Autumn is our season for renewal - sowing green manure crops and building compost piles as we remove summer crops. With most of this growing seasons crops in the ground, there is more time in the week for weeding in the orchard and preparing whole areas for winter green manure crops. Our harvesting continues with the broccoli taking over for cucumbers and cauliflowers for tomatoes. The carrots and parsnips sweeten with the cool nights. And English spinach has returned!

Spring has charged along -with the days lengthening, grass growing, summer crops being sown, transplanted and taking off, lush lettuce, sweet peas, juicy radishes, tomatoes ripening, potatoes flowering, and plenty of planting- bringing us to the edge of Summer solstice. The season has had it all - cold nights, strong winds, hot days, and deluge rain. Through all of the extremes, and the beautiful days in between, most of our crops are showing resilience and vibrancy - signs of good health.

It has been almost a full year since Peter and I admitted that we were dead tired.  We had hit a wall in late February, which is pretty normal for us vegetable farmers.  We can usually manage to pull together the last of our strength to get through March.  But when summer stretched into April...late Autumn/early Winter 2017 feels a bit like childbirth- we got through it and even though the Winter rest blurred how exhausted we had become,  we decided to take a year off from running our CSA.