THE ALLEGED FARM NEWS
Endive (escarole or radicchio), Green garlic, Lettuce, Scallions, Squash, Cilantro, Dill
A couple of years ago I decided to stop complaining about the weather. In the newsletter, that is. I will still do it in person when warranted (which is to say, most of the time), especially if anyone is foolish enough to ask me how the farm is doing. But I decided to stop doing it in writing for a number of reasons.
For a start, the longer I farm, the less the weather irritates me. This has nothing to do with any improvement in the weather. Indeed, I have a sense that the weather is getting worse: more violent, with greater swings to the extremes. I do not, for instance, recall hail playing such a prominent role, and hail larger than BBs only ever occurred out on the Great Plains, where some touchy weather god clearly has a bone to pick with Midwesterners. So it is not lack of cause. I have simply achieved in fourteen years of farming a greater degree of fatalism, allowing me to recognize that there is no point in expecting the weather to do me any favors. Bad things will happen and my job is to deal with the consequences, not lament my fortune.
I suppose too to some minor extent I worry less about the weather as I get better at farming. Along with grim acceptance, fourteen years of farming have also taught me a few things about how to cope with the climate—about when and where to plant certain crops, about how to get the most out of my greenhouses early in the season when the weather causes the most problems, about which varieties can tough it out. I have learned to wait until March to start my seedlings, to keep a row cover on the summer squash as long as possible, to ignore the local custom of planting peas on Good Friday (when, in any event, the soil often has yet to thaw), to stay out of the most poorly drained sections of the farm as long as possible. But I should not overstate this. While I have gotten better at farming I often still feel like a hopeless neophyte. And anyway, the basic lesson I have learned is not to grow anything outside and I still have not figured out how to put that into practice. Or rather, how to afford to put it into practice. I would love to install a retractable dome over the farm but I cannot seem to fit it in the budget.
Mostly, though, I stopped complaining about the weather because my readers found it depressing. Apparently people want a little good news from their farmer. This expectation seems somewhat misplaced given the native fatalism of farmers, and especially so given this farmer’s disposition. I don’t do good news well. Even when I attempt to be cheery and upbeat (it does happen from time to time) most people still think I am depressed. It could have something to do with people taking me too seriously. Or maybe not seriously enough. Or both. Or perhaps I am depressed. Who would not be with weather like this?
Not that the weather the past two months has been notably worse than anything I have encountered before. May always does its best to undo the promise of April and we have had other wet Junes. Other hail too, some of it much worse. Combine hail with a fifty mile an hour wind and it looks like someone went after your farm with a giant shotgun. You need generations of training in fatalism to shrug off that kind of damage.
We have suffered no catastrophic storms, but the accumulated effects of all the cold and rain have caused enough problems the make this a frustrating season. The cold nights, which lasted well into June, have slowed the crops’ growth considerably. The first planting of broccoli, in response to the cold, is making sad little heads, and many of the eggplants, pining for a Mediterranean climate, look worse than when we set them out a month ago. As for the daily rain, it has mostly played havoc with our ability to get our work done. You cannot plow, disk, till, cultivate, hoe or seed wet soil. We have been waiting several weeks for a chance to hill the potatoes and there’s no point spraying the winter squash to ward off striped cucumber beetles if the spray (a fine kaolin powder) will wash off a few hours later. I have not been able to get in any cover crops or finish preparing beds for shell beans. The carrots desperately need weeding.
Not that I am complaining. This is just what it is like when you farm. You make plans, buy seeds, imagine the bounty, and then—assuming you have not found a way to pay for that retractable dome—you go outside and things go wrong. In a few weeks we will have a drought and I will have a whole new list of problems.
So it goes. I have never had a year when every crop thrived, nor one when every crop suffered. Apparently this is not the year for eggplant, but we have some healthy rows of potatoes and an onion patch that shows real promise. Some day soon the squash plants will start to produce at their usual pace (and, I hope, produce fruit without hail damage) and soon after that we will start to wish we had fewer squash.
There’s no question I would have liked better weather to start the season, and no question better weather would have meant better crops. No question either that one might, based on weather history, have expected warmer June nights and fewer thunderstorms. But weather history (perhaps much like other history) is at best an uncertain guide. The farmer who mistakes the average recorded conditions for a promise will suffer perpetual disappointment, at least until he develops a protective layer of fatalism—or, if he has figured out how to afford it, an actual protective layer over his farm.
In any event, it is not the weather that causes the biggest problems. It is the farmer. Whatever previous observations might suggest, he could undoubtedly work harder, time tasks better, manage workers more efficiently, fix machines more promptly and spend a lot less time wandering around the fields muttering to himself about wet soil and cold nights. If I really felt like complaining about something in the newsletter I would complain about him. But that would just be depressing, and anyway after fourteen years of farming I have pretty well learned to give up expecting more from him
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