It's hard to believe, but another growing season has come and gone, the Sox are in the Series, and the first real frost will arrive later this week.  The final big task of the season, planting next year's garlic, is the last thing we have to do.

As many of you who have kept up with the Notes from the Field will remember, it's been an interesting year.  While we escaped the devastating rains that pummeled farms to the north, south and west of us in June and July, the dry pattern that continued into the long, warm fall meant that we were irrigating into October.  Some crops were complete failures for us this year; our parsnips and rutabaga did not make it through the dry weather (thankfully, Bruce and Jenny at Picadilly Farm in New Hampshire have enough to share).  Celeriac was a loser on both of our farms this season.  Jenny and Bruce also had lots of trouble with their winter squash, including diseases that reduced the keeping quality of some varieties significantly.  Other crops, including kale, collards, peas, garlic and storage onions, were marginal.  The shares looked a little slim in the early part of the season, when crops that we had counted on did not come through as planned.  The season for cucumbers, summer squash, cherry tomatoes and basil was bountiful but brief, as devastating diseases took down each of these crops too early.  Other crops, though, like cabbage, green beans, fresh eating onions, eggplant, peppers of all colors and sizes, our field tomatoes, and our fall mixed greens, were among the loveliest we've seen on this farm.  It's been a funny one, a mixed tale of abundance and scarcity, ending in a beautiful autumn that seemed to go on forever.  Now the winter share crops and the beautiful, lush cover crops have taken over the fields, and the summer share season is at its end.

Erinn and Dan Roberts and I have harvested for 417 CSA pickups over the course of our seven seasons of working together at Waltham Fields Community Farm; this week we will pick for our final three.  As they prepare to take on the exciting task of starting up the brand new Lexington Community Farm in 2014, it's hard to explain how bittersweet their departure is for me.  Together, they are a powerhouse of energy, complementary skills, genuine goodwill and compassion, and incredible farming knowledge.  Erinn is an exacting and disciplined farmer with prodigious inner and outer strength and courage and powerful farming instincts.  She is also hilarious.  Dan is generous and gregarious and curious, always willing to follow a problem to its solution, even in farming, where the solution can be hard to see.  He is a quick learner and a masterful teacher.  They are both, in very distinct ways, great leaders and managers.  I have been humbled by their work ethic, constantly impressed with their ability to communicate with one another and with others on the farm, and inspired by their commitment and their perseverance. 

Although he has been part time with us on the farm this summer as he helps care for his daughter, Elsie June,  Andy Scherer has been another essential piece of the backbone of Waltham Fields for eight seasons now, as assistant manager, farm manager, co-manager, and Gateways field manager.  As he moves on to work at Sunshine Farm in Vermont next season, (home of Picadilly Farm's Bruce Wooster's brother Chuck -- yes, it is a small world), his influence on Waltham Fields remains strong.  His insistence that we look at things differently, change our perspective, cut loose things that aren't working, try a little of the mysterious and the unexplainable, harvest that less-than-perfect zucchini (or eggplant or cauliflower or napa cabbage) will remain a powerful voice in my head to guide farm decision-making in the future.  Andy is resourceful, smart, insistent, determined, funny, and has taught almost everyone on the farm how to drive a tractor, most recently Naomi. 

These three accomplished farmers have contributed an immeasurable amount to our little farm over the better part of the last decade.  As they prepare to move on, it's difficult to tell what they take with them and what they leave behind; we have worked so closely together for so long that it sometimes seems like we share brains, or hands, or other things besides tractors and seeds and soil.  My heart overflows with admiration and gratitude for the work that they've done and for the exceptional human beings that they are.  The farms where they are headed are fortunate indeed.  Our farm will miss them, and more than that, I will miss them, immensely.

Thank you for sharing this season with us.  Thank you for being willing to take home a big, challenging bag of veggies every week during your own busy lives, and face the challenge of washing them, dealing with them, learning how to cook them, and sharing your culinary triumphs and conundrums.  Thank you for learning to eat differently, to go outside your comfort zone, to try a rutabaga or a kohlrabi.  A CSA season is a long labor of love.  I know that I will be grateful when the summer harvest ends, and I imagine that you will too -- for about three weeks.  Then, as the relatively restful season of late fall and winter sets in, with a simpler harvest whose main challenge is the oncoming cold, I will start sneaking peeks at seed catalogs, planning next season's harvests, dreaming of summer in vivid technicolor.    Here's to cucumbers, summer squash, green beans and basil and rutabagas and beets and carrots, eggplant and green peppers and red peppers and cauliflower and cabbage and melons and tomatoes.  Take a bow, veggies.  Thank you, too. 

Enjoy the harvest,

Amanda, for the farm staff