Back In the Saddle

Blue, the farm dog, doesn’t want to head out to do chores.

Now that the farming year is starting to slow down I have more time to focus on “the Blog”, and projects around the farm that aren’t strictly about farming veg., or growing seeds— like fence building and other infrastructure stuff.

It has actually been a good year to be a farmer, at least for me and other farmers I know. Despite some wacky weather in June (unseasonably cold and rainy) we had bumper crops of organic seeds come in. We are still cleaning, cataloguing, and germination testing, getting ready for the seed selling season in early spring.

There has also been a surge in the number of people interested in everything local around food. So we pretty much sold out of seed this spring and had an unprecedented number of people come to our farm stand looking for fresh veg. Our farmer’s market started off slow, but quickly got busy. I consider myself a seed grower, but selling fruits and vegetables is a part of our business for sure, so I am very grateful that our community has been embracing local agriculture.

And it is so important to do so these days. Yes, there is the pandemic, but the world seems to be in a slow motion collapse, with so many different crises going on. The more that communities strive to keep the supply chains short— meaning that we grow and make what we can— the better. Of course we can’t do it all, that would be amazing(!), but is unrealistic in our culture. But when supplies get short like they did this spring with certain foodstuffs, the more that is produced locally the better. The community just keeps on keepin’ on.