Kurt’s Field Notes – The Final Week, October 2026

Well, here we are again. Week 18. Our final CSA box of the 2026 season.

There’s always a strange mix of emotions that comes with writing this last farm update. On one hand, I’m ready. Really ready. We’ve been running a marathon since March, and I can finally see the finish line. There’s a certain relief that comes with writing the last harvest plan and knowing we won’t have to do it all over again next week.

But there’s sadness mixed in there, too. I’ll miss seeing you at pickup. I’ll miss hearing what you cooked with your vegetables and hanging out with my production crew in the fields. And mostly, I’ll miss that sense of purpose that comes from knowing we’re growing food for hundreds of families who have put their trust in us.

It’s been a good year. A full year. And before we close the door on another CSA season, I want to tell you a little about what’s been happening around here — and say some thank-you’s that are long overdue.

The Farm Is Starting to Look Like Fall

If you drove down our road this week, you’d notice that the landscape is changing. Our neighbor’s son harvested the soybean field next to ours, and suddenly we’re looking out over wide-open ground again. It’s always a little strange how quickly the view changes once those beans come off. One day you’re surrounded by crops, and the next you can see clear across the field.

On our farm, the irrigation headers are coming out. Sprinklers are being collected. Hoses are getting wound up and put away. The guys have been cutting tomato twine and pulling stakes, and they’ve pushed the remaining watermelons off their beds so we can mow everything down. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s important. There’s a lot of equipment and infrastructure that has to be cleaned up and tucked away before winter arrives.

We’ve also been digging sweet potatoes. The guys brought in another big harvest this week, and we’re down to just one bed left. You’ll find some of those beautiful purple sweet potatoes in your final CSA box. The rest are still curing in our greenhouse. They need a few more weeks! I also harvested one bed of jicama. There’s not a lot there, but I’ll put some in the store this week for you to enjoy.

And one of my personal victories this week? I got next year’s beds made before the rain came. That may not sound like a big deal, but trust me, it is. There’s something very satisfying about looking out over freshly shaped beds, knowing they’ll be ready when spring rolls around. It’s one of my favorite tractor jobs.

Running on Empty (But Making Progress)

I probably didn’t help myself much by disappearing for the entire weekend. Last weekend I went down to southern Ohio for Man Camp, a Christian men’s retreat where about 3,000 guys head into the woods, camp out, worship, and spend time focusing on their faith.

It was a great weekend. Just what I needed spiritually.

Physically? Well, that’s another story. Let’s just say I didn’t get much sleep, and I’ve been paying for it all week. But the farm carried on just fine while I was gone. That’s a good feeling, too — knowing we’ve built a team that can keep things moving without me having to be in the middle of everything.

We’ve also had a couple of inspections recently.

Two weeks ago, we completed our annual food safety inspection, and I’m happy to report that we passed with flying colors. Our inspector was impressed with how clean and organized everything was, and how quickly we could produce the records and documentation he asked for.

That doesn’t happen by accident. Food safety involves a lot of behind-the-scenes work that customers never see, and I’m proud of the systems we’ve built. We also had our Ohio Department of Agriculture inspection this week. After preparing for the food safety audit, this one felt pretty easy!

New end walls were welded onto the high tunnel

A Little Construction (And a Proud Dad Moment)

My cousin Glen has been working on an upgrade to our high tunnel. The old end walls had quite a bit of wood in them, and we’re replacing that with metal to make them more durable. Josiah has been helping with the welding, which has been fun to watch. He’s developing some real skills with his hands, and I’m proud of the way he’s taking on projects and figuring things out.

Speaking of Josiah, he brought home a coffee table this week that he’s been building in woodworking class at Woodmore. He started the project back in the summer, using some old oak we found in our barn. Beautiful, heavy, reclaimed lumber that probably has a few stories of its own. He worked on it at school, finished it up, and brought it into our living room this week.

And I’ll tell you what — it’s a beautiful piece of furniture.

Josiah made this coffee table for Corinna!

Some Exciting Doors Are Opening

One of the things I love about farming is that you never quite know what opportunities might be around the next corner. This week we had a visit from Seagate Food Bank, and we’re beginning conversations about the possibility of growing food for them next year.

I’m really excited about this.

One of the challenges in farming is figuring out how to get healthy, locally grown food into the hands of people who need it most — while still making sure the farmer can earn a fair living. A partnership like this could accomplish both. The idea is that we’d grow certain crops to order, Seagate would purchase them at a fair price, and that food would ultimately make its way to families facing food insecurity. We’re still in the early stages of figuring out what this might look like, but I’m hopeful.

We’re also continuing to build our relationship with Oregon City Schools. We’ve been growing and shipping produce for their school food program, and we recently received a nice purchase order for the school year.

That’s encouraging for a lot of reasons. It gives us another dependable market for our crops, helps us plan production more intentionally, and gets fresh local vegetables into school meals. When I think about the future of Shared Legacy Farms, these are the kinds of partnerships that get me excited. Our CSA will always be a big part of who we are. But we’re also discovering new ways to grow food for our community — through schools, food banks, and other organizations that share our belief that good food matters.

Gratitude.

Before we close out this season, I need to say thank you. And first and foremost, that thank-you goes to you, our CSA members.

Every year, hundreds of families make the decision to invest in our farm before we’ve even planted the first seed. You trust us with your grocery dollars. You show up every week. You cook what we grow, even when we hand you something you’ve never seen before.

And you tell us about it. You send pictures of meals. You share recipes. You stop me at pickup to tell me how much you loved a certain vegetable — or that maybe we don’t need to grow quite so many turnips next year. (Message received. Maybe.)

That feedback means a lot to me. I’ve often thought that one of the hardest things about farming is how disconnected farmers can be from the people who actually eat their food. We work incredibly hard to grow something, send it off into the world, and sometimes never hear another word about it.

But our CSA is different…. I get to see the people I’m feeding. I get to hear your stories. I get to watch your kids grow up. And on the hard days, that makes a difference.

You remind me why this work matters.

A huge thank-you goes to our incredible field and harvest crew: Crew Leader Jose, Juan, Pedro, Asuncion, and John. These guys are the muscle behind Shared Legacy Farms. They’ve worked through the heat, the rain, the mud, the early mornings, and the long harvest days. They plant, weed, harvest, wash, pack, and do a thousand other jobs that most people never see. And now they’re spending their final weeks pulling irrigation, cleaning up fields, and helping us put the farm to bed for winter.

I couldn’t do this without them.

To my boys, Jed and Josiah, thank you. This year has looked different with Jed heading off to the Air Force, and we’re proud of the young man he’s becoming. Josiah continues to amaze me with what he can build and fix, and I love having him involved in the farm.

And to my wife, Corinna — the person who keeps so many of the moving pieces of this business together. The newsletters, customer communication, online store, marketing, social media, photographs, planning, and a hundred little details that make the customer experience what it is — that’s largely her world. She makes sure the story of this farm gets told, and that you feel connected to what’s happening here.

A big thanks to Glen, who keeps our equipment and buildings functioning and has been tackling projects like those high tunnel end walls. Also to Mike, our tractor operator, jack-of-all trades. With his farmiing background, I can ask him to do anything and he knows what I’m talking about.

To our wonderful pickup site hosts — Esther, Jahnine, Anessa, Chris, Derek, Karen, Stephanie, Becky, Anita, Dena, Moira, Amy, and Tanya — thank you for helping make pickup days run smoothly. Thanks to Grace Church and Five Lakes Church — for opening your parking lots for 2 hours every week to allow lines of cars pick up produce.

To our amazing CSA and online store packing crew — Tara, Karen, Katie, Lori, Laura, Adelle, Holly, John, Clara, Kristi, Sharon, Sean, Jenna C., Val, Phoebe, Debbie, Jen S., Lisa, Connie, Kim, Debbie, and Sarah — thank you for turning mountains of vegetables into organized, beautiful orders week after week.

And to our mighty bin-washing crew — Hazel, Jinny, and Josiah — I know there are more glamorous jobs in the world. But somebody has to wash all those bins, and we sure appreciate you. A special thank-you to Cadie Jardin for helping our members figure out what to do with all these vegetables through her recipes, videos, and kitchen coaching.

A Trip to Chicago?…

Our H-2A crew will be heading home to Mexico soon, and this year we’re doing something a little different. Instead of our traditional Adios Party and hog roast, we’re taking the guys on an Adios Trip to Chicago! We’ll head up on November 8, spend some time exploring the city, and stay overnight in a hotel before they fly home on November 10. We’re hoping to show them the Magnificent Mile, the Bean, and whatever else they decide they’d like to see. For guys who have spent most of the last several months working in our fields, I think it’ll be a fun change of scenery.

I also want to say a special thank-you to everyone who has contributed a gratuity for our crew. Your generosity means a great deal to these men and their families. One of my favorite moments every year is getting to hand them those envelopes before they leave. They work incredibly hard, and it means something to know that our customers see that and appreciate them.

Thank you for helping us send them home feeling valued.

So What Do Farmers Do in the Winter?

People sometimes ask me what we do when the CSA season ends. Do we just shut everything down and take a few months off?

Well… not exactly. But we do slow down. And I’m looking forward to that. We’ll still be harvesting some of the last crops from the fields in November, and we have a couple of online store pop-up markets planned.

Right now, we’re tentatively looking at November 7 for the first one. Then we’ll have our big Thanksgiving Pop-Up on November 21, when you’ll have another opportunity to stock up on produce for the holiday. That will also be the day Anderson Farms comes to the farm with Thanksgiving turkeys for everyone who placed a turkey preorder and deposit. We may do one more pop-up in December if we still have enough produce available. We’ll keep you posted by email.

After that, things will start to get a little quieter. We’ll finish putting equipment away, clean up the last of the fields, and make sure the farm is ready for winter. And then I’ll turn my attention to the part of farming that happens at the kitchen table instead of out in the field.

Spreadsheets. Budgets. Crop plans. Seed orders.

We’ll look at what sold well this year, what didn’t, which crops were profitable, and what we want to grow more or less of next season. We’ll also be working on our plans for those school and food bank partnerships, figuring out what we can realistically commit to growing and how to fit those crops into our production schedule.

A lot depends on how our CSA early renewal season goes, too. When members renew in the fall, it gives us a much clearer picture of what next year will look like. It helps us decide how much to plant, how many workers we’ll need, and what investments we can afford to make. That’s one of the biggest gifts of the CSA model. Your early commitment gives us the confidence to plan ahead.

And somewhere in all of that, Corinna and I hope to enjoy a little downtime. We always look forward to Thanksgiving with our family at Maumee Bay. It’s one of those traditions that marks the beginning of a slower season for us.

And we’re especially excited that Jed will be coming home from Air Force tech school mid-December. After months of having him away, we’re looking forward to having him back under our roof as he begins the next chapter of his life and enters the working world. It’ll be good to have the family together again.

The Finish Line

So here we are.

One final harvest plan. One final CSA packing day. One final pickup. I’m tired, I’ll admit it. There are parts of me that are more than ready to put this season behind us and get a little rest. But when I look back at everything we grew, the people we fed, the partnerships we strengthened, and the team that made it happen, I feel something else, too.

Pride.

Not because everything went perfectly. It never does in farming. But because we showed up. We worked hard. We took care of the land, we grew good food, and we did it alongside people we care about.

That’s a pretty good way to spend a year. If you’ve already renewed your CSA membership for 2027, thank you. Your support gives us tremendous peace of mind heading into winter.

And if this was your last season with us, thank you just the same. It’s been an honor to grow food for your family. I hope we’ll still see you at one of our online store pop-ups or around the farm. Please take a few minutes to fill out our end-of-season CSA survey, too. We really do read your responses, and your feedback helps shape what this farm becomes.

I don’t know exactly what next year will bring. There are always new challenges in farming, and plenty of things we can’t control.

But I do know this: We’ve got good soil. We’ve got a great team. We’ve got some exciting opportunities ahead of us.And we’ve got a community of people who believe in what we’re doing. That’s a lot to be thankful for.

From all of us here at Shared Legacy Farms, thank you for another wonderful season.

We’ll see you next spring!

Farmer Kurt