Hi Farm Friends!
Thank you for being with us for the past 20 weeks.
We hope you have enjoyed your experience buying food directly from a small farm and learning a bit more about the story behind it all.
For this newsletter, I was reflecting about the season behind us, and going through photos of the past 10 months. I think this year stands out as our most successful season yet.
Yes, some crops did fail. Our onions mostly died in the wet spring soil, our carrots just COULD NOT DO IT despite many different attempts from us, and our beets mostly fizzled out throughout the summer. Our beans were hit and miss, our eggplants didn’t do too much, our leeks succumbed to leek moth, our melons were planted too late. And there were some tasks we didn’t get to - upgrading our wash station, adding exhaust fans to our new greenhouses.
And we faced a HUGE amount of rain this year.
But we also accomplished SO much!
2 new giant greenhouses set up and planted. The store deck renovated. Perennial herb beds started from seed and planted. Rhubarb and Asparagus beds prepared for next year. Trenching all through our wet north beds. A hardening-off hoophouse made. A packhouse renovation. Mulch layed. Our first ever Open House! New signage, a new fridge in the store.
We also had some crops that did AMAZING.
Broccolini, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, cabbage, spring onions, salad mix, kale, kohlrabi, broccolini, ground cherries and tomatillos, spring and fall beets, fennel, bok choy, herbs.
We had a fantastic crew of staff and volunteers who we were very blessed to work with!
Courtney, Kristen, and Jonathan made up our main crew and Susan, Roberta, Mary Ann, Jackie, Hails, and Jeneane volunteered. They kept things going with bed prepping, planting, harvesting, weeding, washing, bagging, and packing shares. Everyone kept up their spirits through hot days, muddy soil, insects, messes and the general chaos and busyness of the season. SO GRATEFUL for this team of wonderful humans.
We improved on many aspects of the farm as well.
Our Farm Store got an upgraded walkway and a replant of the garden. We prepped many beds ahead of time and kept up on tarping with much reduced weed pressure. We maintained our new greenhouse crops on schedule (more or less). We implemented a new planting system of planting regular succession crops on a bi-weekly schedule which helped to organize our workflow. We managed weeds fairly effectively with the Hour Of Power daily. Our time management was better this season.
And we learned a ton too!
We learned that it’s time to dig deep, as it were, into what’s going on with our soil. Some beds produce excellent crops and in some beds, the same crop struggles. Is it nutrient deficiency, compaction, water retention, something else entirely? We won’t find all the answers, but by thorough soil testing and some consultation we hope to be able to specifically amend beds to what they need and see the results. We learned about growing hot crops (cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants) and beans in the greenhouse, and by improving the soil and air circulation we aim to have even BETTER yields next year.
With the bulk of the season behind us (we still have 6 weeks left of the Fall Farm Share [which you can still sign up for!] and then we will continue to harvest greens from our hoophouses after that), it feels good to reflect on everything that we have done.
Running a farm is not like running a factory. There are many, many moving parts and many variants which we have very little to no control over. Especially growing in our mostly-human-powered, low fossil-fuel, environmentally friendly, no spray organic way.
Soon it will be time to take all these reflections and formulate our plan for next year.
One big difference for next year is that we will no longer be able to use the Harvie platform, because they are discontinuing this service.
Right now we are busy researching other platforms and will arrive at a decision by the end of the year.
Hopefully this won’t have a big impact on returning customers, other than a slight learning curve with using the new software. It may even come with improvements! For sure it will come with the same kind of customized Farm Share (CSA) that we have been running for the past 6 years, just with a different software.
Thank you SO much for joining us this season.
Thank you for taking a chance, for learning how to use new veggies, for taking on the challenge of eating seasonally and locally, for fostering an interest in our farm and family and how we are growing your food, for attending our events, for sending us words of appreciation, for sharing your pictures, for accepting the imperfection of growing things, for going with the flow, for telling your friends, for enjoying the food we grow and sharing it with your families. Thank you for being part of our 2024 Summer Farm Share Season.
You are the Community Supporting our Agriculture. Pat yourselves on the back, and if the grocery store starts to bring you down, come join us for the Fall Share, or shop at our store (open til Christmas, perhaps beyond??), or find us again in the Spring.
Your grateful farm family,
Kim, Alex, Rosemary, Lark
Below: the 2024 Farm Season in pictures
p.s. PLEASE RETURN ALL YOUR GREEN BAGS. :) <3
