Season Completed!

I'm sitting here sipping a second cup of coffee with a deliciously relaxed sense this morning.  Yesterday we completed deliveries for the Fall 2011 Season, an event that always gives such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction.
Once in the early days of operating our CSA, I had a conversation with another vegetable farmer who expressed amazement that we were willing to assume the "obligation" of providing enough produce to fulfill our seasonal contracts.  And while it is indeed a feeling of responsibility that I feel, I hardly see it as an obligation.  But then, the word obligation has sort of a negative tone, a bit like a mortgage payment or being indebted to someone who has done you an unasked-for favor.  The CSA, for me, is more like a partnership.  Our members do their part, I do my part.  We each play a role in the effort.  And THAT is a very positive responsibility that I take seriously.
Having said all that, I do relish the thought of no worries over the gardens.  Even though we still have a great deal of active growth and harvestable vegetables right now, if the worst happens and a horde of locusts descend or the next arctic blast finishes it all off, I won't lose sleep.  I won't cringe with the feeling that I've let our members down (though not a single one has ever intimated such), and I won't fret over how to pull a couple of hundred family-sized portions of assorted vegetables out of a handful of picked over radishes and a few limp turnips!
Now, onward and upward.  I will give myself a couple of days of relief from the stress then begin planning in earnest for Spring.  Or maybe I'll let a thought or two wander across my mind about which section would be best for the spring lettuce and did I remember to order seeds for the daikon radishes...