I hope all of y'all had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas! This is our last farm share of 2022! I think that this year we have grown some amazing vegetables, and I really look forward to growing for you and your family in 2023!
This week, we will will have a great assortment of root crops, plus some really tasty salad mix and bok choy! Now that the holiday markets have concluded, I can offer a lot more of our jam flavors every week. Next week, we will have sprouts again. I am still working on finding a local source for eggs. Our go-to-farm is Three Board Farm, but this is molting season for chickens, so most every egg farm with retail clients has all of their supply going to those outlets. I'm hoping that eggs will be back in a few weeks.
Farm Update
We arrived to the farm this week ready to survey the damage done by the Artic blast. After removing the row cover, things really were not as bad as I thought they would be. The root crops survived, but even with the row cover, we lost nearly all of our most recent outside plantings. Everything survived inside of the tunnels, so most of our salad mix crops are fine. However, we have really been relying on a lot of our mature row crops, most of which are toast as well.
Several factors contributed to the termination of the crops. For one, we did not have the appropriate row cover at the beginning of the week. We only had Thursday to deploy the new row cover. We have always been prepared for cold around 18 degrees, but below 10 degrees is really a new ball game for us. We finished putting out the row cover around lunch on Thursday, then the wind started. 35 MPH gusts were having a severe effect on the new row cover. This is the thickest cover we have ever used, and I didn't realize it would catch more wind than the other row covers we have used for years. We typically use concrete weights like cinder blocks to hold the row cover down, but the wind was lifting the blocks off and the row covers were flapping in the wind like 13 foot flags. We doubled all of the weights on the covers, but it still wasn't enough, then we ran out of weights. The cold wind was lifting under the gaps between the concrete, bringing icy, cold wind under all of the veggie blankets. At 5 PM the temperature really started to drop, and the wind kept howling. By 6:30, I felt like all of our efforts were a lost cause. I left the farm feeling overwhelmed, defeated, and pretty hopeless.
I needed something hot, so when I got home I ground some beans and made myself a pour over coffee. I took off my wet and muddy clothes, put on my bathrobe, and sat down staring blankly into the steaming cup. Then my brother calls me. "Casey said that he would bring Will and Ben, plus some shovels and help us save the farm tonight." My fiancé looked at me and said "let's go". I changed clothes, found an extra jacket and some gloves, and headed back to the farm. Everyone was there by 8 PM, and we set to work. The plan was to bury one side of the row covers with soil from the walkways. This hadn't even occurred to us during the morning time. I was so stunned by the row cover turning into flags, that my brain didn't think outside the box for a second. The six of us took one section of row cover at a time, burying one side with soil, then removing the concrete weights for reinforcing the opposite side. We did this until 11 PM. By the time we finished, the soil was freezing, crunching so strangely under our boots. The temperature was below twenty degrees. By the time we covered the carrots, they were already frozen solid.
Our friends really did help us save the farm. All of the crops we covered survived, except plantings less than a month old. I wish I had asked for their help sooner. I really learned a valuable lesson in finding the humility to ask for help. Our friends volunteering gave me the assurance that even if all of these crops die, we have an amazing group of people who love us, support us, and who would drop everything to help us at a moments notice.
I look back on photos from last Winter, and when compared to this season, we are just surviving, not thriving. The weather has been so impactful this summer and fall. After this Artic experience, I am even more convinced on the necessity of moving as much of our farm under protective cover as possible. We took out a loan for the BCS tractor, I think we are going to need to borrow some money and build as many of the caterpillar tunnels as possible this Spring. If we can add 6-10, 100 ft tunnels, I believe that will be enough growing space to ensure our Winter seasons are thriving, not surviving.
