A quick reflection on how the 2025 season went. And by quick, I mean like really quick. But first a few announcements.
First of all, I want to thank everyone who joined the farm this past season. Without your support this endevour would not be possible.
Hopefully everyone knows the season ended. Please plan accordingly.
I set the price for FruitShare for 2026 (actually I just didn’t change it from 2025) and enabled ordering on our online farmstand. For those not familiar with our FruitShare product, the best way to describe it is that it’s like a buyers club. We pool the money we collect for FruitShare and use that money to purchase certified organic fruit from our wholesaler or other fruit from local orchards then distribute it to our customers. We try to purchase items during their peak season and typically grown in the United States (though not exclusively since not all fruit is grown in the US). It worked quite well this past season after a few hiccups the first season two years ago.
Other items like ‘Shrooms, Eggs, Coffee and Cheese, won’t have pricing until I get it from the suppliers. Typically pricing comes in January.
We’re still taking orders for 2026. So far we’ve had a fantastic response. We’ve about doubled where we were at this time last season. I’m not sure if that is good or bad. Perhaps people are worried about the economy in 2026? Maybe it is our “buy at the 2025 price for the 2026 season” sale? Maybe people are just sick of the Christmas, er, I mean Holiday commercials and store displays already out even before Halloween? (I think that has nothing to do with it but had to be said nonetheless). Anyway, feel free to order your share at your earliest convenience.
Farm News
One thing I’ve learned over the decades of farming (has it really been decades? Yes!) is that every year is exactly the same as the previous year. Some crops do well. Some crops fail miserably. And most crops fall somewhere in between. In other words, if we plot along the x-axis all the crops grouped in ascending success rate order, the curve it would form would be bell shaped, or as I like to think of it (my being an ungulate enthusiast) more like a camel’s hump.
This year is no different, though with one big exception. Instead of the typical dromedary camel hump shape it was more of a bactrian camel hump shape. You know the type — two humps. It seemed we had way more things do extremely well like cucumbers, zucchini, winter squash, and potatoes and more things that failed miserably, like sweet corn. So still camel hump shape, just from a different part of the world.
Another thing that did extremely well this season were the weeds. In recent years we felt we were finally getting a handle on weed management. This year, not so much. It was a two-fold problem this season. Fold one was we used an area of our farm we hadn’t farmed in a decade or so. We stopped using it for a reason lost to time. We restarted using it because it was inside the deer fence we put up. Since we hadn’t used it in the recent past it was filled with perennial weeds. The crops in this area seemed to follow the bactrian camel success curve so the weeds weren’t a particular reason for some crop failures.
The second fold of our weed issue this season was the very long wet spring we had. When it rains constantly there is never a dry enough time to manage the weeds. I suppose the farms in the pacific northwest have figured it out but here in Minnesota we’ve been more focused on farming during droughts. If I recall correctly, and as I’ve said before, that is a big “if”, last season was also a wet season with poorer weed management. And as we all know, when you have a year of poor weed management there are a lot more deposits in the weed seed bank than withdrawals. Getting the weed seed bank back into a reasonable level is difficult resulting in several to many future years of bad weed issues. Something to look forward to next season.
Our hope is that next season we’ll we get our one inch of rain every Friday evening like we’ve always wanted and never seemed to get. This gives the plants sufficient moisture and a weekend to dry out before we start cultivating and hoeing again the following Monday.
Other than contemplating our future and cleaning up the joint, there isn’t much going on. We’ll start receiving seed catalogs soon and start planning for 2026. In the mean time, if there is something you would like us to grow, this is as good a time as any to let us know!
Joke of the Week
What’s a camel’s favorite vegetable?
Humpkin.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, orders, deposits, jokes, brain teasers or anything you’d like to send in.