Welcome to our first newsletter for the HOA board to share important information and announcements about our community, upcoming events, opportunities to get involved, helpful advice and tips, and updates on what the HOA board and committees are working on.

This month, we feature helpful tips on lawn, gardening, and tree maintenance by Gina Burrows.

‼️ This first edition is being sent by mail as well as email, but future editions will be sent by email only. To ensure you receive this each month, add your email address to your homeowner portal account. Please email CCG at harvestjunction@ccgcolorado.com if you need assistance getting setup.

Announcements

Homeowner Portal Account

Your Homeowner Portal Account is used to access the latest calendar of events, submit architectural requests (for home improvements), maintenance requests (for common areas), download homeowner documents, and pay your quarterly HOA dues.

This is an essential account for all homeowners to create. If you haven’t created it yet, please do so now by going to the homeowner portal and clicking the link “Request access to the portal”.

Architectural Requests

All architectural review requests should be submitted using the homeowner portal. Please be sure to include the ARC Submittal Form and your property’s plot plan with any requests.

The new HOA board discovered that architectural reviews were temporarily paused prior to electing the new board; therefore, there is a backlog of requests. We are working hard right now to review and approve each of these requests.

‼️ Some architectural requests were mistakenly emailed to CCG. If you have an outstanding request, please double-check the Homeowner Portal to verify its status, and if it is missing, email harvestjunction@ccgcolorado.com right away to get this resolved.

Changes at Centennial Consulting Group (CCG)

There were two staffing changes in July at CCG, our management company.

1. Amber Fisher (formally Amber Springstead) has returned and will be co-managing Harvest Junction with Christi Whisner. She was previously our community manager up until July 2020. Please join us in welcoming Amber back to our community.

2. Nicholas Hellman, who previously assisted homeowners with architectural requests, is no longer with CCG. We will miss him and wish him the best in future endeavors. Grace Blaszczykiewicz is now handling all architectural requests.

Upcoming Events

July 4th events were a great hit. We had about 150 residents attend our annual bike parade and BBQ. Thanks to all who attended!

Below is a summary of upcoming events; stay tuned as we add more! For the latest details, please visit the Calendar in the Homeowner Portal.

If you have an event that you are organizing in our community, such as a park playdate, let us know, and we will add it to the calendar!

How to Participate in the Community Garage Sale

Do you have furniture, toys, clothes, books, housing goods, or more that you wish to sell? The HOA is planning a community-wide garage sale event to take place on August 28 from 8am-1pm. The HOA will advertise, create, and display signs for the event. If you want your sale to be listed, we request a $5 contribution to cover the advertising costs. All participating homes will be displayed on a map, with a list of items to be sold.

Sign up by August 15 at any of the four corners of our community:

• NW corner: 135 Sugar Beet Circle
• NE corner: 46 Sugar Beet Circle
• SW corner: 311 Western Sky Circle
• SE corner: 422 Western Sky Circle

Each of these locations will have a sign-up sheet on their front porch and an envelope for the $5 cash.

Getting Involved

HOAs are run by homeowners with the sole intent of making our community great. We founded four committees and need volunteers! Please review the list of committees below and sign up to get involved!

Architectural Review Committee

This is a brand new neighborhood, and everyone is working hard to install their landscapes and make home improvements. All of these improvements need to be reviewed and approved by the HOA’s Architecture Review Committee (ARC). Currently, the new HOA board is operating as this committee, but we want to open this up to a broader group of homeowners.

Do you have experience with home improvement, landscaping, construction, and wish to help keep our community beautiful? Committee members review ARC requests from homeowners, provide feedback, and approve or deny consistent with CC&R section 6 and our architectural guidelines. They also recommend changes to our guidelines as appropriate.

Sign-up here! We need at least 3 volunteers and will review applications before our next board meeting.

Public Landscape Committee

Are you interested in helping to keep our community beautiful by picking up litter, weeding, removing graffiti, and improving landscapes? Then join us on weekends for recurring and special projects throughout the year. We’ll also have an ‘education’ subgroup to assist homeowners in keeping their yards attractive in our high desert climate. This opportunity is open to everyone.

Sign-up here! The first event will be on July 31 starting at 9:00am in the park. Details will be sent to everyone that signs up.

Safety Committee

Would you like to help improve the safety of our community by training with the Longmont fire department on first aid and preparedness, creating a neighborhood watch program, and working with the city on safety improvement projects? This opportunity is open to everyone.

Sign-up here! Our first meeting will be scheduled for the beginning of August, and our first training opportunity with the Longmont fire department is in September. Details will be sent to everyone that signs up.

Social Committee

Do you love creating memorable social events that people talk about for years? If so, then we want you! The social committee organizes neighborhood events that allow neighbors to meet each other and enjoy living in our HOA. Ideally, we would have one event a month. Past events include a July 4th bike parade, BBQ in the park, and Chilli cookoff. The committee meets several times a year to organize all aspects of events.

Sign-up here!

How to Stay Connected in Our Community

Facebook Harvest Junction Group

Did you know that there is a private group on Facebook specifically for Harvest Junction homeowners? It’s an unofficial group (not created by the HOA) but very active and a great place to post questions, get to know your neighbors, and help each other. To join, go to the Harvest Junction Facebook group and click the “Join” button.

Nextdoor Harvest Junction Neighborhood

Nextdoor is another great resource. We have a neighborhood defined for Harvest Junction, so you can limit your posts specifically to the Harvest Junction community or post more broadly to other areas. It’s a great place to see what’s going on throughout Longmont, and even the city of Longmont itself posts here. To join, create an account at Nextdoor using your real-world Harvest Junction address.

Monthly Tips

How to Create a Water-Wise and Healthy Lawn and Trees, by Gina Burrows

Establishing a healthy lawn

Creating a healthy, water-wise lawn can be achieved in our high desert environment. I am including a few tips and tricks I have learnt after living here in Colorado for the last 9 years. One of the most important tips I can give you is to water smartly. If you give your lawn a deep soaking a few times a week, you will have a lawn that is resilient to extreme temperatures because it has deep, strong roots. Below is my recommended watering schedule, followed by some mowing, fertilizing, and weeding tips.

• 0-2 weeks after installation
  • Water 2 times a day (early morning and late evening) 15-20 minutes each
  • Check that your sprinklers are hitting all areas of your sod (not the sidewalk)
• 2-4 weeks after installation
  • Gently pull up sections to check it has rooted
  • If rooted, you can mow to no less than 3”
  • Start cutting back watering to once a day
• 4 weeks plus after installation
  • Aim to water 2-3 times a week to encourage deep roots
  • Adjust irrigation system to use a “soak and run cycle”: run 7-10 min, soak for 30-60 minutes, run again for 7-10 minutes
• Don’t cut grass more than 1/3rd its current length
• Mow grass to 3-4 inches long
• Fertilize twice a year (early spring and fall) with a good quality organic fertilizer created for lawns
• Weed by hand, use of pesticides and herbicides can have unintended consequences to helpful insects such as bees and butterflies
• Aerate your lawn in spring and dethatch every 2-3 years to allow water to soak through easily.

How to grow strong trees

Personally, I love a neighborhood with lots of beautiful trees when you walk along the paths. However, young trees like ours need some extra care to help to become healthy mature trees able to withstand all of the crazy weather. Below are some tips I put together to help you to support your growing trees!

• Remove tree stakes after 1 year (if a tree can stand on its own, you can remove sooner)
• Check soil moisture once a week, 4-6 inches below the surface. Soil should be moist but not wet.
• Watch for signs of drought stress. Are leaves wilting, yellowing, curling, or browning at the edges?
• Don’t spray with pesticides. It can damage the leaves/bark
• Use mulch to suppress weeds and conserve moisture. Cover the soil with a 3- to 5-inch layer of mulch starting a few inches from the base of the trunk and extending 1–2 * feet from the tree in all directions (creating a circle around the tree).
• Watering suggestions for establishing your tree and beyond:
  • Install a drip irrigation line for each tree (grass sprinklers will not provide enough water, deep enough)
  • Water for about 30 minutes using a drip irrigation line following this approx. schedule:
    • April-May: once every 2 weeks
    • June-August: once each week
    • September-October: once every 2 weeks
    • November-March: once a month during times when the temperature is over 50 degrees
• Wrap your tree trunk in late fall/early winter and remove in spring to prevent sunscald from snow (for the 1st three years)
• Prune your trees in late February/early March. The Park People have a great guide on pruning.

What is the Board Working On?

Landscaping

We have a few landscaping issues in common areas, including dead trees, park lawn cut too low, native grasses cut unnecessarily, brown/dormant grass, irrigation issues, and water swamping in the northwest corner of the park. The Board is addressing these issues.

The board met with Metco (our landscape company) to immediately make the following changes:

• Stop cutting park grass lower than 3”
• Verify that irrigation systems are working correctly
• Adjust watering schedules to use “soak and run cycles” for better absorption and deeper roots
• Skip mowings to give the grass a chance to recover
• Reduce or eliminate mowing natural grasses
• Eliminate the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides that are toxic to the environment
• Share landscaping best practices for HOAs
• Have Metco periodically inspect the health of our landscaping and provide monthly reports to the board
• How best to care for our existing live trees for the long term

The board is also investigating multiple improvement projects, including:

• Cutting, removing, and replacing dead trees
• Installing french drains, graveling, or correcting grading in the park to prevent pooling of water

Replacing dead trees will be expensive; therefore, we are exploring options to minimize costs (to keep HOA dues as low as possible) and possibly spreading the work out over a few years. Several homeowners have also volunteered to help with public landscaping. This helps keep our community beautiful while keeping costs down. Sign up if you are interested in helping.

Updating our Architectural Guidelines

The current guidelines are boilerplate, and we want to make our architectural guidelines more in line with our community’s needs and wants. Over the next few months, the new HOA board and Architectural Review Committee (ARC) will be reviewing and updating our guidelines to more align with the wishes of our community at large. Sign-up if you are interested in joining the ARC. We will also be soliciting feedback from homeowners through this process.

2021 Goal Planning

Each year, the board will proactively create an annual goal plan of objectives to achieve. This plan will be shared with the community at the beginning of each new year and updated throughout the year. The new board is kicking off this process and will have the HOA’s first goal plan ready to share by the annual meeting.