October 2020 News from the Farm
Greetings to our dear community, what a wild world we are all living in now! We are thinking of you all, and wondering how each of you is holding up in these times.
Seems wherever we are, things keep shifting and stretching us to evolve and adjust to new normals. Taking care of ourselves has become a priority. The responsibility of taking care of our land and those who have come to learn with us is unwavering.In the spring we were ambitious to grow wonderful food and we planted one of the largest gardens we have planted in many years. Our small crew, along with help from visiting helpers, worked hard day after day to see this garden to fruition. We immersed ourselves in this “shelter in place” garden year. We are grateful that our chosen way of life allowed us to do the right thing for the collective community by staying focused on our work in the garden.
We sold produce and flowers from our small farm cart and lots to the local market in Felton. We focused on teaching and learning with one another.
Then the wildfires came and we came to a grinding halt and fled for safety with our animals and a few belongings. The experience was intense, to say the least. A collective experience of worry and stress and heartbreak. It was something we knew could happen in our area but we hoped would never come as close and affect our community as much as it did. We are all healing in different ways and personally we are beyond grateful for our land to be spared from the flames.
We’ve made it to the fall season on the farm and we have turned our focus to seed saving, cover cropping and compost making. Soon we will plant our garlic for next summer. We have managed to get some winter crops going despite the 16 days of an abandoned farm during the evacuation. We are carrying on with the cycles of nature; it is what we know in our core. Normally this time of year finds us in a wild flurry of preparing for our largest event. The nature of this event is to clean, clean, clean, and to follow through and put everything away from the season’s hard work. We make as many beautiful value-added products as we possibly can. We bake goods, we make snacks, we prepare tasty beverages. Then we welcome all of you, as many as we can squeeze, into our big beautiful farmhouse.
We cannot do this this year. It just doesn’t seem possible during this pandemic. Camp Joy is taking a hiatus for the first time in 43 years and canceling our wreath sale and open house in its traditional form.
We are beyond grateful for all those years of support that you have offered us at this time of year. We continue to honor what we’ve grown this year while focusing on our health, everyone’s good health: physical health and emotional health and planetary health.
We will look for ways to bring some of our products to the community, either in pop-up craft events if they are able to occur, or possibly this could happen online through our website with pickup at our farm cart. We will email you and post on social media to get the word out if we develop this idea.
But currently and most importantly, we are allowing ourselves permission to take this year off from putting on this wonderful seasonal event that we all love.We are taking this autumn season’s cues to turn inwards and prepare for rest and winter, hoping the spring ahead will give birth to good health and continued growth; to a better world with more justice and equality; and access to good food and sound land stewardship. And to our continued main mission of being a nonprofit educational farm for 50 years come 2021.
With love and gratitude,
The Camp Joy family