There's Always Next Year

The beginning of September usually is the point in time where we officially 'give up' on some of our crops, projects or goals for the year. In many of these cases, we've already had a pretty good (read in, bad) feeling where things stand. But, we still hold out hope that we can get something done that will turn things around. Until we hit September.

In many ways, it is liberating to make the 'official' call that something will not be done about the crop that was taken over by weeds. Or, that there will not be enough warm days to accomplish project X. Perhaps it would be difficult if we didn't have a significant list of success stories to counter the failures. But, we realize we've accomplished as much as we could. And, we also realize that the failures were part of a 'triage' of 'emergencies.' These failures were, in part, a decision that was made to focus elsewhere for the good of the farm and the CSA. So, if we regret anything, it's not being able to do it all.

The failed sections of our plots become new 'to do' entries on our lists that include removal of weeds, tilling and cover crop or compost applications before the ground freezes. It's always difficult to admit missing on a crop - but if we don't want to pay again next year, we need to act on cleaning up those areas now.

As far as projects go, there is still hope for many of them, but things like painting are running on shorter time ropes (so to speak). We'll see what we can get done. But, again, we remember that if we accomplish one thing, there are always many other things that can be added onto the list.

So, we remember what we HAVE accomplished. We are grateful for the help we have received to get these things done. And, we look to next year for redemption on the crops that didn't do as well as we would have liked and the projects that resided a couple of slots too low on the priority list to complete this year.