Boy am I ready to go back to those dry years we were having three years ago. It is a lot easier to put water on than take it off. The timing can also fit your schedule instead of Mother Nature’s. Although it easier to get vegetable crops up when it stays wet until they come up, it makes them harder to take care of once they get up. Since most organic treatments wash off with a rain it also makes it more difficult to control the bugs. The last two years it has been so wet that pests have not been a huge problem but I’m not sure this year is going to be so kind.
It has been a interesting week at the farm. We were working in the field Tuesday when it started to rain lightly so we moved into the high tunnel for some weeding and soil preparation so we could plant more tomatoes and peppers and our celery. I was tilling when I heard Rose holler and I looked her way to discover her, my cousin, and my brother-in-law trying to hold the high tunnel roof down. A big wind had come up and was literally lifting the roof off of it. It lifted part of the bows off and set them back down and tore the plastic up. I never dreamed of it doing it now because I had the sides down 5ft. up so I thought any wind would simply blow right through. Chalk one up to inexperience and plain old stupidity. The strange part was that for all of the destruction it caused, the storm only gave us two tenths of rain. Then Tuesday night we got 8 tenths more. Also the storm came from the north but the wind came from the south. Then Friday as we were picking for market I had a row of potatoes dug and two buckets picked up when we got 9 tenths of rain in maybe 45 minutes. Did you ever try to pick up potatoes in fresh plowed ground that had an inch of rain on it! It reminds you of your childhood making mud pies and as I recall I was never that fond of making mud pies. It took me three hours to finish that row that normally would have taken 30 minutes. Then Saturday we were having a very active market in Blue Springs. That is until about 10:30 when another big storm hit and all we could do was try to hold our tents down and wait for it to let up, which was about an hour later. By the time we got out of there we were all sufficiently drenched.
For those of you who have been looking for my update each week, we have been away from our web connection for a couple of weeks so I haven’t been able to write my newsletter. I think we are back on our regular schedule for a least a while anyway. After market on Saturday we were in a Wendy’s so those with dry clothes could change and a family eating there asked if we sold at the farmer’s market. They said they had bought some greens from us a couple of weeks earlier and told us how good they were. That was a ray of sunshine in our otherwise dismal week and it is those kinds of comments that keep us going sometime. A friend of mine called Saturday and was discussing the storm during market and he commented that this was sure a fine way to try to make a living. I told him the key word was try. Well I am going to close for now and try to get a little rest before Church tonight. After the week we have had I am tired.
Your friend in farming bringing you food with integrity.
