Hey Food Farmers,

I have a few important items to pass along today. First, we’ll be holding an informal get-together for members in the atrium at the Zeitgiest Arts building on Tuesday, February 26^th from 5-7pm. We used to have yearly meetings in Duluth when we were first getting started. It’s been ages since we’ve held a gathering “in town,” and we figured restarting that tradition would be a great way to kick off our 20^th season.

There’s no big agenda for the evening, just a chance to have a few appetizers, say hi to the farm crew (we clean up pretty nice), meet your fellow members and welcome this year’s new shareholders. If you have friends who are interested in becoming members bring them down to the event so they can meet us and get signed up. Annie assures me that she’ll find some embarrassing photos of me from the early years of the Food Farm (mullet warning!) and maybe John will even entertain us with a chicken song or two. Please come down and say hello; we’d love to see you, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Another event to put on your calendars is the Good Food Summit, March 8^th and 9^th at UMD. This will be  a great place to celebrate, network and learn about all the great things evolving here in the Lake Superior bioregion around the issues of sustainability and healthy food. For more information or to register go to www.goodfoodnetwork.org.

Many folks assume that winter is a time for rest and relaxation out here on the farm, and while there are fewer people around your farmers have been plenty active. Our planting schedule is nearly set, the seeds have mostly arrived, and we’re researching and planning all kinds of things, from crop rotations to transplant production to packing shed layout. It’s an exciting time as we look forward to the first onions going into seed flats in 2 ½ weeks even as we’re just digging out from the first significant snow storm of the year. Whether it’s the deep cold of a few weeks ago to the deep snow of Sunday, we are happy to see the signs of true winter that seemed to pass us by last year. The snow is a sign that the irrigation pond will be full in spring and the cold gives us hope that the cutworms and other pests that were unusually abundant last summer will not return. Other than that, the dog gets lazier by the day (and dangerously close to the wood stove), and your farmers dream of the new life that is set to spring from the earth in a few short weeks.

For the farm crew,

Janaki

P.S. If you haven’t already, make sure to get your signup sheet in before the event on the 26^th. We’ll be opening things up to new shareholders and we expect the new shares we’re offering to go quickly. As always, if you think you’ll have difficulty getting your payments in on time please send your renewal and deposit in anyway, but call us to set up a payment plan. We set the payment schedule based on the cash-flow needs of the farm, but don’t want that schedule to preclude anyone from signing up again.