Greetings Fruit Growers!

If you are done harvesting, I hope you’ve had a successful season, if you are still out on the field during these chilly fall days, hang in there, enjoy the outdoors, the weather, and the bounty of your plants!

I’ll start this newsletter with some association matters about changes in the way we handle memberships and my personal celebrations as OFGA coordinator. Enjoy the articles that follow, and don’t miss the opportunities for grower-members on the last pages!

Membership updates

Ever since its beginning days as the Organic Tree Fruit Association, our association handled memberships on a “rolling basis,” a yearly membership payment meant that you were a member from the day of payment to a year later. In practical terms, this means that we need to keep track of every individual membership, which takes time that we could spend on other things from website improvement to communications with members and keeping in touch with other associations and event organizers, so we could bring you timely information about relevant matters.

Our Board of Directors agreed to switch to a membership year that follows the calendar year. The time between the date of this newsletter and December 31, 2019 is going to be a time of transition, during which time I will be contacting everyone individually to let you know how this affects your membership. If you are signing up to be a member during the transition time, your membership will start on the day you sign up and end on December 31, 2020. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me! If you are a current member and you haven’t received an email about this matter by October 31, 2019, please send me an email to ofgacoordinator@gmail.com, I’m still trying to sort out some data in our documentation. Thank you for your help and understanding!

Celebrations

While everyone is busy this time of the year on their farms, OFGA continues to work towards its mission to share information, encourage research, and connect individuals and organizations within the industry of organic fruit growing. In the last few months, I have worked with the board and with many of you, we have talked on the phone or met in person, I have sent and received almost five hundred emails, and I have found many occasions to celebrate what we do. A few examples:

• We had a successful summer field day

• We were able to connect with others in person at different events

• We connected with a journalist at National Geographic to provide input on how climate change is reshaping the agricultural calendar

• We were able to connect a customer with an organic grower so she could purchase her favorite apple variety

• We have started collaborations with other organizations to reach more people, to share more information, to do what we do more efficiently

• We are working on a publication for beginning growers (more on this later!)

Thank you for being part of what we do, thank you for being an OFGA member!

Until next time,

Nellie Robertson