From Our Newsletter

Current

November 24, 2009

Hi,

This is our last newsletter of 2009. Right now, we plan on sending out the first 2010 newsletter sometime in March, although they will be sent out in a sporadic manner until June when they will return weekly. In the meantime, I recommend you follow us on our Magicland Farms blog and our website Magicland Farms.

I promise I will be more diligent in keeping the website updated.

As you probably know, this Wednesday (November 25) will be the last day our market will be officially open this season. We hope to take our sign down on either Tuesday or Wednesday. (Our sign has been hit by cars sliding off the snowy road in early December two years in a row!) On Friday and Saturday we will be hard at work at the market closing up for the winter. If you still need some apples or squash feel free to stop if you see us.

We have a nice quantity of good keeping apples in our cooler. We hope to make them available for sale starting in late March or early April. We will send out a newsletter about a week before we have them set up for sale. We also hope to have strawberries for sale by early to mid June. Again we will send out a newsletter shortly before we start picking.

A little weather note. It looks like Thursday will be cold and blustery with some snow flurries or even a bit of a dusting. Saturday and Sunday look like a another mild, sunny weekend with temperatures in the mid 40s. However, keep in mind winter is quickly approaching and there is a possibility by the time December arrives it will be already firmly entrenched. Right now NOAA hints that December through mid January will be slightly below normal and that February through much of March will be above normal, i.e. early spring. I remember a year something like this, way back when, and what happened was that it was mild through mid January-the weather then turned terribly cold with lots of lake effect snow through early February and then mild to warm with an unusually early spring. I remember my grandmother asking an old Newaygo County native if the upcoming winter was going to be hard. He replied, "Ma'am, every winter is a hard winter!"

We are often asked, "What do we do during the winter, other than pruning and equipment repair?" Well, while some of the pressure of the farm is reduced (Thank the Good Lord!) we are still too busy. For one thing, cleaning up after the spring, summer and fall when we let things slide. (Right now you don't want to see my computer desk, bedroom, work room and more! Trust me!) Then there are the billion home and farm maintenance jobs which we also let slide and must repair this winter-like the leaky hot water heater downstairs and the fallen out tiles in one of our shower areas. Since we heat our house and workshop 80% with wood, we have to cut, haul, burn and clean the stoves and chimney continually. In the afternoon I put on my teacher's hat and for about 90 minutes help my five youngest children learn math (first year algebra through trig and calculus) and science (biology, physics, chemistry). Then, as you may know, I do writing on various topics and I write monthly workshop articles for Boys' Quest/Fun For Kidz magazines. I am fortunate that the kind editor of these magazines lets my deadlines slide during the peak growing season and resorts to running my repeat articles several times a year. For more information on Boys' Quest and Fun For Kidz , please visit Fun For Kidz Magazines

While all my articles and books I have in print are non-fiction, I have written a short middle-grade fiction book titled "The Secret of Treasure Lake" for which I am looking for a publisher. Any suggestions here (other than self-publishing) would be appreciated.

Nashle!

Doufám, ze të zase vidím*

Au revoir **

Tom

* Hope to see you soon in Czech

**Till I see you again in French

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