Week 18: October 2, 2023

If most of us trace our lineage back far enough, we’ll probably discover that somewhere along the line, at least one of our ancestors farmed, but for most of us nowadays the connection between field and plate is far more distant than just walking outside to harvest your dinner. Until moving to Minnesota, that was largely true for me, too, as I am at least two generations removed from agriculture. The farmland that remains in my family is back in Michigan and the last time I visited it I was about three years old, so while my green thumb might have some genetic basis to it, farming is not something I grew up with. In other words, my learning curve is pretty steep, and every year I am struck by just how much more I need to know. Mother Nature also likes to remind me of just how little I can control certain things. This is good for someone like me who prefers to have everything line up neatly and in its place, on time and according to plan. Perhaps one of its most important gifts, farming seems to provide (force?) a path to humility.

One of its other most important gifts, for me, is the community of CSA members that we’ve been building these past two years. It has been my privilege to get to know you and your families and to have your support and encouragement, especially this past year which drought made one of the toughest so far. Knowing that you would hang in there with us even if you weren’t going to get everything we planned for this year helped us to stay motivated to still do the best we could. Whether it was learning that your kids gorged themselves on strawberries the moment they saw them or that they ran around pretending to be a farmer when their veggies arrived or that you discovered ground cherries and fell in love them, hearing the stories of how you enjoyed our veggies was the best part of my job. Thank you for joining with us for Season 2 of the Middle Fork Farm CSA! You are all wonderful and we’re so glad that we get to be on this journey with you!

Week 17: September 25, 2023

This past week I’ve been thinking about the passing on of knowledge that occurs in farm families that have been working with the same piece of land for decades, if not longer. I imagine that the older folks would say something like, “Oh, yeah. I saw that happen back in 1950. This is what we did then,” or some such thing when brought a question about how to handle a particular issue. Many small-scale vegetable farmers these days didn’t grow up on a farm and so we rely instead on our relationships with each other, the different associations we belong to, university extension services, internet search engines, and listserv forums to help us figure things out. While this collective knowledge might not go very far back in time or reflect a very deep relationship with a particular piece of land, I am nonetheless incredibly grateful for it. For instance, I thought it was something I did wrong that was preventing my peppers from ripening in a timely fashion this year until a whole slew of emails hit my inbox this past weekend with other farmers saying they were also having trouble. No one knows why this is happening – was it the smoke? is it the drought? is it the soil they’re planted into? – but hearing that it’s been a common problem is reassuring. The best thing to do, I think, is to take copious notes so that if (probably when) it happens again, we can try and figure out a pattern. Still, I suspect some things in farming will always remain a mystery.

Week 16: September 18, 2023

This morning I was thinking about how quickly the rhythm of one’s days can change on a farm. Things are definitely slowing down more and more these days. The sense of excitement and urgency that always begins a farming season in the spring when there is so much to do has largely been replaced by feelings of calm and satisfaction. It’s the time of year when I can really take my time in the field, steadily plugging away at field tasks and not worrying so much if they don’t end up getting done that day. I turn the radio on, listen to the music of my youth, and enjoy the fact that any growing that remains to be done is largely up to the plants at this point.

Before photo taken 6-12-23 and after photo taken 9-18-23. So much has grown in just three months!

Week 15: September 11, 2023

Fall is absolutely my favorite time of the year. It’s also the time when I am most happy to be farming and working outside. The air is cooler now and it smells so fresh. The clear blue of the skies and the angle of the sunlight in the morning and evening is stunning. Raptors soar over the farm field every day, the hawks especially make their presence known by their near constant screeching. (This is when I grab the cat and put him back in the house!) There are all sorts of dragonflies, several species of whom are probably migrating through on their way south right about now, darting around catching the tiny flying insects that I can’t easily see without my reading glasses. There are still bees about doing their business, but they seem to be a little lazier and slower about it, so I get a chance to better enjoy their antics.

Week 14: September 5, 2023

It sure doesn’t feel like September yet, does it?! The kids are back in school, the bucks have once again grown their antlers, the days are getting shorter, and some of the songbirds have already headed south for the winter, but it’s still in the 90s. I’m actually giving you winter squash this week which feels absolutely nuts to me given the weather, but they ripened up a little earlier this year (due to said weather) and it IS technically meteorologic fall when it’s normally a good time to start giving you these kinds of veggies. The good thing about winter squash is that you can just stick it in a cool, dark place for several months if you’re not quite ready for it yet. Hopefully you won’t have to wait that long to enjoy it and it will be fall (for real!) soon!