“Summertime has Come + Gone, My oh My”
What I love about farming is you are ALWAYS learning and you are consistently challenged.
Autumn has always been one of our favorite seasons, but this year the change means a lot more than ever before. After a tumultuous, hot, and drought filled Summer, we gladly welcome the cooler nights and shorter days of Fall. Our crops have certainly felt the rapid change in seasons. I believe as of Sept 13, we have already experienced 3 frosts in many pockets of Central Oregon, our first frost arriving August 20th. It really is true that there is always something to learn in farming, and it still seems as though each week we have a couple of big lessons learned and valuable takeaways. Those late August frosts taught us that any weather forecast below 40 should be treated as a frost. We ended up losing a few crops a little bit earlier than anticipated because of the low dips in temperature, such as our watermelons and cantaloupe along with all of our winter squash, which was what we were saving for the last fall market in November. There can easily be a lot of loss in farming. It is important to learn from these failures in order to plan better the following year by planting earlier, covering with frost cloth or growing in a greenhouse.
The season has also flown by! I’m sure it could have been that we had one project after another, or having a CSA, two farmers markets, and building relationships with new wholesale clients while trying to figure it as we go, since this was our first time doing it. Or maybe because at over 100 degrees your brain stops working and all that time was erased from our memory (we hope). It seems like just yesterday we were building our prop house and commencing battle against the Marmots. Now we are harvesting what little we have left, staring into a brown field of dead crops gone to seed and missing the abundance already.
Although we had some losses, we are now reflecting on everything we have gained this year and a big smile comes to our faces. In our first year we were able to grow enough food and flowers to fulfill our CSA, and have a full booth for two farmers markets every week (besides one market in Redmond when I got sick, Aaron's back went out and we had a farm full of smoke). We were able to provide organically grown (not certified organic, yet) and delicious produce to our community and had them come back for more week after week. Our flowers brought happiness and positivity to those who needed it. We financially invested in Fibonacci Farm in the beginning of the year, as there are a lot of start-up costs when starting a business. Another achievement is we did so well with our markets and CSAs, that we were able to make enough money this year to pay ourselves back.
We have really enjoyed the relationships that we have forged with our CSA members and love hearing about what they’ve been cooking. We have connected with so many amazing small local business owners and farmers in the area as well as making great connections with a fantastic community who support eating local, healthy and small farms. We are excited to say that next year, we plan on opening our CSA to many more members and offering a few more convenient pick-up options. Further, since we will be doubling our garden size we plan to grow a more diverse array of flowers, vegetables and fruit. YES, FRUIT! We recently placed a large bulb order for Spring flowers, so we will have Tulips and Ranunculus in time for Easter and Mother’s Day. We will make sure to keep everyone updated once we have specifics on the 2022 CSA.
As we strive to live a balanced life, we will be taking some much needed time off over the winter to rest our weary bodies and mind. Though we have found it tough to make travel plans, we hope to do some exploring and escape the cold a bit. We will hit the road for a month to explore our Majestic America as well as a trip to the beautiful Guatemala to meditate about what we want to grow next year. We expect this winter to be much like last – planning, planning and more planning and utilizing indoor space to germinate our early spring crops. With all of the knowledge we’ve gained this year, we are confident that next year we will be able to avoid the same mistakes and be in a better position to handle new obstacles.
From the bottom of our hearts, thanks for your support, it means everything to us.
