Keeping Faith

November 27, 2024

A lot has happened since the last newsletter. A good friend passed. We planted the garlic into bone-dry soil. We submitted our proposal to continue operating Restoration Farm to the Nassau County parks department. It’s been an emotional roller coaster, but with Thanksgiving upon us, we’re ready to take a breath and count our blessings. They are many.

In October, Long Islanders mourned the loss of Amy Peters. Amy was lead singer and mandolin player in Sea Cliff’s Rusty String Band, which performed at Restoration Farm’s one and only pig roast in 2014. That was my first time meeting Amy, and we kept in touch, as she had recently taken over the fledgling Sea Cliff Farmers Market. While she was undergoing chemotherapy in 2016, two members of the Restoration Farm crew, Farmer Steve Cecchini and volunteer Francis Magaldi, pitched in to help supply the market from our farm fields. Amy recovered, business boomed, and the market ultimately outgrew its home at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Sea Cliff. By 2021, it had transitioned to a new name and a new home—Deep Roots Market in Glen Cove—and is now regarded as one of the best farmers markets on Long Island.

Married to our own jobs as we were, Amy and I only crossed paths once or twice a year, usually when she came to the farm to buy seed garlic. But when we got together, there was so much ground to cover. How to command fair prices in the era of cheap food? How to manage community expectations? How to survive and thrive without a permanent claim to a permanent home? We never found definitive answers, but we took comfort in knowing we weren’t the only ones asking. The Long Island farm community —and countless others—are so lucky that Amy walked, worked, and loved among us. She impacted so many lives, and she will be missed.

This year’s garlic planting was marked by sunny skies, a big volunteer crew, and bald eagles swooping overhead. But boy, was it dry. New Pond Field, where the garlic was headed, had recently been cleared of sweet potatoes, making it a good choice time-wise, the window between the two crops being short. But with no notable rain for months, even a short window was enough to turn the bare soil to cement. It was painful to watch the tractor kick up clouds of dust in preparation for planting, but in order for our crew to plant 10,000 cloves by hand, the soil had to be workable. So we held our breath through the dust and kept planting. Fortunately, garlic gets a heavy dose of leaf mulch over the winter, which will go a long way toward replacing the organic matter that was lost at planting. Many thanks to our crew—Jackie, Mike, and Nancy—and to our volunteers—John, Bryan, Suzanne, Judy, Geri, Jeff, Tim, Carol, Janine, and Mike, for getting the entire job done in one dusty, fast-paced day.

The other big news is that we finally submitted our once-in-a-decade bid to continue operating Restoration Farm. As private contractors on public land, we’re periodically obliged to bid on our own operation through the public procurement process. There is no tenure—just the strength of our history and our proposal. Our first bid was in 2007, when Nassau County wanted someone to launch an organic farm at the Old Bethpage Village Restoration. Our second bid was in 2014, at the tail-end of our start-up phase. Now in 2024, Restoration Farm has a lot of history, and condensing all that we do into a written proposal is no small task. Plus, there is far more scrutiny in the bidding process this time around; every i must be dotted and t crossed, or a proposal can be rejected outright. The RFP was issued on October 27, proposals were due November 20, and I spent 3 weeks camped out at the Cold Spring Harbor library so I could work on it for uninterrupted chunks of time. On the day it was due, hours after the final addendums were issued, Dan and I drove to Eisenhower Park to deliver the 40-page proposal—the original, plus 5 copies, all in sealed, opaque envelopes. After 3 weeks of attending to virtually nothing but the proposal, handing it off was a huge relief. Now I’m ready to sit back and give thanks while we wait for the county's response, due on or about December 11. As with all big projects around here, this one involved many helping hands. A big thank you to Lisa LoFaro and Johnny Breads for their help with the budget projections, to Glenn, Nancy, and Judy for proofreading, and to all the CSA members who submitted testimonials.

The Thanksgiving tradition at the farm is to offer a bonus holiday share to CSA members who renew their memberships by mid-November. These pickups are always an exercise in faith—the faith that no matter how difficult the current season, or how daunting the winter ahead, we will plant seeds again next spring. That sense of faith is especially poignant now, as we move forward without the guarantee of a new contract. So to all the CSA members who put their faith in the 2025 season, who filled the parking lot and returned to the Tin House last Saturday and Tuesday to load up for the holiday, we are thankful for you. We wish you—and all the farm’s supporters—a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thanks for reading.

—Caroline