25 June 2009

Basil, Beets or turnips, Chard, Garlic scapes, Kohlrabi, Lettuce, Oregano, Scallions

  This past winter it snowed heavily in London.  Heavily by London’s standards.  Six inches.  Enough to turn the morning commute, a messy affair at the best of times, into a complete disaster.  Mass transit came to a halt.  There was a fifty mile traffic jam heading into the city.  Even the trains stopped running.  A complete cockup.  And people were mad.  

            The government, they pointed out, had had several days warning of the impending storm.  Indeed, the government itself had spent several days warning everyone else to prepare for what would prove to be the worst winter storm in 18 years.  And yet when the snow arrived the government proved unprepared.  Streets went unplowed.  Schools closed.  Trains—yes, British trains—stopped running.  Shocking and inexcusable.  If a London financier cannot count on making his daily fifty mile commute into the city in a snow storm without facing serious delays, what has the country come to?  Even the French could have done a better job.  Well, maybe not the French, but the Swiss certainly.

            What has England come to indeed?  This stiff upper lipped, nature worshipping, world conquering nation of ironists thrown into a petulant fit because the government cannot maintain suitable control of the weather in order to allow people to drive themselves ridiculous distances to get to work on a day any sensible person would have settled down by the fire with a mug of tea, a wheaty biscuit and a Thomas Hardy novel.

            Actually, it sounds like they have come to the same place the rest of us inhabit.  The place where we don’t have to think about the weather much any more because we have created all sorts of ways to go on without or in spite of it.  We have turned the weather from a major force into a minor irritation.  And we have been able to do that in large part because we don’t have to produce our own food any more.

            When you have a well stocked grocery store with food from all over the planet, suddenly those rainy spells or gusts of wind or bursts of hail, all that weather well short of newsworthy that can nonetheless have a real effect on how your garden grows, they don’t matter so much any more.  Sure, there are still ways the weather can mess with your life even if you don’t grow your own supper.  You can be carried off in a flood or hit by lightning or have your golf tournament delayed (and maybe even all three at once).  But if you only pay attention to those moments you understand the weather about as well as you would understand soccer by watching a highlight reel. 

            Not that having some protection from the normal vagaries of the weather is a bad thing.  I do not wish to suggest that we should go back to some authentic lifestyle of deprivation.  Getting through the winter on decreasing quantities of increasingly moldy root vegetables does not ennoble anybody.  We spend considerable amounts of effort and money on the farm trying to fend off the effects of ordinary weather.  We put up high tunnels and put on row covers and put in drain tile and turn on irrigation and build up raised beds and lay down biodegradable black plastic mulch. And just about every day something about the weather makes us wish we could do more.

            But there’s a big difference between combating the weather and ignoring it—or at least ignoring it until it forces you to pay attention.  Farmers may not like the weather—I have yet to meet one who has anything really nice to say about it—but like the participants in any great war, we have a serious respect for our foe.  We know what it can do in ways both violent and subtle.  Those whiny British commuters, on the other hand, seem to have come to regard the weather as just another social problem to be managed into submission.  If the government could only do its job properly we would not have to worry about being assaulted by panhandlers, hooligans, inflation, labor unions or snow storms. 

“Make it go away,” however, is not a reasonable request.  We may be well on our way to proving that we can change the weather in profound ways, but not in profound ways that inspire confidence in our ability to tame it.  The weather remains, as always, quite distinctly both a part of our lives and beyond our control.  As such, it deserves attention, no matter where you get your food.  You don’t have to like it, but you do have to find a way to live with it.

For the moment we are living with the weather by picking a significant portion of your share—basil, beets, scallions, lettuce, kohlrabi, turnips—in the high tunnels.  Those tunnels make a huge difference.  We spent an hour yesterday afternoon trellising the greenhouse tomatoes, some of which have already grown over the tops of their stakes.  We even found three ripe cherry tomatoes.  I wish we had space inside for the eggplants and sweet peppers, which are just starting to recover from the shock of a last late frost now that the nights have finally warmed up.  Those warm nights have also allowed us to take the covers of the squash and cucumbers and at the moment they look content.  Fortunately, the peas and potatoes and onions don’t mind the cold nearly as much and appear to be thriving. 

If I sound a little like I am hedging my bets, like I am unwilling to declare that we are well on our way to a glorious season, well that is because I am.  Things could be in far worse shape, but the rain already has us behind schedule on weeding (to be fair, we are always at least a little behind schedule on weeding; unlike people, weeds have clearly learned to live with the weather) and direct seeding and there are spots that have been constantly wet now for long enough to effect the crops there.  Plus I have no idea what plans the weather has for us.  I would happily offer up suggestions—near drought conditions would suit this farm fine—but I have yet to figure out an effective way to deliver them.  Muttering under my breath and staring hostilely at the sky, which I have been trying on and off for fifteen years, does not appear to work.  Likewise, I think I can rule out sarcasm, voluble swearing and various rude hand gestures.  It is possible that certain traditional dances or animal sacrifices might get the message through, but opportunities for embarrassment and mess seem perhaps a little too high to risk.  Which leaves me with no alternative but to contact my elected representatives and get the government to take care of this issue.  I have no illusions.  It won’t be easy.  I don’t expect immediate result.  But compared, say, to saving the American automobile industry, surely reining in the weather will seem like a manageable undertaking.