August: Audacious and Auspicious!

After last week's CSA box (contents shown here), one of the members emailed me and asked if it was the last box of the Summer CSA subscription. So, I looked on the calendar and was stunned to discover  August was pretty much over!  I cannot believe summer is over-- it whizzed by too fast!

August has been a crazy busy month with many eventful moments, a few of which I will note here.

First, we said good-bye to a wonderful man, our friend Chris Shomenta, who had been battling cancer the past 5 years. You may have seen this joyous  photo of him as my spokesmodel for our CSA a few years ago.

We were honored to be asked to host a Celebration of Chis's Life at the farm after the funeral service. A huge crowd came to show their love for his wife Julia and the rest of his family and to share stories of amazing Chris. What a poignant and special event. We will miss you, Chris.

The celebration we have been anticipating all year was the wedding of a darling couple, Diana and Ryan. Despite threatening forecasts,  the weather cooperated and  the wedding two weekends ago was stunning.

I can't wait to see the official wedding photos, but I sneaked a few shots before the ceremony.

During one sweet moment in the ceremony, Diana and Ryan combined their own small fishbowls, each with a single fish, into this large fishbowl with a replica of the living room of their house. The two wedding fish are now happily residing with our goldfish, koi and tilapia in the Aquaponics pond.

We were grateful to have had our most recent wonderful WWOOFer, Kait, for a couple weeks to help us spruce up the farm before the wedding. Besides tackling plenty of weeding, chicken coop cleaning, potato-digging and power-washing, Kait outfitted Gourdita the scarecrow in fresh clothes for the wedding.Thanks for  your hard work and delightful nature, Kait.

And now, for the most long-awaited news of all:  Our commercial kitchen is complete and has passed all inspections and is officially approved!  We served our first  offical Pizza Night on Sunday.

Here's to the next thousand or so wood-fired pizzas and  sourdough breads to be made in our beautiful new kitchen!  It has been such a long, arduous, costly, exhausting, exciting project...now the real fun and the real work can begin!