Notes from the Field: July

Rain, rain, go away! Come again another way!

Busting the Rain Myth

We’ve been getting so much rain. 13.4 in. the last month. That’s 9 inches above the average! And I know, you all are probably also really sick of it. So often when I talk to folks on the street, they comment “Oh, it’s such a drag that we’ve been getting all this rain. But you know, the farms need it.”

Woah, woah, woah.  Here’s the thing about farms and rain. How much rain do we need on farms?  The same answer my constant questions my first year apprenticing: Just enough, but not too much.  I think every farm dreams of getting a nice, gentle rain once or twice a week.  Ideally at night, so it wouldn’t take away from the time in the field. Or maybe 1 rainy day every two weeks to give us a chance to go in and catch up on office work.  Then we could sow our seeds, know that they would get watered in, and the fields would still dry out enough to cultivate the fields.

This year’s abundance of rain has presented us with challenges. We haven’t been able to disc the fields, so areas that we had previously prepared for fall crops like sweet potatoes and brassicas have grown thick with weeds and grasses. Our early potatoes stayed wet, buried deep in the ground in furrows that collected water, and rotted.

The Silver Lining: Learning Opportunities

But the rain has allowed us to teach apprentices how to deal with wet fields; we’ve talked about the value of building raised beds with our bed shaper, which helps to keep our produce up out of the water in beds that drain better. We’ve shown the farmies the swales full of rainwater helping to keep our topsoil from running off in the hard rains. We’ve been putting our occultation tarps over the beds we’ve already made to keep them from getting too soggy to plant into. We’ve sidedressed our peppers and eggplant, broccoli and chard with fertilizers to help them size up after the heavy rains have leached more nutrients from the soil.  Weeds that have gotten too big to hula hoe means we are keeping the pathways clean with a weedwhacker.

Every season the weather lends up new challenges. Part of the fun of farming for me is that it keeps me on my toes. Having such a diverse mix of crops on this farm also lets us manage our risk so that there are always some crops that are doing really well. Onions have loved this rain, and planting them on biodegradable plastic mulch has kept them ahead of the weeds.  Eggplants are big, beautiful and bountiful.

We hope that you all get to savor the harvests that are abundant this year!