It is 7:30 in the morning and already raining hard, with thunder and lightning. The forecast is for at least ten more days of rain, and we have had over seven inches in the last two days. It is hard not to feel afraid.
Yesterday when Sam came home from market (somehow it did not rain until it was time to pack up, which was a gift from the heavens -- waiting to dump the load until people had already had a chance to buy some beautiful tomatoes), she said exactly what I always think: "I hate it when people say that all this rain must be good for the garden." People have no idea. In no situation is a flood good for the garden. Not even if we were having a horrible drought would six inches of rain in one day be good for anything. No plant likes to be underwater, ever. All roots need to breathe.
We have 20 workers at this time of year and I doubt we can even step in the field right now. Our coolers have just about enough food in them to get through the CSA, but eventually we will need to go back out and find some more stuff to sell and distribute.
Weather is always the biggest risk factor for us, and as soon as it stops raining we will figure out what to do and how to move forward. Just before all this rain started I was talking to another farmer who was trying to decide whether to plant his fall carrots and beets now or wait until everything dried up again. We knew it would be a long wait, but we couldn't predict whether the seeds and the soil would stay in place. We still don't know. I think he decided to plant and see what happened. That is exactly what you do as a farmer. Our seeds were already in the ground and a small river has cut through the middle of that patch, as we have almost no fields that are actually level. Yesterday Zach went out and filled that gully with hay to try to slow the erosion.
In the olden days, it would take a hurricane to bring this much rain. Now this kind of thing happens much more regularly. Torrential downpours, wild hailstorms, such extremes. It is hard to know how to plan for periodic calamities.
But since we can't plan for them, we can only learn from each event. We have learned to pay tree people to trim the dead branches from the big trees around the stand so they won't come crashing down on us. We have learned to be alert to which roads have low bridges or a tendency to flood so we won't get stuck on the wrong side of the water on our way to market or traveling between farms. We always surround our fields with a wide border of grass so we won't lose all our soil (although we did lose an entire bed on Saturday, just washed every bit of soil down to the stand and away. Shocking.). We have generators. We pick most vegetables a few days ahead, just in case, as that has saved us many times.
There is no such thing as perfect weather, not even in California. Having to irrigate everything all the time is far from perfect. We have pretty deluxe conditions for growing vegetables here, on the whole, and we just have to cope with the increasing complications of the climate. But is it hard not to feel uneasy and tense when the rain gauge keeps overflowing. So many consequences in so many ways, and it is definitely not good for the garden.
And who calls this a garden, anyway. This is a farm. Gardens are a different scale. That's a whole other topic. I have to go check the rain gauge and stop ranting now.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
I Still Miss Darryl
Who could guess that Darryl Wright would leave such an endurable trail of memories behind him? I truly think of him every single day, and he has been gone for 3 1/2 years already.
This morning at 6:00, while it was still only 76 degrees out, I tackled the vines that have been growing up onto our house. I clipped and pulled and dragged -- and sweated -- and remembered that Darryl used to come over from time to time with Clinton and deal with the wildness that surrounds our house. It was Darryl who planted it all originally, following my requests that the bushes grow tall and thick to no one would have to see everything on our porch. After 18 years, the viburnum is well over the top of the porch railing and the laurel out front hides the bottom eight feet of our house.
Working with one of our neighbors who cared deeply about landscaping, Darryl designed the areas and planted the trees and bushes that have filled up Blueberry Hill. This is really why I think of him every day -- I drive past the river birches in front of the Common House, the line of willow oaks along the walkway, the maples in the parking lot islands. Darryl knew how to make things grow. This place is leafy and beautiful.
I think of him every time I go swimming, of course. He swam so that he could lubricate his creaky joints. Now that is what I do too. He limped on his sore ankles. I limp on my sore knees. He would have loved to have a hot tub. That would have been divine for him.
He used to sit in a chair every CSA day and cheerfully fill bags with chard, making jokes all the time about how wet his pants were and what people would say when he went to the store. His answer, always, when someone asked him how he was: "I don't have any choice now, do I?" But he meant that in a positive way, that he was alive and here.
The room we built for Darryl is now under-utilized, but it is meant to be my mother's painting studio. She probably uses it more than I realize. The sign that Darryl posted outside says "New Shop Annex Studio," referring to the original name of the spot that his room now occupies. There used to be a Shop (where things got fixed) and then there was a New Shop and then there was an annex on the New Shop -- or maybe I am confused and the New Shop Annex was all one thing. Anyway, that room was his haven during the last years of his life. Cozy and dry and separate from all other activities. But too close to the pig pen for him.
Darryl left a bunch of legacies in addition to all the plantings. The shade cloth on the greenhouse, the Gravely tractor, the Loudoun farm (he located the property for my parents back when he was a real estate guy), the garden spaces in front of the stand, the funky table outside my mother's house that is positioned so she can set things down when she opens the front door, his son Philip who still brings by piles of reject goodies from his place of work. Some of us remember everything about the way he moved and talked, swore and laughed. And some people don't. But he is wrapped around so many pieces of our lives that it is hard to miss him, even if you never knew him.
This morning at 6:00, while it was still only 76 degrees out, I tackled the vines that have been growing up onto our house. I clipped and pulled and dragged -- and sweated -- and remembered that Darryl used to come over from time to time with Clinton and deal with the wildness that surrounds our house. It was Darryl who planted it all originally, following my requests that the bushes grow tall and thick to no one would have to see everything on our porch. After 18 years, the viburnum is well over the top of the porch railing and the laurel out front hides the bottom eight feet of our house.
Working with one of our neighbors who cared deeply about landscaping, Darryl designed the areas and planted the trees and bushes that have filled up Blueberry Hill. This is really why I think of him every day -- I drive past the river birches in front of the Common House, the line of willow oaks along the walkway, the maples in the parking lot islands. Darryl knew how to make things grow. This place is leafy and beautiful.
I think of him every time I go swimming, of course. He swam so that he could lubricate his creaky joints. Now that is what I do too. He limped on his sore ankles. I limp on my sore knees. He would have loved to have a hot tub. That would have been divine for him.
He used to sit in a chair every CSA day and cheerfully fill bags with chard, making jokes all the time about how wet his pants were and what people would say when he went to the store. His answer, always, when someone asked him how he was: "I don't have any choice now, do I?" But he meant that in a positive way, that he was alive and here.
The room we built for Darryl is now under-utilized, but it is meant to be my mother's painting studio. She probably uses it more than I realize. The sign that Darryl posted outside says "New Shop Annex Studio," referring to the original name of the spot that his room now occupies. There used to be a Shop (where things got fixed) and then there was a New Shop and then there was an annex on the New Shop -- or maybe I am confused and the New Shop Annex was all one thing. Anyway, that room was his haven during the last years of his life. Cozy and dry and separate from all other activities. But too close to the pig pen for him.
Darryl left a bunch of legacies in addition to all the plantings. The shade cloth on the greenhouse, the Gravely tractor, the Loudoun farm (he located the property for my parents back when he was a real estate guy), the garden spaces in front of the stand, the funky table outside my mother's house that is positioned so she can set things down when she opens the front door, his son Philip who still brings by piles of reject goodies from his place of work. Some of us remember everything about the way he moved and talked, swore and laughed. And some people don't. But he is wrapped around so many pieces of our lives that it is hard to miss him, even if you never knew him.
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