Hard Times
We ended up with 9 consecutive days of rain! The second time this year where we had over 1 week of consecutive rain fall. I lost track of the total but based upon a 5-gallon bucket left out in the field, it looks like we got 10-12". It could be worse. Columbia MO area got 10" in just 2 days, which would certainly be worse. Contrary to popular opinion, too much water is worse than not enough for vegetable farming. Roots rot, soil and foliar diseases run wild, planting and harvests are delayed and your farmer's boots are weighed down with so much mud.
It's weeks like this that are demoralizing and certainly humbling to farmers like us. We feel completely powerless in the midst of the deluge or the constant wetness. All we can do is think about what we could have done better relative to timing. "If we'd only known it was going to be like this we would have.....(Fill in the changes we would have made). Farmers of all kinds suffered some big setbacks last week and many feel discouraged.
I'm sorry we couldn't get everyone together for an onion harvest. This is one of the "I wish we'd have knowns" that we experienced. Once onions are mature, the necks fall over as the onion goes dormant. Best practice is to wait until 90% have fallen, stop watering them to let them dry down in the field for a week to 10 days and then harvest and dry them further. About 80% had fallen just before the rains started and kept coming. It was about the worst possible timing you could have had. In hindsight, it would have been better to grab the onions before the rains but we were busy getting in the garlic harvest (good thing we at least got that done before the rain). Anyway, the onions spent their dry down dormancy period soaked in water. Once the rain stopped we went to check and found that many of the most gorgeous huge onions we had ever grown had rotted in the field! 10,000 onions had rotted or were in danger of rotting, so we slopped in the mud to salvage what we could. Harvest is supposed to be joyous but not when you are checking each one for root rot and sometimes finding an onion mush mess in your hand. Even with all the work of installing drain tiles in our fields, amending with tons and tons of compost to improve drainage and using raised beds, our heavy clay soils were not working with us on this one.
The salvageable sweet onions are now drying down in the barn and we'll start putting in shares this week. We're checking on them and we think they are ok. But its possible some may have some internal damage or rot that we can't see. If you get a bad onion, please let us know. We've never had this sort of rain event at onion harvest before and we aren't certain that there may be some internal damage that we don't know about in some of the onions. We sure hope they are good and the ones we've checked are good, but there may be something we've missed. So if there is damage that goes more than a layer or two deep, we'd like to know about it.
We do have a second and even larger round of onions growing in the field (the ones above were planted in the fall), and I wish I could say they were doing well, but the constantly wet foliage has led to fungal disease which has really taken hold and looks like it will significantly reduce yield there. As organic growers, we don't have effective chemical fungicides at our disposal. We do have some organic sprays that we can use to help slow the spread of these fungal diseases, but they will not kill them. We've seen major differences in how hard hit certain cultivars are to these disease, so at least we've learned what varieties we will eliminate from our crop plan going forward.
Just letting you know we had a rough week and a half on the farm, but we'll get through. The sun is out again and our boots aren't quite so muddy. We'll get back on our planting schedule once the fields become less soggy and there are lots of crops that are still thriving. I can't tell you how amazing the outdoor tomatoes and peppers are doing right now (I can't explain it. This much water and wetness could have really hurt them, but they are looking really good right now!).
Thanks for being part of our food community and sharing in the joys and hardships of growing local, organic produce.
Blueberries!
You may have noticed blueberries available the last couple weeks. Maybe you tried to buy them but they were sold out, or maybe you were one of the lucky few who got them before they were gone. I didn't mention them here because I didn't want to get your hopes up because there were so few available, but this week, we have a substantial quantity so I thought I'd tell you a little more about them. These berries are from Crow's Nest Farm run by a friend of ours named Mark. He used to run the Heartland Harvest Garden at Powell Garden's for years. For many years we were inspired by Mark's work with making organic food production fun and beautiful. He is incredibly knowledgeable about organic horticulture and we often lean on him for advice about growing food. Marks' farm is quite small but he grows some great blueberries using all organic practices (something very hard to find locally) so we asked him if he'd like to sell them to ya'll. We've enjoyed the experiment and as more and more berries ripen, we'll have more available for you (and us). So while they last, enjoy! And thanks for helping support another small local farm seeking to grow in a sustainable and healthy way!
Bread and Cheese
Bread- Farm to Market Italian Artisan Loaf
Cheese: Hemme Brothers Quark , 6oz Jar
Closing Thoughts
I hope I haven't projected discouragement upon you. Instagram and Facebook are usually full of pretty things and successes, but real life isn't so antiseptic. Farming is a struggle. Life is a struggle. Thanks for struggling through it with us.
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
