Good day and beautiful weather to all. I would first like to thank all of our members for their kindness and sincere understanding about last week´s postponement. All of us on the farm wish only to provide you with the best veggies we can produce and last week certainly did not allow for that. But this week we are back up and running, with our eggplant reaching its finest form yet. During the week off, my compatriots and myself took to transitioning the farm from summer harvest to fall planting, with a healthy amount of cover cropping mixed in. Despite a near catastrophe from the torrential downpour we received two weeks ago, our first plantings of arugula, radishes, and carrots have all blessed us with a healthy show of green.

Autumn will be the last season I lend my hands and back to Serenbe Farms. With the end of my apprenticeship in sight, I find it appropriate to mention how it is that I came to Serenbe in the first place. I am often asked how I ended up here and where my desire to farm began. The answer to the latter came as a result of spending my college career philosophizing over the many unanswerable questions life so generously bestows upon us. In the midst of meaningless rhetoric and mind-bending hypotheticals, it occurred to me that at the end of the day no one can know anything for sure, not even whether tomorrow will turn into today. With that weight on my mind, I began thinking of how that last mystery could become more promising. It was in sustainable agriculture − what brought our people together as a culture in the first place − where I found a hopeful answer. Having an idea of what needed to be done, I became hard−pressed to find an inroad into a field in which I had almost no practical experience. Unexpectedly, it was among the cobblestone streets of Spain where i was introduced to the WWOOF organization.

World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is a non-profit organization that spans the globe. Started in the 1970´s in the UK, the organization began as a way to connect urbanites to the farms that grew their food. Thirty years later, WWOOF operates independently in dozens of countries and as a collective for the thirty nations which are not large enough to sustain the organization alone. Whether you are a hard−core farmer or just a rural traveler, the WWOOf organization provides a means to travel the world at the cost of growing your own food. In most cases, room and board is provided by the host farm in exchange for an allotted number of hours worked on the farm. For those with a career interest in farming, full−season internships can be found with a livable wage provided. For any interested in such a lifestyle, www.wwoof.org is a useful starting point, though there are others (sadly only a few). Two of these are Organic Volunteers and ATTRA, which is where i found my next endeavour. Molokai, Hawaii shall be my new home over the winter and with that, on behalf of Paige, Matthew and Bosco, I close with an aloha and a mahalo.

−r.j.

(not to confuse...he´ll be here until the beginning of November, so you´ll hear more from him!)