It has been a busy couple of days .
The Aronia arrived on time from Aronia Unlimited on Thursday the 13th. I was glad I was here when Fedex delivered . In typical Fedex Fashion ,(UPS is no better BTW) some of the boxes were handled quite roughly . 15 plants were out of their cells in the flats ,some( 8) with much of the root balls broken off . I immediately repotted all of these and watered all the flats heavily . Other than being a bit wilted , which is to be expected, the rest of the order looked very good . You will notice in the picture that some of the leaves were red . This is normal as these plants are getting ready for their Winter dormancy.
I sent an e-mail to Matt at Aronia Unlimited to advise him the plants were here and there had been a small amount of damage through no fault of his company . He e-mailed me back within a few minutes telling me they would ship a replacement flat out on Monday . WOW! I was more than impressed . I did a bunch of research before I chose these guys and they will get my business in the future if and when I expand my Aronia plantings .If you are planning on growing Aronia I highly recommend you work with Aronia Unlimited
After the plants were watered they were loaded in the back of the pick-up to go to the farm Friday .
I left early Friday morning and got to the farm around 8:30 am . By 12:30 pm ,all the plants were in the ground . It went much quicker than I anticipated. I am sore today ,but it is a good sore . My biggest worry now is the Deer will pull them up before we get the fencing up . Sometimes they pull stuff up for no apparent reason (at least to us humans) .
A little later today I will head back to the farm to pull Honey and check on the Aronia . I need to find a day next week to get that fence up .
Before I close ,I need to share some personal reflections on yesterday . I managed to dump a mug of coffee all over some important papers before I left the house . My helper forgot to set his alarm clock and I left without him . I was pretty upset with how things were going the whole ride up . This was going to be a horrible day ,I had made up my mind to it .
Once I got to the farm ,my day changed . The sky was blue ,not a cloud in sight. A hawk soared back and forth over the field ,looking for it’s breakfast .Autumn was in it’s glory ,the formally green forest was ablaze with color and the annoyances of the morning were forgotten and forgiven Once I carried the first flat out and began planting ,it was like an epiphany . This is where I was meant to be . This is what I am meant to be doing .
A farmers work is never done .