Complimentary Blueberry Juice

This short blog hiatus was unplanned. Fall was mentally difficult and I think I just checked out of agriculture a bit early this season. Even though there was a lot of positive things going on, the farm received over 120mm of rain in October, effectively shutting down our season.

The one thing we have (until now) always been able to get done is re-mulching our no-till beds. However this was not an easy task with 120mm of rain. It just is not worth it to make a big mess with the compact tractor, ruts and mud. In the end we did have a one-day window where we decided to go for it, and managed to get 13/58 beds re-mulched for the season (but even that made quite the mess).

With this one task left to do I was in a sort of obsessive loop, just thinking about getting this task done, waiting and waiting for the moment it would stop raining long enough to go and do it. But that moment didn’t come.

In the meantime other tasks were completed, but it was pretty anticlimactic. Finally the idea of finishing 58 beds, ready to go for next season, was within reach. It’s been several-years-journey to get here, and the prospect of starting 2026 on that foot was exciting and enticing.

Instead, we’ll have a new challenge for 2026: starting with 13 beds, and figuring out how to do the rest on the fly. Effectively this means we won’t be able to mulch the rest before early seeding and transplanting season begins. It’s not the worst thing, but it will force us to think differently about how we approach seeding and transplanting in April and May.

Other than that, the fall time was full of great stuff: the cover crops performed wonderfully right to hard frost, the hoop house produced lettuce right up to the end of November, we harvested 600L of worm compost, we are overwintering 3 beehives, and we are expanding the CSA program to include the shoulder seasons.

Most importantly, we continue to improve year after year, and even though we ended the 2025 season on a note I’d rather not have ended on, I’m 100% confident that 2026 will continue the trend of rapid and meaningful improvement on our ability to grow consistently high-quality produce, week in and week out.

Graham

thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice