It’s been more than a month since my last post (sounds very confessional, I know), but things are still rolling along. We had our first farmer’s market of the season this past Thursday at the JP Farmer’s Market at the Loring-Greenough House (12 South Street, Thursdays, 2-8pm) and had a good time, despite the cool, rainy weather. This early in the season, our offerings tend to be a bit sparse, but we did have: kale, chard, snow peas, garlic scapes, baby lettuce, lavender (which smelled amazing!) and a few tiny zucchini. Last year, we had only one market day with a sprinkle, so we’re making up for it this year.
Rain has actually been our biggest challenge at the farm this month. We’ve had well over 8 inches of rain at our farm in June, probably closer to 10 inches. And, sadly, our fields, especially our new field, drain very badly. For the past few weeks, it’s been hard to even get in the fields, and weeding and planting have basically been impossible most of the time. It looks like we’ll lose our onions and the first planting of green beans, and our head lettuce, rosemary, basil, parsley,and collards all look pretty bad. (The weeds don’t seem to mind the wet.)
The past few days have been warm and drier, which is helping a bit. We were there with the whole family today, tying up and pruning tomatoes, weeding, and planting new beans, sunflowers, and cucumber seeds.
I feel like a real farmer now, because I spend half my time complaining about the weather. On the plus side, the kale really seems to like the rain, and it’s been pretty huge.
(For this season, I bought both an iPhone, so that I can take credit cards at the market and keep in touch with customers better, but also so that I could take fun time lapse of photos of behind the scenes at the farm.)
Now that Noah is finally out of school (we had a lot of snow days this year), he’ll be coming up with me to the farm all week, as we try to wrestle the weeds under control and also make our World Peas deliveries. There’s no JP Market this week, because of the 4th of July Holiday, but that’s probably okay, in that it allows us to keep trying to get caught up.
I actually need to schedule some time to think about what’s next–with the weird weather, all my plans need to be adjusted, in terms of what crops go where, and when. That’s the constant lesson of farming–you have to learn to adjust your plans. You must respect the reality in front of you, the realities of the season, of the weather, of the soil, of biology. Farming is what happens when your dreams collide with the earth.