumpkin patches, heat or no heat.  When that's done we'll spend some time getting ready for a field trip group that's coming on Thursday afternoon.  They're from Papillion-LaVista schools and we're planning on 45-50 elementary-aged students.  A summer field trip should be fun -- we'll focus on the growing pumpkins, field crops, and livestock.  Temperatures will still be hot and humid, but the really bad stuff from earlier in the week should move out just in time (we hope!)

I'm planning to post some photos soon of our farm-improvement projects, the field trip, and maybe even our first parade of the season, Limestone Day June 27 in Weeping Water.  Until then, stay cool!!!