A welcome change of weather has blessed us here in eastern Washington and with this change, most of the nearby fires have either abated or been successfully contained.  Most importantly, there has been no further loss of human life. We are grateful to the hard-working fire crews, and most grateful to Mother Nature.

Although we’ve not received any real precipitation here in the Valley, a few mornings ago Mt. Gardner was gowned in white down to about 6000 feet. Safe to say this was a welcomed sight and I still believe a harbinger of things to come in the next month, as are the gathering robins and meadowlarks and scores of raptors that frequent our September valley. Aspen trees are beginning to fade and a few southbound hummingbirds visit our feeder that we left out this late just for them. Flights of local ducks go over-head at daylight each morning as I sip on the back porch, snug in a wool coat with temps dipping below 40. We’ve eaten the last of the garden corn and continue to pick tomatoes furiously while relishing the swing toward autumn equinox.

We did get one more shot of hot, sunny weather last week giving us perfect weather to essentially finish our harvest! Despite all the dry weather, the fires, the early and late heat, our grains did survive.  Overall yield was down 10-12 percent, but our quality was both very consistent from field to field, and excellent throughout. I’ll say we may have our best quality crop in ten years. For all of this, particularly given the hectic and fast paced growing season, we feel most fortunate. Now we can more comfortably move onto fall tillage and honestly hope for rain with conviction!

With the cooling weather orders in the granary have livened back up and Brad is doing a great job seeing that your orders get filled in a timely manner, so as to keep our “fresh” grains and flours coming. We will be into our new crop soon and excited to see the results. As always, we invite and look forward to your feed-back as well.

Brooke and I truly appreciated the stellar turn-out for a sanctifying evening on Bluebird’s 10th anniversary paella bash. Wow! The collective thought I believe was that of peace. Love and loss were easily acknowledged throughout the gathering but so was celebration and a feeling of goodness and proud sense of place. We like to think it was a community gathering that went far deeper than Bluebird.  That said, we were happy to provide an excuse! I was delighted to see many familiar faces and just as delighted to meet new ones. Won’t you join us for another one in ten years…?

I hope you all enjoy the turn of seasons and can ease up with the lengthening, September shadows. Here’s to the good season!

Yours, Farmer Sam