What’s been going on! 

It has been an enjoyable and reasonably busy three plus months.  The weather, particularly in August, was so horrible with high humidity and heat that it limited our field work but we have picked away at various cleanup projects, tried to keep up with the mowing (impossible at times) and are close to having all the beds ready for planting for next winter/spring, just a little composting left to do.  The fall cover crops have never looked so good due to the copious rain and we will soon be planting the Anemones and Ranunculus.

Betsy has spent an incredible number of hours working on the local elections and with the Alamance County Democratic Party, keeping up the website, calling seniors to tell them about absentee voting and many other duties.  I have helped some as well but hers has been almost a full time job most days which brings us to the next 3 weeks leading to Nov. 3^rd and our election message to all of you.

Most of our focus has been on getting local candidates elected as that is where the change has to begin, especially here in Alamance County.  We need better people on the school board, the county commissioners, in the NC House and Senate.  We absolutely have to have a change in the US Senate and the White House.

We all have to vote and make sure everyone we know votes!  There can be no excuse.  We have no control now over what will happen with the Supreme Court, that die was cast in 2016 when too many people didn’t vote and that mistake will hang over the nation for the next two generations but we can make headway going forward, if we vote.

Here is what you need to do now.  If you are registered to vote and have gotten an absentee ballot, send it in or deliver it in person to your Board of Elections immediately, don’t wait.  It is almost too late now to get an absentee ballot as it takes up to 10 days for them to get it to you.  Follow the directions exactly, including the kind of pen to use and where to sign and witness, etc.  Do not try and deliver it at either an early voting or regular voting location as that just slows down the voting lines. 

It is best if the absentee ballots are at the county Board of Elections by the last week of October.  If you live in a state like North Carolina which prepares to count absentee ballots as they come in, before Election Day and includes that count in the Election night totals great.  If you live in a state like Pennsylvania or Wisconsin that doesn’t start counting them until Election Day or after, only vote absentee if you have no other choice or are very concerned about Covid 19.  We want as many votes as possible counted on Election night.

If you are not registered to vote or know people who are not then, in North Carolina and many other states, you can register and vote at the early voting sites.  If you are not registered to vote don’t wait until Election Day, as while they will let you vote a provisional ballot, it is basically a vote that will not be counted.

Make sure you vote early!  The forecast is for this to be the highest turnout election since 1908 and the lines will be long, even with early voting but you have many more days to get it done including Saturdays and some Sundays in certain counties.  Early voting in North Carolina starts this week on October 15^th and continues until the 31^st.  Do not wait until November 3^rd unless you absolutely have no choice.

We need to have massive, overwhelming numbers vote so that there is no question as to the outcome and this is where this relational organizing comes in.  More people will vote if we contact people that we have a relationship with versus total strangers and they in turn contact people they know who might be on the fence about voting.  The nearly 800 people who get this newsletter is one example of this.  There is another whole texting campaign where you text three people you know who may not have voted yet and ask them to text three people they know.

There are many other things that we all can do like phone banking, literature drops, poll watching and more but if we all just do two of the things above- voting early and getting people we know to vote then the outcome will be huge and we will not have to protest in the streets after Election Day like in Belarus.

Betsy and I have voted in every election for the past 44 years, no matter where we were and this is, without question, the most important one yet.  In the 17 years we have put out this newsletter this is the first time it has not just been about the farm but unusual times require unusual actions.  VOTE!

Picture of the week

The last of the peppers, beautiful cover crops, the first fall color

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