Submitted by Lopez Community Land Trust

En lieu of the Lopez Community Land Trust annual Harvest Dinner, the 2020 harvest on Lopez is being celebrated by a dinner series launched by Ursa Minor in collaboration with LCLT. The series started on Oct.16, and each week through December Ursa Minor is collaborating with a different local culinarian to create a side or salad to be featured on their take-out menu. The item will feature local items from the island’s farms and producers.

When the LCLT board and staff met recently, they reflected on their love and appreciation for farmers and how much they missed doing their annual Harvest Dinner this year due to COVID-19. Even though Lopezians couldn’t be together this year, they can still celebrate and support the local harvests through all of our local eateries and farm stands, as well as expressing appreciation to local farmers.

Specific reflections from the LCLT Board and staff recently described farmers as highly sophisticated in understanding systems, resilient, intelligent, risk takers, faithful, strong, reliable, educators, growers of quality food. Farmers are hard working visionaries who shape the land to help meet the needs of humans while adding value to the lands they steward. They are first responders to climate change. Farmers are good hearted and the keepers of generational knowledge.

During this time of thanksgiving, let’s honor the farmers who provide the pastoral landscape that Lopezians value so highly, and the quality healthy foods so necessary for our immune systems challenged by the pandemic.