As our cold weather (it's all relative) slowly gives way to sunny days and short-sleeve shirts, the respite from work associated with growing crops seems ever so brief. In early February, staff celebrated processing the last squash from the 2004 growout at the Conservation Farm. Processing all 131 accessions of maize from last summer will continue over several more months; it requires 4 person-hours to process each accession for freezer sampling. Thus, it would take one person working a 40-hour weeknearly 13 weeks to complete the sampling part of the process, not to mention subsequent cleaning. But so far, we've calculated that we will have cleaned and processed over 6,000 lbs. of corn, squash, tobacco, amaranth, sunflower, fava bean, peas, lentils and garbanzos grown last summer Looking back, we've been cleaning and processing a similar amount each year for the past several years. Looking forward, we're likely to be cleaning and processing a similar amount each year for the next several years.
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