Report Card

Last year, I took a moment at the mid-year point and once the year was completed to provide a public "report card" for how the Genuine Faux Farm and its farmers fared in their coursework for the year.  I saw it as a way to stay in touch with those who were interested and keep them informed as to what Tammy and I are trying to do as we meander through the past couple seasons and transition how the farm works.

Several people responded positively to our efforts to "grade" ourselves, so I thought I would do it again for 2021.  Yes, I realize the term is not over.  But, when it comes to this sort of report card, you just do it when you feel like it.  And if you don't feel like it?  You don't do it, I guess!

Advanced Pollinator Support

This just might be our favorite "course" on the farm.  And, to be perfectly honest, the fact that we are reducing the time spent on direct to consumer sales and simplifying our grow list has provided us with more breathing room to do work in this area.  I will also admit that we double-dipped and took two related classes where some of the work overlapped (see below). 

Bird traffic on the farm was good.  We had a small bump in our farm's bumblebee population (yay!).  But, butterflies were much less common (sigh).  We got lots of sunflowers, zinnias, borage, marigolds, basil, cosmos, calendula and other flowers into the ground this year.  We did what we could to keep the clover blooming.  There were plenty of asters in the fall and we had food for the pollinators for much of the season.

The pumpkins showed us that there was plenty of pollinators present by the heavier production levels.

But - we can always do better!  A-

Domestic Bees on the Farm

This is the class that has some overlap with the prior one.  Providing a nice habitat and plenty of food for native pollinators is part of what needs to happen with our domestic friends as well.

Like so many things we have done on this farm, we learn and we gain confidence.  That is true with our bees.   I suspect Tammy might agree that we are no longer beginners and we might be approaching a intermediate level of competency.  All I know is we have some mighty tasty honey at our house and the bees like our vine crops (and vine crops like our bees).

Simply because I can't help myself, I am giving us a B for the course.

Reduction in Labor Hours II

We took the first course in the series last season and we found ourselves taking the second in a series this year.  Once again, it was pretty much just the two of us, with periodic volunteer work from some kind and wonderful people.

Apparently, the second class in this series adds certain complicating factors - like the removal of a kidney - to make homework that much more difficult.  The other half of the course focused on what happens when you "don't wanna" or you get the "motivation blues."  

Overall, we did ok, but while I think Tammy did a fine job this year, I'm afraid I brought the grade for the two of us down.  Yep, this is one of those classes that had work in teams and the better students get pulled down by the goof offs like Rob!  

B- for the year - the same grade we got in the first iteration of the course.

Remedial Vegetable Crops for Recovering CSA Farmers

Here you go!  This is a special topics course that was built almost entirely for our farm.  When you have grown vegetable crops for a CSA farmshare program for years, you need to really think hard about doing things differently once you move away from that model.

We set some very specific goals for the project required in this class.  We wanted to be sure that we put some of our own desires for vegetables at the top of our priority list so we wouldn't find ourselves with a very limited set of options in our own pantry this coming winter.  And, of course, we had to try to figure out the proper number of crops to grow and the scale for each.

There were outright successes, such as the sweet corn, and failures (but what else is new?).  These sorts of things rarely resolve in one season, so we're going to call this a two-year course and give a mid-term grade of a B- for this one.

Giving Through Writing 

In the current reality for Rob, the farmer, it has become apparent that he is also very much, Rob, the writer.  So, it turns out that this class must be a perpetual one?

This year's writing has been odd.  Some of the best writing I think I've ever produced occurred in the first four months of the year.  And, of course, that darned kidney thing came up and upped the difficulty level.  The reality is that the world continues to change.  Perhaps the benefit of blog writing consistently is not the same as it was either (both for the writer and the reader).

I think the facilitator of this course needed to do a better job of outlining the goals for the class. I give a C if only because I didn't have the same focus as I did last year.

Living with Medical Challenges 101

Here it is, the course no one really wants to take, yet we all get to do it at one level or another.  To be perfectly honest, both of us did our best to try to skip classes, but for some reason, the coursework still followed us around.  Because neither of us wanted to take the course in the first place, we reject the whole concept of a grade!  Hahaaa!

Farm Goals for Experienced Farmers

Here is something that, frankly, might be a good course to actually have in the world.  It would certainly need to be a peer-mentoring type of course if it were going to work because that's where you can get the best support for this sort of thing.  

Since 2019, Tammy and I have been undertaking the process of re-envisioning or re-imagining the Genuine Faux Farm - looking for its new place in the world and in our lives.  I realize that makes it sound like we haven't been involved in this process pretty much every year since it started.  In fact, we have always had conversations about where the farm is going next.

The difference has to do with the bolder decisions and bigger changes.  Up until 2019, we pretty much trotted out modified versions of the same thing each season.  The overall goals remaining largely intact each time.  Now, we are processing much bigger changes - and sometimes the things that are slowest to adapt are the hearts of the people who are closest to it. 

Because this class will exist for as long as we farm in any capacity, we can only give it one grade: Incomplete

That last grade is actually the most accurate of all of them.  We are still enrolled in the school of pollinator support and we do our writing homework nearly every day.  The Genuine Faux Farm is still an integral part of our lives and our identities - and it is likely that it will never completely go away, even if we leave the farm some day in the future.  

I think I can be content to accept an incomplete grade for all of this - and I look forward to improving in the future.  Just so I can receive another incomplete.

It's a plan.  See you next term!