Today the Route 12A farmstand  closes,(although if  any of you still want root crops for winter storage please feel free to contact me through the e-mail).  It  has been a difficult and challenging growing year for all the area growers, and the weather and  economic situations still govern  how sucessful we ultimately are  as farmers.  But here at Edgewater we had an enjoyable work environment with a great crew of folks this summer, and that-more than the oftentimes disagreeable weather–is what I will take away from this year .  Many  of them will  drift off  to other jobs or travel in the next couple of weeks, making late fall  a bittersweet time for us.

So  with the closing of the doors of our retail arena we begin anew the  work toward the  2009 year. Although we will still be  packing out root crops  for wholesale, we  are well along in our fall field work with cover crops  in and fall clean up  well underway. We have already begun inventorying pots and plastic for the greenhouses and fertilizer for 2009. We are in the midst of  replacing an older greenhouse and  I have started to  do  the  annual  pressure washing and maintenance on the the tractors, machinery and tools in hopes of getting  them all put away and ready for spring  before the snow flys. We have a  lot of tree takedowns to deal with in the hedgerows around the fields and in particular  near the greenhouses, where the trees have grown to a height  where they are cutting down on the sunlight. We are moving plants into the stock plant house to winter over and propagate. Garlic will be planted tommorrow. So although many  people believe that  we have acquired a lot of spare time on our hands, we actually hit the ground running with a full slate of things to do as the days become ever cooler and shorter.

We are greatful for your patronage and support. The kind words are a great boost in validating our work, and we want to thank those of  you who felt a plate of cookies or pan of brownies was an expression of your appreciation. (editors note: in the future, please drop all food down at the barn wash area as the girls at the farmstand sometimes don’t share well with the field crew) To those of you in the CSAs,-both the Eastman Box drop  and the debit shareholders -we  will be meeting this week to evaluate  what we have done this year and what we will do in 2009. You will be  contacted  with a proposal  or the proposal will be  posted on the  farm home webpage.

Have a great fall and we hope to see you out and about.