Seasonality

Well, it's happened again, you've eaten the entire farm. That's all the vegetables we've got. The cooler has been jam-packed for weeks with all the stockpiled carrots, potatoes, squash, and cabbage; after tomorrow morning the cooler will be emptier than it's been in a long time. That's the plan, of course. You've seen the farm season through from start to finish, from the first leafy sprouts in May to the last of the root crops in November, and now it is no more.

Similarly, on a smaller scale, you've watched each crop tentatively arrive, flourish in its prime, and eventually decline as its time comes to a close. Take the spinach, which has transformed from new and fresh and small, to full size and vibrant, and now is diminished by cold. Within another month, by the time winter begins, the leaves will be small, wilted, looking nearly dead. But though some plants may die, the spinach in its stalk, the carrot in its taproot, the potato in its tuber, and the cabbage in its leaves all consolidate strength to lie low through the winter then send up the first shoots as the weather warms in spring, racing with the other plants to be the first to drop seeds for the new year.

Like the plants, so too the farm recedes into winter after a season's growth, the tomato stakes put away, irrigation hoses rolled up, the supplies stacked in the shed, and the remains of our carefully planted crops tilled under to turn back into soil. Although the life, the complexity, we built here this year is no longer, the farm is not destroyed and dead, but decomposed into its constituent parts ready to spring forth not five months from now with new growth next year.

As the farmer, I too feel quite the same way...quite ready to rest at the season's end and hunker down to rejuvenate over winter, sustained by stockpiles laid by while the sun offered enough energy for life–the food I've frozen, canned, and stored in the cooler in preparation for the cold and dark ahead. And, after spending every week for the last six months thinking about you all and what vegetables to send out in the shares each Friday, the biggest change will be to suddenly have no more CSA planning and picking.

I imagine the end of season may be a big change for many of you, too. You'll most likely have eaten vegetables from my farm more weeks than not this year! Come Spring, I bet you'll be looking forward to fresh, new vegetables as much as I will be looking forward to growing them again, and I hope you'll stick with the farm next season.