{"id":5239,"date":"2015-01-12T10:39:25","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T10:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/?p=5239"},"modified":"2016-04-08T10:40:41","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T10:40:41","slug":"a-note-from-farmer-al-january-12th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/a-note-from-farmer-al-january-12th\/","title":{"rendered":"A note from farmer Al : January 12th"},"content":{"rendered":"Dear CSA Members:\r\n\r\nToday something different is happening here at Frog Hollow Farm. We\u2019re\u00a0planting BARLEY!\r\n\r\nThere\u2019s something special,wonderful actually, about planting seed in soil on a\u00a0warm, sunny day in January, no less! In short sleeves to boot! Seven of us who\u00a0make our living tending soil gather around this GINORMOUS tractor (New\u00a0Holland, 130 horse power) with this impressive looking planter mounted behind it. This tractor is capable of planting 40 acres of grain per day, but we only\u00a0have 9 to tackle today. None of our tractors are this big or set up to plant row\u00a0crops, so we enlisted the assistance of another local grower, Bob Cecchini, who\u00a0graciously loaned us the use of his tractor and a driver.\r\n\r\nIt was almost like a party with seven of us standing around watching this huge\u00a0tractor pulling the planter behind it, planting seeds into soil, all of us asking\u00a0questions of Bob Cecchini and enjoying the spectacular weather. Although\u00a0we are enjoying this weather, we\u2019re still doing our rain dances because now we\u00a0need rain to water our barely! The seven people comprised of two old farmers\u00a0(Bob and I), Sarah, three young farmers (Marlene, Kristin and Christian, who\u00a0the driver of the tractor from First Generation Farmers) and Bob\u2019s regular\u00a0tractor driver who was making sure the planter was adjusted correctly (and I\u00a0suspect he was keeping an eye on his baby \u2013 New Holland) and\u00a0planting just the right amount of seed per acre.\r\n\r\nThis project has taken me back to the days when I first started farming here\u00a0in Brentwood. Corn was my first crop and I still remember in vivid detail how\u00a0exciting it was to see the seeds germinate and those first shoots emerging from\u00a0the soil.\r\n\r\nWhy plant barely? Well... I was approached by Thirsty Bear in SF and asked if\u00a0I would consider it. I thought, why not?! This will be an adventure in farming\u00a0and beer brewing and I\u2019m game! We\u2019ll keep you updated as to when the barely\u00a0is malted, the beer is brewing and when it\u2019ll be served...\r\n\r\nOrganically yours,\r\n\r\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Signature of Farmer Al\" src=\"http:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/assets\/FarmerAlSig.gif\" width=\"250\" \/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear CSA Members: Today something different is happening here at Frog Hollow Farm. We\u2019re\u00a0planting BARLEY! There\u2019s something special,wonderful actually, about planting seed in soil on a\u00a0warm, sunny day in January, no less! In short sleeves to boot! Seven of us who\u00a0make our living tending soil gather around this GINORMOUS tractor (New\u00a0Holland, 130 horse power) with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-note-from-farmer-al"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5HwAU-1mv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5241,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5239\/revisions\/5241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happychildcsa.com\/froghollowCSA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}