The vegetable season is over at Old Plank Farm. Here's how post season usually starts out for me:
Day 1: Get around to breathing, finally. It feels good to breathe; forgot to do that a few times during the hectic harvest season. Enjoy the silence and lack of activity.
Day 2: Sit at the kitchen table and stare at the wall. Occasionally stare at the ceiling. Check clock to see if it's April yet. Clock says 8:06. Approximately four hours later check again to find it says 8:07.
Day 3: Begin to adjust to the rhythm and pace of the winter season. Get excited about off-season farm work, creative projects, reading books, and resting. Plan to write a book. Nothing speeds up the clock like planning to write a book.
And after a few more days, spend a little time reflecting on the 2020 season. How can I sum up our summer? Hot, humid, and enough melons to go around (although one more round of cantaloupes would have been nice, I know!). I am always driven to improve upon each season, but those notes mostly belong on the winter to-do lists. My thoughts today are more focused on gratitude for yet another year on the farm. This was my 12th season at Old Plank Farm, which is enough seasons under my belt to say that I’m starting to feel a bit old!
Every year I am most grateful for the support from all our CSA members who enjoyed the farm’s produce. Thanks to all the members who sent thank-you emails and even cards in the mail, they were all appreciated. The purpose of the work we do here is to contribute to your good health, this year more than ever. Managing a diversified vegetable garden would lose so much of it's value without the farmer-member relationship we share with you (even if we never connect to you directly, you are a part of our lives every week as we pack up your veggie box!).
This year I am especially grateful that my crew and I managed to stay healthy and free of Covid-19, allowing us to get our work done and safely deliver vegetables to our members every week during the harvest season. I'm also thankful that we had generally good vegetable growing weather and a wide range of delicious crops to share. The spring and fall carrots were beautiful, our new potato harvest was the earliest we’ve ever had, and the yellow watermelons were as sweet as always! Most weeks’ CSA boxes were average or above-average in terms of value and quality. I think that's as much as any organic farmer can ask of their garden, given the never-ending uncertainty and stresses involved in this line of work.
Things we are planning to improve for next year mostly relate to making field work more efficient. Improving our transplanting and cultivating equipment (mostly homemade rigs), will help improve our yields and reduce farmer stress. We also want to give more attention and resources to crops that are regularly difficult for us. Most notable are the mid-season carrots/beets and the late-season lettuces and brassicas. Improving these crops will help us achieve more variety in the weekly CSA boxes, which is always one of our goals. Meanwhile, Angelica is also busy raking through our 2020 fieldnotes workbook for more ideas on what we might change in 2021.
As I wrap this up, I notice that the clock is working a little better now. It will likely be a quiet winter ahead, for myself and most people I know. But whatever your plans, I hope you can eat well this winter, stay healthy, and join us next spring for another season of Old Plank Farm vegetables. We’ll be in touch regularly in the coming months with updates about our 2021 CSA program and more. In the meantime, thanks again for being a part of Old Plank Farm in 2020!
2020 Old Plank Farm Crew, taking a day off. Left to Right: Angelica, Sunshine, Mirianne, Sabrina, Stephanie and Oscar. We THANK YOU for supporting our farm!