After our last volunteer shift of the Fall season on December 9th, the UW Farm has officially ended its 2023 growing season! One way that the farm team celebrated the end of the year was by coming together to construct a gingerbread farm for the annual School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (SEFS) gingerbread competition. Some of the features of our gingerbread house included: different flavors of cake to represent stratified soil layers, gummy worms to represent soil organisms and microbial life beneath the surface, gingerbread versions of our interns, and even a bursting CSA box with veggies molded by students.

Our most important celebration, however, is in recognition of each and every one of our supporters. We’d like to give special thanks to our community, CSA shareholders, campus retail partners, UW Food Pantry, each and every donation, and the hundreds of hours given by our invaluable volunteers. We truly would not be able to exist as a small-scale, organic, regenerative urban farm without you. You make it possible for us to facilitate educational opportunities and connection with local food systems, supply thousands of pounds of produce to our community, and continue a larger scale conversation about our collective relationships with land and food access.

In Fall of 2023, the UW Food Pantry served an average of 1300 students per week, twice as many as Fall 2022. Throughout the year, the Farm supplied over 2300 pounds of fresh, highly nutritious produce to the UW Food Pantry. If the timing is right for  you, we greatly appreciate donations of any amount. Every donation makes a difference and plays a huge part in expanding possibilities for food equity and education on the Farm and beyond. Over the next month, we will be evaluating many more quantitative aspects of our year and sharing highlights of 2023 in our Annual Impact Report.