Shakespeare wisely noted “How many things by seasons season’d are.”  In this season of harvest abundance and giving thanks, we’d like to invite you to follow the seasons with The Land Connection’s 2014 Farmer-Annotated Calendar.

You’ll find out what your hard-working local farmers are doing all year round, and you’ll be contributing to our mission to train farmers in resilient and restorative farming techniques, and to protect and enhance our precious farmland so that it will produce healthy and abundant food for current and future generations.

The 2014 calendar profiles 12 of the over 130 graduates of our Central Illinois Farm Beginnings program. We chose people from our first class way back in 2006 clear through to people who graduated this past September.  We took photos of each person on their farm, interviewed them, wrote up some blog posts, and then invited each person to  annotate their month with what’s happening on their farm.  Here are just a few of the things you’ll learn from this year’s calendar:

• Gail Record tests her recipes for savory scones, and orders sweet potato slips for her sweet potato pecan bread in January.
• Katie Kenney plants fruit trees and berry bushes and gets the brooder ready for broiler chicks in April
• Rebecca Fischer begins transplanting seedlings outdoors and cleans out the chicken coop in May.
• Justin and Erica Turner start mushrooms in the hoop house and plant storage beets in July.
• Jen and Andy Miller decide on the breeding groups for their meat goats in September.
• Eric Marshall checks the hazelnuts for picking, prepares the beehives for winter, and takes the steers in to the locker for his grassfed beef customers in October.
• Sally McDaniel-Smith drains and rolls up the last irrigation hoses and drip tape, and works the soil for early spring fruit tree planting in November
• Cathe Capel mulches the garlic, and combs and cards wool from her sheep to spin and then knit and weave into hats and scarves in December.

Our 2014 Farmer-Annotated calendar makes a great gift for gardeners, farmer’s market fans, and anyone in your life who loves food and farms.  Get one for yourself, and a few for your friends.  Thank you!