Farm Notes is online: The PVF Season in Review! We hope you have enjoyed this season as much as we have!
For those who pick up at the farmers markets, we do have one more weekend of normal market sales on November 20/21. And if you missed a week, that final weekend at the market is your chance to catch up. Just tell us that's what you are doing and we will believe you!
We are digging carrots by hand these days because our 25 year old root digger (it's a magical machine, but very noisy) lost some important parts, just dropping them in the field while we jiggled along, undercutting carrots. I saw something shiny behind me but didn't think much about it, and then the machine started to act a little grumpy, getting tangled in the weeds and making big piles of broken carrots. The whole cutting disk had fallen off on one side, and soon the other one fell off in solidarity. So we switched back to the dependable digging fork. It's a fine way to pull carrots. It's just a really big field. 
We are tightening up the winter tunnels and waiting for an order of new greenhouse plastic to arrive. Even farmers have supply chain issues (we waited for over six months for a new walk-behind tractor to arrive this summer... paid for in March, arrived in September).
This recent week of warm days has made our work so much easier. We got back to hoeing spinach and clearing the fields of all the irrigation stuff. The farm will be ready for winter.
Today someone from the Farm Bureau came to the Vienna farm with a lot of camera equipment. They have been profiling farms all around the state, county by county, and it was time to find a farm in Fairfax County. There are not a lot of choices around here. He had a good time filming the little fields with the mansions all around the edges of the farm. We had a ten minute interview where I got to try to say something coherent about the way the county has changed in the last 60 years. He said the program will be aired on PBS at the end of December, but not on any of our local stations. Someday we will find it on YouTube and will put a link on our website if I ended up saying anything worthwhile.
Thanks to all of you for being part of our farm and eating lots of vegetables and staying flexible. This business depends on our CSA members, especially in a year when access to the farm is nearly impossible while the roads are in a constant state of deconstruction. You persevered, and so did we, and it was a very good season.
