We gathered for the first time in 2018 for our Annual Member Meeting, a chance to discuss reports from the previous year, give input on how the 2017 growing season went, and plan for the year ahead.

Among the positives: Great crops, especially cucumbers (we harvested over 70 pounds this summer!) and eggplant, with more variety in the crops overall; we built two new raised beds; our pest control committee was established; and we had two successful events.

The negatives: the floundering of a plan to sell herbs at the Windsor Terrace Food Coop, tomato blight, and mosquitos.

For this year, we plan to plant and prune wisely to avoid the blight, hopefully pinpoint a few members who can focus solely on the herb project, organize a school apprenticeship program, and work on improving our sidewalk strip.

If you wanted to come to the meeting and missed it — no worries. There will be plenty more chances to get involved! We’ll have a spring clean-up and member orientation on Saturday, March 17th, starting at 10am. Once the weather improves, we will reestablish our regular Saturday collaborative work time.

We’ve also already set the date for our Earth Day event: Saturday, April 21st. More details to follow!

The temperatures have dropped a little as we’ve moved into September, but the farm is still going strong with peppers aplenty, okra still blooming, and the kale getting ever taller as we harvest it. We still have one more watermelon to ripen, and the seedlings in the new bed are coming along just nicely. But we are thinking about the coming end of the season, so there are some specimens tagged for seed collection.

We’re also seeing some of our plants wind down — including the cucumbers, which looked too sad to photograph. Also there is evidence of a lot of pests and afflictions, including the tomato plants which continue to succumb to blight, nasturtiums covered in aphids and surrounded by morning glory, as well as pepper leaves pocked from some unknown nuisance.

But this is all part of the growing experience. And since not all insects are problems, let’s leave with this bee pollinating away on these flowers:

In the last few weeks, we’ve been getting ripe tomatoes, green beans, and ever more cucumbers and kale. Our eggplants and peppers and still heartily producing as well. It’s been a great growing season so far, and we’ve already planted some crops for fall in one of our new raised beds — beets, carrots, radishes, and more greens to come! We lost some tomato plants to blight, but luckily our new-this-year pest committee, also known as the Aphid Avengers, have been on the case, and we hope we won’t lose too many more plants.

Our first tomatoes are ripening, eggplants are getting big, and the couple of okra that were small a few days ago suddenly were gigantic. Plus we’re going to have so many hot peppers. It looks like it’s going to be a very productive year at the farm, and our harvest piles on the table are becoming more varied — not just green veggies now!

We’re trying to get better at succession planting so we pulled up some bolted arugula and lettuces too tall to stand upright, as well as what was left of the snap peas and put in some brussels sprouts for a fall harvest. We also got soil for the new beds this week and are planning what to put in there — probably some root veggies to make use of the deep, rich soil!