season's end - Rejoice! it's behind us

The CSA ended a few weeks ago, the Byrd House Market and St. Stephen's Market have ended and the final weeks of the South of the James Farmer's Market are just around the corner. I usually try to write a little something about the year as well as give thanks a little earlier than right now, but this time it's taken me a while to sit down to write anything. I think it's because I don't want my words to resonate as someone who is whining about a bad season, because there was a lot of good sprinkled into this year's challenges. It was a really tough year for so many reasons, but I'll get into that later. The good stuff deserves a mention first.
Some may wonder whether or not buying local really makes a difference, in our experience as a farm offering a CSA and a farmer's market vendor, it does. Each and every week the folks who are market regulars make the rounds, buying delicious fresh produce from one or several different vendors, five dollars here, ten dollars there. It doesn't seem like much, but it is. Without uttering a word, your saying "thanks, I'm glad you’re here.” Along with our super CSA members we couldn't do this without your enthusiasm for good fresh food. I'd like to thank all of the folks dedicated to the farmer's markets; you made all of those uphill days worth it. It's so great to connect with you. We, as growers, get so much out of it beyond sales. We really appreciate you! (Big hug here).



I like to use this end of the season post to give thought to this past season. Reflect. In this thinkin' and reflectin' and all, I recognize there have been A LOT of posts about the chickens. Before Lucy's interest in the chickens Adam and I never paid them any mind, except to collect eggs and feed them. Now Lucy and I spend hours upon hours with them. She loves them, or loves to torture them in chase. I'm not sure which. She may be spending a little too much time with them though. The other day she sat on one of her bath toys as though it was an egg and said in her sweet 2 year old voice. "Look ma ma, hatching Elmo.".

As usual, my digression has led me away from talk of the farm.

Even as modern as farming has become we still have only so much control over what and how we grow, nature has the most it seems. Each year the growing season is a little different - climate wise- and the most fruitful vegetable plants are a little different each season. Last year it was beans, beans, and more beans! Oh, and did I mention we had lots of beans last year? This year it was eggplant. Funny thing though, I was campaigning to stop growing eggplant early in the season. Our first planting of eggplant pretty much bit the dust after the flea beetles had their way with them. Once they destroy the leaves of the plant you end up with weak plants and not too pretty, pip squeak eggplant. This happens every year; we've never had much success with eggplant. After the devastation of the first planting I said to Adam "why don't we just stop growing eggplant. It's a waste of time, money and bed space." I probably said this about ten times throughout the week. I really thought we should just stop growing it completely. Oh ye of little faith. But not Adam, ever the optimist, he ignored my anti-eggplant lobbying and allowed new eggplant to take root. He won; those plants grew and grew and grew producing eggplant for what seemed like forever! We were picking hundreds of pounds of eggplant off of one bed for the entire summer! Wonders never cease.



I can honestly say, I never want a repeat of year like this one! Aside from the heat slowing us down and slowing down the production of the plants, we had a lot of our most important and necessary machinery break down. For fear of sounding like I'm just doing a bunch of bellyaching I won't get too into the details of it all, instead I'll list our summer breakdowns, more like facts than boo hoos. Early spring - lawnmower breaks down, tractor breaks down- now Adam had to use the BCS walk behind tractor to till the soil, this takes 10 times as long to do everything. Weedwacker breaks. Unmowed grass and weeds everywhere. BCS walk behind tractor breaks down in August and the tractor is still not fixed. Now Adam has to use a leaf rake to till, if you want to call it that at this point. Minus the irrigation, we are doing some pretty prehistoric style farming, it's being done all by hand. Now that's dedication!! This struggle was all compounded by the constant heat and deterioration of plant production and sometimes death.
You see now why this was not the summer of love.

We learned a great deal this year and feel like this summer's experience has better prepared us for next year.
On the plus side the car, truck and van never broke down, the irrigation never caused any problems, our garlic was magnificent, carrots,(though late to mature, as they were supposed to go to the CSA) were amazingly sweet, the electric fencing was worth its weight in gold - no deer pressure this year, Claire and Amy, our farm employees, rocked and all in all, despite the setbacks we still managed to have beautiful, cream of the crop (so to say) vegetables to take to market and give to the CSA!!

Last words: I am still on a crusade for a producer only farmer's market!!!! If you want that too let the market managers know.