Happy Holidays! I hope you are able to spend some time enjoying food with people who are special to you, and also get to spend some time lounging in your favorite cozy pajamas. Those two don't necessarily have to happen at the same time, but more power to you if they do!
Remember when it was sunny and green all day? I do love those days, but these cold, dark days help create balance. Most healthy ecosystems have a cycle of disturbance and rest, and the farm is no different. The yin and the yang. Seasons of darkness, and seasons of light.
For me, the days around winter solstice are usually ones spent on reflection and introspection, both on a farm level, and on a personal level as well. The early sunsets nowadays have me inside earlier, and with less overall outside work to do, I enjoy taking time to get some inside planning work done.
Things as simple as seeing how much of each veggie we grew this season helps to show we did on a macro level, and how we can do even better next season. Every year, as we strive to improve our soil and hone our skills, we are getting a little better at vegetable production, and it is gratifying to see our progress.
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This season, here at Great Oak Farm we were able to grow, harvest, and deliver some hearty amounts of organic produce! 5,883 pounds of tomatoes. 4,437 cucumbers. 4,482 two pound bags of carrots (and counting!) 3275 pints of cherry tomatoes. 717 pounds of brussels sprouts. And the list goes on. Especially when considering how short our growing season is up here, hats off to Farmers Ryan, Alex, and Sean for helping to make all of this harvest happen.
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But the best part about these numbers isn't the numbers themselves. It's that the lion's share of this harvest gets picked fresh and delivered directly to each of you in your CSA vegetable boxes each week! This keeps food miles as short as possible, which in turn keeps our collective carbon footprint pretty small. Reducing time spent in transportation helps keep spoilage and waste to a minimum as well. Most of what we grow is picked, packed, delivered, and enjoyed at the table in less time than it takes California produce to even make it to a store shelf in our region. And it's food that is not only grown organically, but is part of a regional, sustainable food system.
It makes all that great taste even better.
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But the impact of this CSA, this Bayfield Foods Cooperative, is so much bigger than what is produced on just this one farm. It takes a lot of farms and food producers (25 growers and producers as of right now!) to grow all of the food we collectively enjoy each week.
To get a visual picture of what this collective impact was on our region, I recently asked our Cooperative producers how many acres of land they were stewarding in one way or another. This could be active farm land that they are growing and grazing on (both rented ground and land that is owned by the producer), as well as fallow land and wooded areas that are left alone for wildlife, or used for maple syrup production. The final tally? 3,325 acres of land. It blew me away.
Three. Thousand. Acres.
Put another way, the farmers and food producers in our little cooperative are directly taking care of over 5 square miles of land in our region. Making sure this land is not only being sustainably managed for food production now and into the future, but for wildlife and beneficial insects and so much more than food as well.
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When the days are dark, and the world as a whole seems still kind of upside down in many ways, it sure feels nice to see bright spots like this. Together, despite the challenges we face, we - collectively - are making a positive impact in our region.
And it's an honor to be working along side each of you, one bite at a time.
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Wishing you a happy, healthy Holiday season!
In community,
Farmer Chris
Great Oak Farm
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