APRIL 2007 It has been way to long since our last newsletter and for that I apologize. However, we have made some technical changes, which will help us provide better and more timely information to you. Another one of our family members has been helping us out behind the scenes with our website and now she is helping us out even more by putting up more information on our website and also helping distribute the newsletter. Her name is Kara Hooper and she is fantastic at what she does. With her help we now have a new plant of the week posted weekly to our website and also have all our recent newsletters online. In addition to upgrading the website we have also been busy in the greenhouses getting all of our beautiful baskets big and blooming and busy in the fields picking one of the first crops of the season, fresh spinach. I mentioned that Kara is fantastic at what she does and you can see proof of this in the changes that she has made to our website. If you get a chance go to www.baumanfarms.com and check it our for yourself. Now through the end of May we will be posting a different plant of the week every week. All of these plants are plants that are perfect for this time of the year and are some of the things that we have found to grow extremely well in the pacific northwest. Some of them are plants that we have grown for years and our consistent performers and others are new plants that we have trialed and have been excited about the results. Either way all of these plants are sure to add something to your gardens and by having them posted on the website gives you an opportunity to get more information about the plants we grow. In addition to the plant of the week, Kara has also added a selection where she has posted the current and past newsletters on the website. That way if one of the newsletters didn't come through well on your e-mail you can always go to the website and read it there. You can also use this section to check and see if there is a new newsletter out because I know that many of you have told me that sometimes it goes through on your e-mail and other times it doesn't. Hopefully this will help solve some of those problems. I had a customer come into the greenhouses the other day and ask me why our baskets weren't in as full bloom as the baskets in the nursery down the road. I told him that it is hard to see at this point in the season why our baskets are better but if you look at our baskets you will notice how full and well rounded each and every basket is and that is because we trim all of our baskets at least three times. This means that we go in and trim all the tips of each plant back with in the basket to make sure that you get a well rounded basket that is going to be full and beautiful all summer long. However, by doing this we do set the buds back by about two weeks, but in as little as a week of sunny weather our baskets will out shine anybodies. He was a little skeptical at first and choose not to buy a basket and instead went up the road a couple miles to see if there was a difference. Within twenty minutes he pulled back into the drive and was smiling and shaking his head as he walked toward me. He laughed and said, "You know what Brian, you are right I really can tell how much fuller and well rounded all of your baskets are compared to the rest." Not only are our greenhouses busting with life but we have finally got our first crop in from the fields, fresh spinach! The spinach is big, lush, and beautiful right now. Spinach loves our spring weather because of the nice cool nights and the warm days. One other benefit of our spinach is that it has not been sprayed. We try to keep any sprays or chemicals down to an absolute minimum on the farm and spinach is one crop that we do not spray at all. We have chosen to call these products CertiFree, which means you will not find any spray residues on any of our products that have that slogan on the sign. Look for that on almost all of the products that we grow. So you can be sure that you and your family are getting a fresh and clean product. There are a lot of things going on right now on the farm and we are very excited about all the things yet to come. Please check out our new website features when you get a chance and come by the store and check out the hanging baskets and the fresh spinach. We look forward to seeing you and your family throughout the coming seasons.