(Not Dead Yet) The Week After Hail
The six year old, above, Elis, visiting from afar, had no idea were hit with hail this week. There was plenty to harvest for our chickens, and really just ten minutes after we loaded up our tractor bucket, 14, one hundred foot beds were flail mowed. The next day the beds were composted with 14 yards of compost and trapped, for planting in a few weeks. While we are still wrapping our heads around not harvesting for about 50 hours this week, and changing some of our growing plan for the season, there's plenty growing. Greens were planted this week, and look at the photo (way down belowa -- that's 28 beds of baby greens re-bounding (and yes, some were painfully mowed in). And while our sales this week, and probably next week will be 50% lower, you may not notice it much. There's some hail damaged zucchini, and pickling packs, and there was a lot to harvest, in our tunnels and with proper leaf stripping, quite a bit from the field. Some of our neighbors were hit too, as you read last week, and we really need you to load up on what we have at market today.
Mowing beds is painful, and revisioning crops plans mid-season is very difficult, and trying to make up income is hard for a farm but we are working on it. Erin, above, is well on her way to mastering our BCS walking tractor, purchased with a zero-interest loan this spring, along with a series of implements that disturb the soil much less than traditional tillage.
Hail damaged beds, flail mowed and ready for new plantings.
This block of 14 beds was an emergency planting block, one we had in reserve. We don't want to talk about the amount of compost (it's expensive) that it'll take to get into production, but here we are tarping this in after watering it in to break down organic matter and eliminate weeds. The trick with all of tarps is using the wind to your advantage, and then keeping them down with hundreds of pounds of sand bags.
With some of the extra time this week, we put a new trellis system in our high tunnel and did some maintenance on our tomatoes.
We aren't sure why Zukes, one of the cats, loves our Kubota so much. But, you all force us to breath a little, and we appreciate all the notes and visits this past Tuesday, and all the support. Mary will be bracing for the next hail warning (it's this Sunday), skipping a farmer training, and I'll be visiting with other growers, talking about some of our most irksome challenges. Thanks for everything. We couldn't do this without you
Editor’s Note: Farm store regulars and a lot of other farmers asked us how we handled the hail announcement, and followup with our 70 farm members. In the interest of transparency, and also trying to explain how challenging it can be to communicate the impacts of a major hailstorm on a market farm — with a fairly rigorous harvest schedule, this is one of the messages that got sent a few days after the hailstorm to our farm members.
Today was definitely different than most Mondays. As you probably saw in the email that went out on Sunday, we got pretty smashed up by the hailstorm that came through on Saturday evening, so we were not harvesting baby greens all day, as is our usual routine.
But we want to make sure no one, especially in our farm membership, is interpreting that news to mean that you shouldn’t come out and fill your feedbags this week. Because here’s the thing: we still have a LOT of greens and good stuff in the walk-in cooler, but it will not last forever. In fact, it really needs to get home to your kitchens by Thursday at the latest. Normally we have gone through all of the Friday greens harvest by member pickup day, and you’re getting Monday-cut greens. (if we have any left then from Friday harvests, we generally use them up ourselves or give them to farm friends, to keep the coolers freshly stocked).
But for better and worse, this week our Friday harvest for market was a lot more than we really needed on Saturday. That was partly because we were clearing beds to prepare for the next plantings, and partly because some restaurants actually closed for the 4th of July holiday and ordered less (apparently some people don’t work that day? Farmers don’t really think of that). A lot of it stayed in the walk-in cooler, rather than going to market, and is still in great condition. We really want you to come and load up on those baby greens, head lettuces, and bunched chard and kale while they are still here! The only fate worse than hail that I can imagine for a perfect leaf of lettuce or spinach would be to go bad in the cooler because no one came to take it home.
So again, members, please do fill up your bags this week, as soon as possible! For Tuesday we will still have lettuce mix, arugula, spinach, Asian greens, head lettuces, baby onions, radishes, salad turnips, and loads of garlic scapes.
Next week is when you may start to feel the impact, when you may have to adjust some of your eating habits to match what is available. But don’t worry, there will still be plenty, and we’ll put in some extra time to guide you to some great summer salads and veggie dishes that just might create some new favorites for you.
When you come out, especially on Tuesday, please feel free to check out the whole farm. Watch for the clues, like a layer of nasturtium leaves matted to the ground, below bare stems, next to the caterpillar tunnel. Fragments of fennel littering the bed. But don't despair. The good news is, many things are already starting to perk up and bounce back a little bit. Plants are sometimes all kinds of amazing, what they can do and recover from. We are trying to follow their lead. You may notice the whole front field you drive by, has been mowed; we’ll be preparing it to replant with fall crops, and we’ll also spend a chunk of the day working hard on our plans for bolstering up our fall and winter crop options, to bounce back from this challenge, too.
We are truly grateful for the support of members, especially when we experience some of these crazy swings in luck or conditions. You’ve made your commitment to the farm for the season, and you’ve agreed to take on a little of the risk of farming, with us. Don’t worry, your portion of the risk is fairly small (you may have to learn to like red salad turnips, next week), but spread amongst so many, it helps us feel less alone, and know that we can recover.
See you soon, and don’t forget to eat your salads while you can.