News and Updates
Updated June 25, 2008
Iowa Flooding Update
We would like to send out a special note of thanks to all of you who have either called or e-mailed to inquire about our status regarding the flooding in Iowa these past couple of weeks.
We are about an hour's drive away from the major flooding in the state (both at Cedar Rapids and Davenport). There is a smaller river (the Wapsipinicon River) which is just five miles or so from us that is flooding very badly also. We are still far enough away from the "Wapsi" that we will not be affected by this flooding though.
Our gardens are wet (eventhough we have very sandy soil) and this factor has delayed our plantings. The positive side of that is that we had not set out tomato plants, etc. that would have been washed away with the deluge of rains we had the past two weeks. Another positive is that by setting out tomato plants late, we avoid the early blight situation and the tomato plants end up being healthier. The negative side of the situation is that it is June 18 and we have not set out tomato plants yet. We hope to be getting everything going very soon. Thank you for your patience and understanding of our time constraints if we are unable to respond to your inquiries as quickly as you would hope that we would.
Sweet Potato Slips
SPECIAL NOTE: Currently, we are booked up on ALL orders for individual varieties of sweet potato slips. We are also are no longer accepting orders for the Season Closeout Assortments. The demand this year has been far greater than we ever anticipated.
As of Wednesday, June 25, we will be shipping out the last of the regular season sweet potato slips. We express our sincerest regrets to all of you who did not receive any slips. The months of May and June were too cold, cloudy and wet. The sprouting of the sweet potato slips was delayed by over 2 weeks and we were never able to catch up. We will be setting out our first sweet potato slips here in Iowa on Friday, June 27. We will begin filling the "Season Closeout Assortments" on Monday, June 30. Those of you who did not receive sweet potato slips this season, will be getting your refunds back just as quickly as we can get them processed. Please be patient as it may take a couple of weeks to process all of these due to the fact that we are still trying to get the garden planted.
PLEASE NOTE: The Okinawan sweet potato will be totally unavailable for the 2008 season.
Poultry Breed Availability
Breed Availability is up to date as of May 29, 2008. We are still receiving orders on a daily basis. We will try to get these availabilities updated again as soon as possible.
Poultry Order Shipments
We started confirming poultry orders in January and February. After setting these orders up in the schedule, we had many more weeks of Winter (including extremely cold weather, ice, freezing rain, and lots of snow). Many breeds of poultry have been very late in starting to lay this year due to this extreme cold. Some breeds have only been laying for a week or two now. We are running behind on shipments, but will try to get to your order just as soon as we possibly can.
WE HAVE RUN OUT OF THE 2008 PRINTED CATALOGS
We have run out of our supply of printed catalogs for 2008. We will not be able to send out any more 2008 printed catalogs. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please refer to our completely updated 2008 online catalog. All order forms have been updated for 2008, so please print that out, fill out the information and mail the order to us with payment enclosed. We were totally unprepared for the number of catalog requests we have been getting during the past two months.
Ordering a free catalog (sent by bulk rate mail only)
You may request a printed catalog for 2009 by contacting us by regular mail, e-mail, or by telephone. Please give us your name and mailing address, and we will add you to the next bulk mailing.
To e-mail your catalog request, write to us at Sand Hill Preservation Center. PLEASE be sure to include your name and mailing address in the body of the email. Catalogs sent in response to e-mail requests are sent out by bulk rate mail.
Egg Productivity by Breed
This list may be found at the bottom of the page on the Poultry Catalog page of the website.
Organic Certification Update:
Over the next 2 years we will eventually be listing everything that we grow here at our farm as Certified Organic. We have many varieties in this year's catalog which are being offered as CERTIFIED ORGANIC. If the item is being offered as CERTIFIED ORGANIC, it will have an OG after the price of the seeds.