When you make your living by the soil and the weather

For farmers, especially those of us who grow veg, fruit and flowers, it is entirely possible to do everything “right” and still fail. We can be good stewards of the land and water, plant responsibly, work from before dawn until well after dusk, take good care of our crew, and provide excellent service to our customers. Yet all it takes is one turn in the weather and months of work can be damaged or destroyed. This translates to not getting paid for all that work, effort and expense. It’s absolutely demoralizing.

When this happens to commodity farms (corn, soybeans, wheat, ect) there are government insurance programs to recover some of the lost income, but small produce farms have nothing but their wits and very often, amazing customers. This is also why our farm subscriptions (Bounty Box and BLOOMS) are so important to us. They are a way for us to diversify our risk and for customers to share a bit of it, in exchange for having top priority for our fresh produce and flowers.

Our growing season started out quite well, a little drier than we like, but we can irrigate. Then the rains and severe storms came. We were pretty lucky, we were only hailed on three times, with fairly small sized hail, but have you seen what even small hail can do to head lettuce or other leafy greens? It’s a disaster…it’s not called Swiss Chard because it’s supposed to be full of holes!

Then there was the rain, and rain…and rain. We had a whole season’s worth of rain in a few weeks. It just wouldn’t stop. We are on fairly high ground (for Iowa) so we didn’t flood, but the soil stayed saturated for weeks on end. And vegetables don’t like that one bit. Imagine your feet staying wet for 6 weeks and you can see why the plants get grumpy about it…some get grumpy enough to die.

Is our season a total loss? Absolutely not, there’s a long list of fabulous crops to come and we’re working hard to maximize what we have, but I wanted to take the opportunity to share some of the challenges we face.

Farmers are nothing if not optimists, putting seeds and baby plants in the ground believing that, somehow, all the pieces will come together into a harvest. But optimism only gets you so far.

So far we’ve lost about half of our broccoli and cauliflower and over half of our dahlias. The peas gave up early and there won’t be any watermelon this year and no full-size cantaloupe…though our mini cantaloupes are looking promising. I’m expecting to lose at least some of our onions and shallots and probably some of the potatoes, but now maybe less than I first feared.

It won’t be a fruit year either as the hail damaged most of the young fruit. These are crops that we have already invested half a season’s worth of time and effort all for a lost opportunity. Could it be worse? Absolutely! We know many farmers who had much worse damage than we did. Stronger winds, larger hail, more rain. But dead crops are dead crops. The details don’t matter much. It’s discouraging to say the least.

Now that we have started to dry out a bit, we can dig in to some serious rescue weeding. This happens when we lose control of a crop due to weather or other factors. Step one of rescue weeding is deciding if the crop is worth saving…and sometimes it’s not. If we determine that it is worth it, we take a deep breath, grab our best patience (and some snacks) and dive in. This is the least efficient method of weeding because often it means pulling each individual “big” weed out by hand rather then using a tool to kill thousands of tiny weeds at once. It takes much more time and labor and NO ONE enjoys it. Luckily, this time around, we didn’t “lose it” in too many areas and a couple of afternoons got us mostly caught up.

So now we get back to the regular work of growing. The popcorn is shooting up like crazy! The garlic is nearly ready to harvest and potatoes will start coming out for fresh harvest soon. The summer squash and cucumbers started rolling in last week and we’re harvesting the first of our cabbages and green beans this week.

Bouquet season started a little later than some years, but we are fully into flower season now and Danielle is creating some floral masterpieces!

The tomatoes and peppers are a little slow but they are setting fruit and putting on some decent growth.

Crazily enough, we just sowed the bulk of the fall crops this past week. It’s always a bit of a challenge to sow cool weather crops in July, as they won’t germinate well in high temperatures. So to meet their needs, we tuck the seeded flats into my parents’ cool, basement until the seeds germinate and then they move out to the high tunnels to grow. It’s supposed to be in the mid 90’s all week, so they are going to have a rude awakening when they move out of the basement. (Kind of like some people I know!)
It’s hard to believe it’s that time for fall crops already, but September will be here before we know it!

Peri the puppy is growing almost as fast as the popcorn! She is now sleeping through the nights and is pleased to go out on our dawn walks around the farm. She doesn’t get to free-range yet, as she hasn’t learned all the rules of the farm AND she is a tiny, hyper-speed 4-legged vacuum whenever she finds a mulberry tree. No one wants to see the aftermath of a puppy who gorged on fallen mulberries! So until she learns the rules and mulberry season has passed, she remains on a leash or long tether as she explores her world.

Last month we talked about hosting tours on the farm and this week we finished the last of our tour hosting with a field day for Practical Farmers of Iowa. While we are active members with PFI, it’s been a number of years since we hosted a field day with them and despite the hot forecast, it turned out to be a delightful day. It’s always fun to see the different interests and dynamics of groups when they visit and most often the attendees at a PFI event are already doing some kind of farming or associated activity or they aspire to do so. They come invested. They ask thoughtful, challenging questions, and every visit reminds us how important PFI has been in the story of our farm.

The VegEmail store has now been open for about two months and we're continuing to make small improvements. We had hoped to have the shipping side (BGF Pantry) open by now, but summer vegetables have a way of rearranging priorities. It'll happen—it’s just taking a little longer than planned.

The season is in full swing now. The weather will do what it will, and we'll keep doing what farmers have always done - plant, tend, adapt, and hope.