Happy New Year and greetings from sunny Yucatan. Somehow those long exhausting days of August seem very far away. Every year at the height of the season I have a mental melt-down and cry "This is crazy - it's just way too much work!". I always manage to get through the worst of it and survive until the late fall and winter. I have to remind myself that there literally is a light at the end of the tunnel - a winter vacation somewhere in the tropics. All those dollars charged to the farm credit card eventually add up to a lot of frequent flyer miles and this has allowed us to take a week or two off some place warm nearly every year since we started the farm.Most years we find ourselves some where in Central America; it's relatively affordable to travel there and the Caribbean coast is equal if not nicer than most of the better known Caribbean islands. We have slowly been working our way through all the countries of Central America, visiting some of them more than once. San Salvador is the last country there that we have not visited yet.
This year we took off a little earlier than normal, and spent the week between Christmas and New Year's on Isla Mujeres. This is a small island just of the coast of Yucatan, Mexico, about a twenty minute boat ride from Cancun. We rented a place with our good friends Steve and Lisa, and their daughter Allie. We had a wonderful time, doing as little as possible. There was a grand fiesta on New Year's eve, where the whole town turns into a big street party, but mostly we just caught up on relaxing.Now we are back to our regular winter routine. Tammara is once again busy with her regular job at the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, she unfortunately doesn't ever get much of a break. I am busy starting to prepare for the next season, which at this stage is mostly computer and paper work. There's lots of planning to do including crop plans and budgets. Organic certification updates are due shortly, and seed orders are already a little late.
Coming up this next weekend is a great conference that may be of interest to our followers in the Saratoga area. The 28th annual Organic Farming & Gardening Conference, presented by NOFA-NY (Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York) takes place at the City Center in Saratoga Springs, NY. It runs from Friday the 22 to Sunday the 24. This is a great conference for the whole local organic community to come together. There are workshops on all types of farming and gardening issues and topics. Sessions are geared towards both farmers/gardeners and consumers of organic food. The meals are a real bargain and are prepared nearly exclusively with local ingredients. This conference rotates around to different parts of the state each year, so it's a real bonus to have it right in our back yard. Here a link to NOFA-NY web site for more information,http://www.nofany.org/
Hope you all are having a great winter, maybe we will see you at the conference.
