Greetings CSA Members-
This is a significant swing time of year for us at Featherstone Farm. The sweet corn and melons of high summer are gone, the tomatoes and peppers are trailing off fast. The warehouse is beginning to fill up with potatoes, winter squash and carrots.
I find myself grabbing a sweatshirt before leaving the house every morning, and I no longer soak a T shirt with sweat by 9:00am. We’ve seen our first low 40 degree nighttime temps in the 10 day forecast. It is much, much more difficult to spring out of bed at 4 or 4:30 every morning, as I did with gusto back in May.
And so the curtain begins to drop on another vegetable growing season, roughly our 25th at Featherstone Farm, depending on when you define “year 1” (it was a soft rollout early on).
Beginning to reflect on what we’ve learned this year, I keep coming back to the idea of humility. Not in the sense I used to invoke it, when Featherstone Farm seemed to be the victim of some new weather calamity every 6 months, and I was humbled in the face of our inability to do anything about it. This is a richer, perhaps wiser kind of humility, but also more unsettling. I am now more aware than ever of the limits of my own knowledge and capacity and imagination; I feel more unsure of our ability to overcome the big challenges of the day, not just weather.
Part of this is the seasonal burnout of autumn speaking in my head. Part of it is the relentless drumbeat of bad news in the media, particularly around climate change, the single greatest threat to what we do at Featherstone Farm. Part of it is undoubtedly the first real tinges of middle age hitting me; I will be turning 55 in November, and I just don’t have the mental and physical resilience I once had (surprise, surprise!!).
And then there is recent bad news from the field, particularly around crop yields. The causes in each case are different, but summer fruiting crops (from muskmelons and tomatoes to basil, eggplant and peppers) were all very significantly less productive in 2021 than projected, in some cases below 3 year averages. And it was only 6-8 weeks ago that the foliar growth in the muskmelon plantings, for example, looked so, so good. How it is that these things can slip from A+ potential (in my head, anyway) to D/D- productivity in such a short time? This old, nearly bald head of mine just spins at the wild volatility of it. Humility.
And yet, I will say that we have a larger percentage of vegetable fields “renovated” at summer’s end, than ever before. If we actually got .5” of rain in the next week, well over half of Featherstone Farm would be smothered in a thick, carbon rich mat of rye/vetch cover crop heading into winter. Of all the accomplishments of the 2021 season at Featherstone Farm, this ranks pretty high in my mind. This, plus the >50% survival rate among the oak, plum, chokecherry and hard maple saplings we planted this spring (despite the best efforts of every deer within a 5 mile radius of the place).
One of our fields covered in a thick winter rye and vetch cover crop
We do have winter storage crops coming in nicely right now. And the high tunnels are getting turned around as I write, the tomatoes of summer getting pulled out in favor of winter spinach.
Abby and Lupe turning our high tunnel from summer tomatoes to ground for winter spinach
Dang, how I love winter! Particularly as the recent memory of dew points >70 still fogs my thinking like a Tequila hangover. Humility. Walking in the woods in the low, radiant sunshine of a subzero January morning, after 6” of new snow overnight; the end of the 2021 season is in sight, and for this I am truly grateful.
In community,
Jack
P.S. Speaking of winter, a reminder that spots are filling up fast and now is the time to sign up! If you've already signed up, thank you! If you're still considering it, just click here for all the details. And if you're ready to join, just log into your account here. Once you log in, click on the "My Farms" tab and then click on "Place Order." You'll then be prompted through the sign up process.
