Back in August, when I started writing this, I began by saying:

Two years doesn't seem like a lot of time between extreme meteorological events, but then this is a different century than 1999. It seemed like we were experiencing the drought of the century all over again until it finally rained last weekend. Let's see if it rains some more. (It mostly hasn't.)

The weather's been very localized this year, and some parts of the region were nowhere near as dry as the area around Ludwig's Corner. The media noticed that the weather was extreme only when that heat wave rolled in over the whole region, but the lawn and the crops at the farm had been screaming about it for weeks, the lawn most desperately of all. Most of the crops, well mulched in their beds, were able to take full advantage of the great water holding capacity of their soil, so rich in organic matter, and thus were able to make the most of the water we managed to provide them. Besides being dry, the tomatoes had been complaining about the cool temperatures, specifically the cool nights, and had been refusing to ripen until that heat wave hit. Now we have tomatoes, many, many tomatoes. We also have major erosion damage out in Field 2 again as a result of the 5 inches of rain we had last weekend and the lack of progress that's been made by our neighbors on the issue of run-off control.

That's how it always seems to be — too little, too much, too little getting done, too much to do . . . I've been to a lot of conferences and workshops where the topic of "grower burnout" was discussed and the advice, as outrageous as it sounds, was always the same: reduce the stress by getting away from the garden in the middle of the season. So, feeling that the garden was in good hands with the interns (and also feeling that if I'm ever going to teach my boys the benefits of traveling, I'd better do it now before they're grown up), I took a vacation. Yep, right in the middle of July, just like a normal person. We visited northern California, my old stomping grounds, from Monterey to Humboldt County, from the coast to the Sierras. We covered 1900 miles, mostly on winding 35 mph mountain roads where we'd seldom see another car. But what we did see was really horizon-expanding for the kids: redwoods and vineyards, elephant seals and giant sequoias, Chinatown, Half Dome, El Capitan, Mono Lake, the Agro-ecology program at U.C. Santa Cruz, the Solar Living Center at Real Goods, the windfarms near Livermore, a forest fire near Yosemite and countless, countless, round, golden or tan hills.

My friends out there would all say, "Isn't it amazing how much it's changed since you were here?" and I'd have to say, "It's nothing compared to the change we're seeing back in Chester County, PA". There were more people, more cars, more development, certainly, but the suburban counties had not been overrun with sprawl to the degree they have here. Californians have long been into clustering and you'll often find great chunks of wilderness right next to densely populated communities. Around here we're finding neither communities nor wilderness, just sprawl.

My kids could not believe how dry it was in California even though I had explained to them the rains-in-the-winter-doesn't-rain-in-the-summer nature of the Mediterranean climate. I, on the other hand, could not believe how dry it was here when we returned from our travels. The first day back, walking through the garden, assessing the situation, feeling the familiar heaviness settle upon me, despairing at the dryness and the amount of work to be done, I asked myself rhetorically, "Now just why did I come back?" Walking through the cherry tomatoes as I was, I automatically popped a ripe one into my mouth and at the first bite, exclaimed (out loud I believe), "to get some real food for a change". I had eaten pretty well out there, considering our shoe string budget, and had had organic produce some of the time, but nothing can compare with that organic produce just off the vine. We shouldn't forget how lucky we are to be able to eat food like that and how important it is that we work towards making fresh, organic foods the norm for the American diet.

Something else that lifted my spirits after returning from California was learning that Maysie's Farm Conservation Center had been awarded a "Growing Greener" grant by the state Department of Environmental Protection. We will be reimbursed up to $75,000 over the next two years for the cost of expanding and enhancing our existing educational programs to include an emphasis on nonpoint source pollution. (Point source pollution is pollution coming from one large, identifiable source, such as a factory's smokestack or discharge pipe. Nonpoint source pollution refers to contaminants coming from a lot of little sources, such as automobile exhausts or lawns or fields that lose chemical residue or soil particles to the water flowing over or through them.) We will concentrate on educating people about nonpoint source pollution caused by agricultural and yard care practices and about non-polluting alternatives to those practices.

The grant allows us to hire a part time education coordinator and that position was filled immediately, but temporarily, by Dawn Lawless, who has already been doing great things for us as a member of our Education Committee, as a program presenter, as a Distribution Manager, as a Newsletter contributor and as an innovative teacher at King's Highway Elementary School (where she has secured grants to bring her students to the farm). She jumped right in and laid the foundation for the Natural Lawn Campaign, one of the two campaigns we will be presenting to our CSA membership. (You'll hear more about our ecological living campaigns from the Distribution Managers when you come for your food.) But now that the school year has started and demanded the majority of Dawn's time, we need to find some other creative, energetic soul willing to accept the title of Part Time Education Coordinator. Could you suggest anyone? Maybe someone who might especially appreciate the luxury of working from home most of the time (since we don't have any sort of office as of yet)?

Since my return from California, we've made some progress on moderating the either-too-much-or-too-little nature of our water supply. We've put into use the well out in Field 2 that was drilled last year with donations from the CSA membership and a grant from The Claneil Foundation. After a year of (admittedly intermittent) research, I decided that rather than installing a solar powered pump, I would install a regular AC pump, connected to the grid, and then install solar panels and what's called a "utility intertie" that would allow us to, essentially, turn our electric meter backwards with the electricity produced by the panels. Now we can have a fully pressurized irrigation system that can provide water anytime, anywhere, instead of a system that would require either a storage tank on a hill or expensive and inefficient batteries to be able to irrigate after the sun has set. This system will also provide the benefit of reducing the electric bill for the farm whenever the sun shines, all year long, not just when we're using the pump. We've installed the pump, its pressure tank and control systems, the electric cable, the water main lines and three frost-free hydrants so far, and hope to put in some more mains, a couple more hydrants and the solar panels as soon as we finish up some other construction projects.

The construction project designed to deal with the times of too much water is well under way. A bulldozer spent the last week out in Fields 3 and 4 repairing the diversion and waterway that were damaged by the less than responsible runoff management of our neighbors. We have yet to lightly cultivate, compost, seed and mulch about two acres of reshaped earth. The repaired conservation practices should prevent even a large amount of runoff from causing erosion and creating that dreaded nonpoint source pollution.

We are happy to announce that our Community Lecture Series has been resurrected and will present three stimulating lectures this fall at West Chester University. On Thursday, September 27th, Susan Goldsworthy, Executive Director of Community Gardens of Chester County, will give a slide show presentation on the many and far reaching benefits that community gardens have brought to a variety of neighborhoods in Chester County. On Thursday, October 25th, Brian Jones, President of Natural Gardens and Lawns, will describe the care and feeding that will keep your lawn healthy and beautiful and at the same time keep our waterways free of nonpoint source pollution. On Thursday, November 29th, Dawn Lawless and Larry Stier, both teachers who have won awards for their gardens, will inspire and instruct parents and teachers interested in the many great things a garden can do for a school. These lectures, which are cosponsored by The EARTH Group, WCU's student environmental organization, will be held in Anderson Hall, room 103 at 7:00 p.m. and are free and open to the public. Would you please take the poster enclosed in this Newsletter and post it someplace where people interested in these topics might see it? I know how difficult it is to motivate people to break the routine of their weekday evenings and venture out to a lecture hall, but I can guarantee that, for anyone even remotely interested in these subjects, these will be three stimulating, informative and inspirational presentations.

We will also be cosponsoring, along with The EARTH Group, an appearance by Wangari Maathai, an international activist for environmentalism and human rights. The founder of Kenya's Green Belt Movement, she has been nominated for a Nobel Prize and has also been designated a "Hero of the Planet" by Time Magazine. She'll be at WCU's Sykes Student Union, Tuesday, October 16th at 12:30 p.m. I, for one, will be very interested to hear what she has to say about the events of last Tuesday, September 11th.

What can any of us say about that day? After succumbing to the shock of the level of hostility and destructiveness aimed at us, and the loss of so many innocent lives, my first thought for the future was, "I hope it makes us a better country". There may always be madmen who wish us harm no matter how benign our behavior may be, but if our behavior is truly benign, they won't enjoy the governmental support that allows them to evade our surveillance and they won't see crowds celebrating our pain. Unfortunately, from the perspective of most of the rest of the world, our country's behavior is not very benign. Most of the people of the world have no better understanding of the sentiments of the average American than we have of the average Afghani. Like it or not, our country's image is shaped by our politicians, our tourists, our television and most of all, our multinational corporations. From many perspectives, our country is seen as insensitive or exploitative or oppressive. I know that's difficult to acknowledge right now when we need to be joining together and feeling good about ourselves as a country, but joining together with all sorts of Americans could be the first step towards joining together with all sort of humans.

My second thought for the future was, "I hope this terrible event, which was so disastrous in so many ways, does not also become an ecological disaster as well". If each floor of a World Trade Center tower was about an acre in size, there must be over 220 acres of computers, carpeting and other synthetic materials now homogenized with concrete debris and dumped in the middle of lower Manhattan. Where is it all going to go? Into the Hudson River? I hope not.

In the days following the attack, when the television coverage was still continuous, I noticed one network separating news segments with a very moving collage of images set to an emotional soundtrack of "We Shall Overcome". That song brings back some memories for me. I think the verse, "We shall live in peace" is especially relevant and I feel that it might be appropriate to add yet another verse: "We shall understand", meaning that we're striving to find our place in the scheme of things. As individuals, as a nation, as a species, perhaps we should adopt a more humble self image so that we can better appreciate the impact our behaviors have on other people, other cultures and other components of the ecosystem upon which we are all so dependant.

Please accept my invitation to use your next visit to the farm as an opportunity to reflect upon your place in the world.