What an amazing second year of farming for us it has been!

As we have reached the end of our season with a few days off before we start again it has been a great time to reflect on the year and how fortunate we are.

The successes and good times definitely outweigh the struggles that are always there and we can focus on working to build the sustainability of the farm which many new farms cannot as they are just trying to survive.

We are so grateful for everyone’s support of the farm and helping us grow more local organic food for the community while taking care of the land.

Working with Nature on a daily basis we know that it never all sunshine and rainbows and it also never completely bad so we have to keep moving along adapting.

It is a fun challenge for us to keep learning and changing every day.

The biggest standout veggie for us this year was our tomatoes, both the heirloom and cherry ones, which was great since it is one of our favorite veggies to grow. The weather this year was more ideal for the tomatoes with fewer days over 100 degrees and talking to another farmer in the area many people had great tomato years.

This year we grew a few new crops on the farm which all will be grown again in 2024 in larger quantities. The garlic, melons, summer squash and cauliflower all had lots of successes and we learned a lot from growing them which will hopefully help us grow them better.

We’re excited to use what we’ve learned and improve all the crops for next year along with trialing a few new crops.

It is so much fun to talk to everyone at the market about how excited they are about certain veggies we are growing and how they are going to cook them. It gives us lots of ideas for what we should cook and also other veggies to grow that may complement the ones we currently have.

We love when people are able to try a veggie for the first time and then the next week they come back to market beaming with a smile and excited to tell us how delicious it was.

Those interactions make every day worth it so much.

It definitely wasn’t a year without challenges with all the cold and rainy weather in the spring. We won’t ever be complaining about the rain so just how cold it was slowing down the growth of our spring veggies.

Combining the mostly colder spring with a few warm spells lots of our veggies got slightly confused about what stage of growth they were in and stayed as small plants before the producing the part of the plant we harvested. Some of them went to flower before they got to a stage we could harvest anything off of.

Over the last month or so with there being less field work we have been able to reflect on the year and figure out ways we can do certain things better. Whether that be by buying tools to help us get something done quicker or slightly changing a system we currently have to hopefully make it work better than it did this season.

We will be seeding our first seeds in the greenhouse on New Year’s Day and are already excited for that and to be back at the market February 3 once we have enough veggies to harvest!