I hope you've been enjoying this beautiful autumn we've been having. Many times lately, as I'm shuffling papers or jabbering on the phone, I've looked out the window and envied the interns, working outside all day long amidst a brightly lit explosion of colors. This warm, dry, sunny, seemingly endless Indian Summer has made for some great working conditions, and, where we've been able to add water, good growing conditions as well, although we can't compensate for the decreasing hours of sunlight. But where we've been unable to add water, conditions have become downright drought-like again. The grasses we planted on the couple acres of soil laid bare by the repairs to the diversion and waterway could really use a little moisture, as could the beds we've planted in cover crops.

We planted white clover in the Field 2 and Field 3 beds that became vacant earliest, hoping that we'll be able to simply till the beds in the spring and leave the pathways in clover. However, the weed pressure is so extreme out there that we will need to mow the pathways regularly if the clover is going to have a chance at out-competing the weeds. We planted winter rye and hairy vetch in the beds where we expect to plant corn next year, since vetch, as a legume, will fix nitrogen from the air and make it available for the corn plants, which need a lot of it. The rye acts as a "nurse crop" for the vetch, since it comes up very quickly, protecting the soil and maintaining soil moisture, thus benefiting the more slowly germinating vetch seeds. Rye is the most winter hardy of our cover crops, so beds that have become available since about the beginning of October have been planted in rye alone.

We prepare the beds in the Church Field and the Barnyard Garden for winter a little differently than we do the beds further afield, since those nearby beds will be used for our earliest crops. When spring planting time rolls around, we can't afford to be held up by the weather, waiting for conditions that will allow us to incorporate a cover crop. So we chisel plow, compost, till, rake and lightly mulch those beds as they become available in the fall to be sure that they'll be ready to be planted when the calendar says it's time to plant.

Other end-of-the-season tasks include consolidating the compost piles that have been accumulating at various corners of the garden, transcribing information from the daily garden log to the crop history spreadsheet and performing maintenance and repair work on our vehicles and equipment. Have you noticed that Seth has resurrected the Ford 9N tractor that had been disappearing under weeds and vines at the bottom of the Below Lawn beds? It's a good machine, built somewhere between 1937 and 1946, but it died on me at a time when I was just way too busy to deal with it. But Seth, our first intern to have grown up on a farm, dealt with it, and more efficiently than I ever would have. Paula, our volunteer future farmer, even put the Ford 9N to use, mowing the area above the potato beds in Field 3 as the first step in creating more beds out there. Seth has also been tinkering with our cultivating tractor, the International 140, trying to work out the bugs that so persistently plague it. And he and Liz have replaced the brake pads and calipers on the Isuzu pick up truck so it stops again. Matthew has been working on reseeding all the bare spots in the sod that have been caused by construction work, vehicle traffic and the drought. All the interns participated in planting some 70 pounds of garlic, which, if we can keep the beds mulched and weeded, should meet the garlic needs of our shareholders next summer and fall.

And we should be able to better meet the educational needs of our community now that we have an Education Coordinator on board, one hired from within our CSA membership no less. Dave Newton brings an impressive career of public environmental education to our humble organization. He's taught environmental issues in community college and graduate school — he's written a textbook on environmental health — and he's served the public from positions in county, state and federal offices. He will be expanding and enhancing our existing educational programs so that they include an emphasis on non-point source pollution and meet the objectives we proposed in our Growing Greener grant application.

Our lecture series continues to present great lectures to insultingly small audiences (HINT, HINT), although Wangari Maathai spoke to a standing room only crowd in the Sykes Student Union. Her theme was "Change Is Possible", and as a woman who grew up in a Kenyan village, but is now talking to audiences around the world, she is an inspirational validation of her theme. Although relentlessly persecuted by her government for her work of empowering women and countering desertification, she responds with the attitude "Forgive them, for they know not what they do".

You know, sometimes I've felt the same way about our government, at least the "They know not what they do" part. What have they done since September to make our country a better country, or our world a better world? Issuing latex gloves to mail handlers to avoid anthrax makes about as much sense as instructing students to get under their desks in a nuclear attack. What have they done to address the inequities and injustices that breed terrorism? Have they made any progress toward accepting the Kyoto Accord on greenhouse gas emissions? Or do they still think it's a sound strategy to abstain from an agreement worked out by 165 countries while we arrogantly continue to release far more greenhouse gases than anyone else? And what about this "fast track" legislation that would give the White House an enhanced ability to circumvent public opposition and an expanded negotiating authority to enact measures that would further consolidate corporate control over world trade? And is drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and offering tens of billions of dollars in new subsidies to the conventional energy industries really the answer to energy security? Maximizing domestic production can't be the solution when we sit on only 2.8% of the world's total proven oil reserves but consume 25% of the world's oil production. If we want to be less dependent on foreign energy sources, maybe we should think about reducing that consumption rate a bit. We, as individuals, should work on reducing our consumption and we, as individuals and groups, should work on our government so that it helps us reduce our consumption instead of encouraging us to consume more.

Does "the American Way of Life", which we have come together so patriotically in the last couple of months to protect, refer to a guaranteed high level of consumerism or does it refer to guaranteed civil rights, personal freedoms and a democratic process? If patriotism means spending recklessly to bolster the beleaguered economy and buying flags to display on our vehicles, mailboxes and front porches, then our country is doing pretty well. However, if it has anything to do with participating in the democratic process, then we're in trouble. At least we are here in Chester County, the wealthiest and most educated county in the Philadelphia region. Can you believe that in the recent election, of the Chester County citizens who had made the effort to register to vote, only about 22% voted? With a median household income of about $63,250, with some 50% of adults being college graduates, we could only boast 22% of our registered voters participating in the democratic process? That's the "American Way of Life"?

I expect our CSA membership was more involved than that and I know that we can be especially proud of two of our members, Jason Phillips and Clare Quinn, who actually ran for public office. They both campaigned on similar platforms of controlling development, but unfortunately, they both ran for the same position, that of West Vincent Township Supervisor, so only Clare came out victorious. She ran as a homemaker with a demonstrated commitment to our township's battle to preserve open space and she ran as a Democrat in a county where over 71% of the contests for municipal office consisted of Republicans running unopposed. Congratulations Clare!

And congratulations to Jason and anyone else who ran for public office, or voted, or reduced their consumption, or struggled to make this a better country, or planted cover crops to protect our precious soil. Also, thank you to everyone who worked to improve our ecosystem and the food security situation in our country by supporting local, organic farms and thank you especially to those who contributed to the development of a sense of community around the CSA at Maysie's Farm Conservation Center.