Our friend and farmer mentor Tony Thacher says it every year: "Every year is Different".

There are patterns and cycles, sure - still: Every year adds new elements to the mix. Every year brings some losses.

We lost Mike Shore of Shore Packing and Timber Canyon Ranch this year. Mike let us load our first pallet of Pixies off of his loading dock onto a Veritable Vegetable truck back in 1990. We've been packing our fruit at Shore every year since then. Now Mary Shore has taken up the reins, and a new generation is running the the line down there.

We welcomed many new customers this year. We used to recognize every name that popped up in our In box. Not so since the national stay-at-home movement started in 2020. 

We are hustling to keep up with the multiplying order numbers — we are thrilled, when we're not too tired to be thrilled.

We're excited to meet so many new folks and send fruit to places we can't find on a map.

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Finding a crew to pack and ship the fruit out of our barn is one of our biggest challenges - which we share with all of y'all who work in small business. We were fortunate again this year.

Rain — or a lack of rain — is a pattern that's repeating too often. No rain means more harvest days and a longer Kishu season (hard rain can end the Kishu season in a single day). No rain means no free water from the sky; we must run and maintain the irrigation system right through the winter. And then through the summer. We have been here before.

Some things don't change. Jim still does the Ojai Farmers Market every Sunday, against all reason except he loves it.

And he still works out of this antique workstation in the barn. Perhaps a GoFundMe for an ergonomic chair?