It's been a quiet week on the farm, where I keep an eye on the skies no matter what the weather forecasters say.  I am thankful that I call Connecticut home.  I love Florida and the Carolinas - but I wouldn't want to call them home this past week when the updates about evacuations, and all the folks that are extending their travels until the weather passes.  Farming is at the mercy of the weather.  Acres of fields cannot be covered, warmed, or sealed up to protect them from the weather.  We get what we get, and we don't get upset.

How do farmers prepare for a storm?

The idea of going to a store to fight for bottled water, extra bread, cans of food comes to mind at the first hint of a storm coming to Connecticut - it's not quite what we do to prepare for a storm around the farm.  We have well water.  We need electricity to keep the kitchen water and bathrooms running.  Anyone that has had kids potty training during storms knows this - you do what you have to to keep that bathroom functioning.  I had our house wired up more than 15 years ago to run off of supplemental power.  To restore power, I fire up a tractor that runs off gas or diesel and flip a switch to convert over.  I have a wood furnace that heats the house, but I don't worry about that unless it is winter.  As long as trees are around, we can be warm.  For food, I typically have preserves in the basement and more than a week worth of meals on hand.  We cook real food and a lot from scratch and enjoy doing that, so we have a lot of what we need to make things stretch without an extra run to the store.  The chickens out back help a lot - gotta love being that close from the yard to table.

Crops can get damaged

The fields are at the mercy of the weather, and a single storm can impact an entire season.  If I anticipate damage to the crops say excessive rain, hail, or flooding - I gather up the teams and we do an aggressive harvest.  We make sure drainage is clear and working.  If a crop is flattened - there isn't insurance for our type of farming, it's gone.  I am thankful for having pockets of fields spread out when storms come because they don't all get hit the same way.  Being a fourth-generation farm - I know which fields handle bad weather better than others, and I plant with that in mind every season.  Here's hoping for a mild fall.