Thanks to everyone who came out to the farm during the Jefferson County Farm Tour this past weekend and helped us have a great time! Thanks to Rodney Just for the photo of visitors young and old listening to live music, coloring, making seed mandalas, eating delicious Thai food made with Red Dog produce, and enjoying the day in the field. 

Autumn is approaching with haste; we are as busy as the animals preparing for winter. We frantically take our bounty from the field and store it for the lean times, as the clouds gather on the horizon and the sun sets earlier. But for now, we are plump and counting on our hard work to keep us going until the days get longer again. I am still trying to wrestle with the fact that we only have 3 months left before we end our season. I wish summer never ended, but we live a little too far north for such fortune.

We also sent off our pigs this past week. I am grateful for what they will provide for us, and I believe we gave them a safe and stable life, one with plenty of love and a plethora of nutritious food. It is moments like these that I reflect upon our food systems and how I feel as though it is important to have a connection with the food we eat. And that life is complex, and we must consume to live, so we have to balance our feelings with our needs. I hope what we provided for the pigs will be reciprocated to us, and I hope they will feed our community with the same moxie as our greens!

Personally, this season has zipped by. May feels as though it was last week and yet it has also been a lifetime since then. Reflecting and ruminating on my time at Red Dog, I think that I have grown wiser and calmer. To be relentless like the stream, but to be flexible like the plants living in the current. Nothing will ever be ideal or perfect, but we set our best foot forward every day. As we bid summer farewell, I want to recognize the land and the shelter it gives us through the storm of life.

~Auster