Some societies operate on different calendar years. Lunar, Gregorian, solar….even fiscal. We have just entered a new year here on the farm. The farmstand closed Sunday past at 4:30, replete with pizza and beverage for the farmstand and kitchen help. There were a few extras and stragglers to soak up any extra libation or pizza. The mood was joyful, and the atmosphere was infused with questions about what our next moves may be. Everything we do (with the exception of the fall CSA and wholesaling out the remainder of the root and field crops) from this day forward is geared towards the 2023 season and preparing for it.

The first step is to clean out the farmstand and ready it for fall CSA. Produce gets hauled back to the big coolers here in the farm pack barn. Benches and baskets are washed and sanitized, stacked and stored. The plant barn will be cleaned out and many of the plants will be hauled over to the propagation house to winter over for vegetative propagation purposes. Some plants get donated, some plants are disposed of unceremoniously over the banks and some plants end up as pets for friends and relatives. When the plants are removed, the benches and cement blocks are removed and stacked aside so tractor and machine storage will be available for the winter. Eventually all water sources will be shut down to avoid freeze damage. The kitchen will remain somewhat functional to bake and cook for the fall CSA, but the help will also be looking at spreadsheets, taking inventory and having meetings concerning strategy for the upcoming yea, finally winding down operations with a deep clean and complete shut down sometime after Thanksgiving. Most of the farmstand employees will be re-tasked into cleaning and preparing the greenhouses for the 2023 growing and retail season. We will maintain 1 propagation house through the middle of February, when we transplanting and more space is needed. Those greenhouses need to be ready to go with clean functioning heaters, solid greenhouse benches and doors working on all hinges. Some will need new plastic coverings and that will happen this fall before Christmas. Much planning and ordering of what we will actually plant in them in 2023 has been done by Sarah at home during the late summer, but ornamental (as well as vegetable) seed orders have to be generated. As of this writing, we still have carrots and potatoes in the field along with cole crops for wholesale. We have been short of help this year, and that is reflected in the tasks that should have been accomplished in the fields (raspberry and blueberry pruning) and were not. There will be a hustle as the potatoes and carrots represent 7 acres of crop yet to deal with. 700 pounds of garlic seed will have to be planted. We will still need to pull stakes from the tomatoes, rebar from the raspberries and drip tape from the fields. Most of the cover crops are planted, and we are getting the strawberries cleaned up as they will need to sprayed and mulched with protective straw prior to the Christmas. season. As weather dictates the success/failure ratio of the growing season, the same can be said of the late fall season. As layers of clothing are added to the laborers, efficiency falters. Cooler days give way to cold, daylight shrinks at either end of the day, and fall rains dictate a shuffling of tasks so that employees are not unduly exposed to the elements. And there is a rush to accomplish as much as possible while our Jamaican gents are here. Contracts expire and they will be heading home soon, some in a couple of weeks with the balance going home in a month. Yet the general mood is upbeat and eager. Talk is about how things can be achieved or done differently. What tools or methods can we adopt or acquire that will enable us to do our jobs with more ease and efficiency? The daily summer pressure seems to be turned down as the leaves fall from the trees.

There a ton of stuff to do it, but the feeling here and now is that if we made it this far, we are over the hump. Despite what we did or did not accomplish, we made it into a new year with much to look froward to and plan for. The old Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball franchise never won a World Series, but we ascribe to their motto with the same enthusiasm they did back then…”Wait until NEXT year!”