It’s a dark and rainy New Year’s Eve and I am happy to celebrate by finishing up our crop plan and placing seed orders. I’m not one for resolutions, but I do love new beginnings. And it seems poetic to wrap up the old year by literally seeding our future.

Our plan for next year is more ambitious. But we also know so much more than we did a year ago! We have a foundation. And with our permanent raised beds we can get into our fields earlier and have so much less infrastructure to build. We’re excited to grow early cut flowers for Mother’s Day, add more herbs for tea, and try new varieties of tomatoes and beans.

Every time that I pause and reflect, I’m wowed that we’ve gone from talking about farming to actually farming. We research and planned for hours, spent almost all of our weekends since May at the farm, and have gotten a elbow tendinitis and quite a few callouses. But often all of that gritty reality fades and it just seems magical that we’ve made this dream a reality.

In the spirit of appreciating this year (and because I will definitely not be up at midnight), here’s a countdown of our 2019 highlights.

10. Gorgeous but short-lived basil which we turned into delicious pesto (we pulled some out of the freezer tonight) and basil ice cream. We’ve ordered powdery mildew resistant varieties for 2020.

9. Our first sale – beautiful pac choi

8. Getting to know our farm classmates. What an amazing group to start a journey with!

7. Gigantic Supersmeltz Kohlrabi

6. Reuniting with our farm crushes – Paul and Elizabeth Kaiser of Singing Frogs Farm – and updating them on our progress

5. A sunny week in May that allowed us to prep our entire field on our farm-cation

4. When our Black Dakota popcorn finally popped

3. Tasting our Salt and Pepper cucumbers and realizing we’d stumbled on a surprise summer star

2. The relief of our farm neighbor pulling our rented truck out of the mud after a stressful night of getting stuck

1. Feeding 9 families for 20 weeks over the summer and 20 families over the winter!