July 5th was my last farm newsletter. It's the first season I didn't blog weekly C.S.A. notes to our members. I had every intention of at least getting something out weekly, but summer farm life set in, and a new baby born in the spring gave me the perfect excuse to fall off the regular newsletter writing wagon. I thought if I skipped a few weeks, I'd be able to get back into it, but once I stopped it was just so easy to not start up again, and the literal dark clouds that hovered over Maine for much of the summer made writing about farming this year extra unappealing. Now here I sit looking back, trying to adequately capture into words a season that was somehow both a whirlwind and a drag. At many points during the summer people would ask us how we were doing it, how were we getting it all done? I didn't have an answer, and really still don't. But here we are having completed our 9th farming season in Cornish.
Kyle and I functioned this summer like some sort of bizarre single human unit: Wake up, kids, water plants, harvest, kids, go to markets, plant, kids, wash, eat, kids, bed, repeat. We were always swapping each other in and out from farmer chores to childcare, and some mix of both when moods and circumstances aligned. We had regular help from our parents with childcare, and several friends and season long volunteers who helped us with things on the farm. I think by necessity the big things got done faster and easier than they ever have. Our systems have now been perfected many years into this farming adventure, and the child driven scarcity of time has made us more efficient. The summer kept rolling, and we just kept doing.
We anticipated an extra hard year due to a new child but the excess rain this summer added an unanticipated difficult dimension to the farm. The rain started in late May, and really hasn’t stopped since. Record setting amounts were dumped, and our growing season definitely felt the impacts of too much moisture.
We plant several crops successionally, so that we have a continuous harvest spanning the C.S.A. and market season. In both the green beans and summer squash/zucchini, the near constant cloud covers delayed flowering on our first plantings causing them to mature at almost the exact same time as the second and third plantings (despite being seeded a whole month apart). This shortened the times of harvest for these vegetables, and we then had them in excess for a very brief period of time.
The clouds and rain also impacted the productivity of many of the vegetables, reducing the overall yields by an estimated 20-30%. Our soils became saturated around the end of June as the amount and frequency of the rainfall increased, and it really never dried out. Plants need oxygen and nutrients to their roots and when the soils are waterlogged it impacts their ability to literally breathe and to uptake those necessary nutrients for healthy growth. The lowest spots in our field became so saturated that after July 4th, almost any amount of additional rainfall would cause puddles to appear. The puddles were (mostly) contained to the aisles as we shape raised beds. They would recede over the course of several days and then fill back up with the next storm. Frogs laid their eggs in some of the puddles. I thought it was a bold and faulty place to lay offspring, but sure enough those puddles persisted long enough for us to watch tadpoles hatch weeks later.
Our brassica plantings were mostly on high ground, but the last 20 feet of so of the beds sloped down pretty severely into a low spot close to the pond. I was never able to weed this section. I’d be out there traveling down the length of the bed with a hoe, hit the puddles and then be forced to return back up to high ground. I tried the first time to hoe through the puddle and quickly realized this was a useless pursuit. That section grew a weird collection of water grasses I'd never seen before. I worked on not looking directly at that area on my morning and evening laps around the field as it visually ruined my gazing at the garden. Finally in September, in a fit of defeat and annoyance I finally made my way over there with the weedwhacker and cut them all down.
On one harvest day it was raining so hard that Kyle and I conducted an informal experiment on the best outerwear. I wore a raincoat and Kyle wore a bathing suit. The results were inconclusive. Most summers I find a raincoat to be oppressively hot and movement restrictive and opt to be sprinkled on instead, but this year the downpours had me in my rubber jacket more often than not. I got used to the sound of mud sucking at my feet and seeping in between my toes as I traipsed around the garden in sandals, decidedly the best farming foot gear for the year as I could just hose them off when coming and going from garden to house.
When the final big harvest time rolled around in the fall, we encountered the next challenge left from all the rain; carrots and potatoes that were extra time consuming to dig, were stuck in soil that had adopted a cement like quality. Usually, we are able to lift the carrots out easily by their tops, but this season they all had to be gently pre-loosened from the soil’s tight hold with a garden fork. The potato harvest was a finger damaging chore as we had to pry back dense mud from the tubers, a task Kyle amazingly accomplished 90% of on his own as the potatoes were grown at our lower Hosac fields too far for me to accompany him during kid nap hours.
Our Onions grew into beautiful round globes and then were hit with a collection of diseases that decimated their healthy green tops and storage reliability in a matter of weeks. All of the diseases they acquired thrive in high temperatures with many consecutive days of humidity. Once the “leaf wetness” took hold, the diseases spread. Usually, daytime sun and heat in July quickly dry the nighttime dew off of plant leaves, but this year the sun didn’t come out often enough, and the onion plants sat wet for days on end becoming perfect hosts for the disease spore to set and multiply.
All of this aside, we just kept going, kept farming because that’s our job and our life. Here we sit now in December with some distance from the season trying to reflect, absorb what we learned, and muster up the energy to move forward to try it all again. Next year is almost sure to be different, but it’s possible it’ll be the same. With farming we are at the mercy of the weather and just have to do our best to adapt and react with the land. The arrival of the coming years seed catalogues that always start filling our mailbox in late November managed to ignite the first hint of a spark I’d been missing, although it didn’t last. As we get deeper into winter and I further settle into my daily woods walks and skiing with the dogs, I’ll recharge and my farming energy will return, it always does.
Some end of year harvest totals for a positive perspective, these numbers don't include what went out for our summer CSA, farmers markets, or wholesale, they are just winter storage numbers.
Onions: 500lbs
Sweet Potatoes: 900lbs
Beets: 600lbs
Potatoes: 1400lbs
Leeks: 300lbs
Kohlrabi: 200lbs
Winter Squash: 600lbs
Carrots: 600lbs
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