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.
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