I can’t believe it’s already the end of October and the end of CSA season. It all happened so fast, so much planting, weeding, and harvesting, so much delicious food. I can hardly remember all the time I spent waiting for those tomatoes to be ready and now I’m scrambling to enjoy the last ones before it’s all over. That’s how it goes, every year we wait for things to be ready, we try to eat as many as we can before they are gone again, and we know there will always be next year. Next year I might remember to plant the parsnips. Next year I might grow several different types of cherry tomato instead of just one. Next year I might take up one of your fine ideas for the farm. Feel free to contact me with your suggestions for special varieties you’d like us to grow and other ways we can better serve you. We will continue to sell our produce at the Olympia Farmers Market, and to stores and restaurants for the rest of the year. We have enjoyed a tremendously abundant harvest season and we are so grateful to all of you for supporting our farm. We hope that you will choose to partner with us again for another great year in 2010. The price of the share will remain the same, and as a bonus for early sign up, we have some really cute Kirsop Farm logo T shirts available.

Normally at this time of year, most of our crew have left us and it’s just Colin and I bunching some kale and braiding garlic and doing a little of this and that to finish out the year. But this year is not normal. One of our spectacularly talented employees has decided to teach us to make holiday wreaths. We are excited to learn a new skill, but more importantly, we are happy to have more work to do together. The end of farm season is bittersweet. We are tired and ready for the rest of winter, but we do love to work with our friends and we do miss them over the winter. Since we have never made wreaths before, we don’t really have any idea how many to make or expect to sell at market over the next two months, and we thought it might be nice to have orders to fill. So if you were planning to buy a wreath this holiday season, I hope you will consider ordering one of ours! We will be using freshly cut boughs of greenery from our farm and others, and some wreaths will be garnished with bulbs of garlic and chili peppers grown here.

Please check our website for recipes for Kabocha squash and Collard greens and for future farm updates. I continue to write the CSA news over the winter months just to keep in touch. There are no boxes to tell you what’s inside of, but sometimes I like to tell you which varieties we are thinking of growing and what sorts of silliness we get up to.