Year-End Farm Report I’m closing the books on 2014. Its hard to have a bad year in Fort Collins, but I will say that 2014 was the worst year farming I have had yet. Fortunately the lessons I learned are heirlooms, and the crop of knowledge is largest when the real harvest is smallest. Lets start with Shires successes in 2014: -We had our best root crop yet. -Established a raspberry bed. -Established a second apiary. -Hosted the FOCO cafe music fest, our first big event! -Expanded our work with Harris Bilingual, Polaris, Lesher, Poudre, and CSU. -Increased the amount of food prepared and served in the garden. -Finally finished our irrigation system which now uses electric pumps and helped us see a 91% reduction in city water used, I think this is slightly skewed for some reason but thats what the city says.. either way our new irrigation system definitely increased our sustainability. The old system ran at $2/hour of gasoline vs the new system at a cleaner $.37/hour of electric. -Added some solid people and good souls to the group of Shire supporters. And our failures: -Had to sublease the 5 acres we were going to farm in Wellington because it was too time consuming and costly to travel that far on a regular basis. Plus I’m used to growing in the hood, growing out in the plains comes with many different challenges. I’m not that good yet. Yet. -Didn’t have my head in the game during a few crucial weeks in the spring and the effects of that rippled through the entire season and forced me to pull out of the markets and limit the memberships so that i would have enough produce for all the shares. ...a side note on that.. Whenever I used to hear about The Great Depression I thought it was more of just a name, the market crashed so people were depressed, but what i realized this year is that depression played a bigger role in the crop failures of the thirties than we think. Farming is a lifestyle, there is something to do 365 days out of the year, and the crops don’t care if you don’t feel like working that day. Its hard enough to succeed when you have your full strength but if something happens to the farmer it makes it that much harder and instantly effects the farm. I’m not saying that I was depressed, but I was definitely not as positive, motivated, and healthy as I normally am, and that instantly effected the crop for the rest of the year. So I believe that during The Great Depression the farmers weren’t always depressed because the crops failed, I think the crops failed more often because the farmers were depressed. It sounds simple but for me I now know how important it is to take care of myself as a grower. The success of my crop is directly related to the health of my body and mind. Of course this is true for all professions, but food is pretty important and someday small farmers may have to play a bigger role than they do now to provide for the planet, so it was important for me to learn that a healthy food system starts with healthy growers. And thanks to this wonderful community we live in, and more concentration, more tea, more exercise, and more hard work I am healthier and happier than I’ve been since i started growing produce, and this will be clear in 2015. So in case anybody was curious, thats how my summer went. We will be back next summer, and the weekly celebration of community and living locally will continue. As always I am going to try to expand and I am leasing more land, but don’t worry it is much closer, and has all the resources the crops will need to succeed. As usual, I have a few surprises up my sleeve that i know you will all enjoy. So I hope you have a wonderful winter. Seed starting starts in January, come feed the fire and get dirty if you have cabin fever. I will end by saying Thank You to my members for supporting Shire, Thank You Mom and Dad for your daily help, Thank You Christina for your help in the greenhouse, Thank You Katie for working so hard, Thank You Lauren for all your help and wonderful art work, Thank You Growing Project for being awesome, Thank You neighbors for putting up with us, Thank You Alex for spreading the word to the people, Thank You K’Ching for working with me, Thank You Odells and New Belgium, Thank You to my brothers, Thank You Goodness Truck for feeding the farmer, Thank You to the Silver Seed for everything you did, Thank You to FOCO Cafe for letting me join your community, Thank You to The City for making urban agriculture a priority, and Thank You to every single person who volunteered on the farm. If I didn’t mention you Im sorry, but now that you made a difference. Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays Respectfully, Luke
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 14:48:06 +0000
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