Archive of Past News of the Farm:
Perseverance November 15, 2011 |
Perseverance
November 15, 2011
Greetings Friends of the Farm,
Alas, I haven’t written to you this year as often as in every one of the past fifteen years that I’ve penned the News of the Farm. It has been my habit to sit down at the computer every single Monday afternoon. Then I could reflect on this farm life, without being out there doing it!
If I hadn’t already thought of the first sentence while cultivating the beets or collecting eggs in the Hen House, I’d look at that “Untitled” sheet of “paper” and conjure some idea into being. Sometimes, I’d relax on my bed, and let ideas just drift across my mind, until inspiration crystallized.
With a good thought, the words would outrun my fingers on the keyboard, and they would be full of mistakes. But it didn’t matter as the ideas were in a hurry, not caring how they were spelled. Just get them down, and come back later to twitch them out of their msteakes. Often, the subject with which I started the essay would be highjacked in the third paragraph by another, better, quirkier one, and soon the top paragraphs would be expunged in favor of the new ones.
Spontaneous ideas -- often the best -- are hard to hold onto at times, especially if the writer is sowing a crop or drifting off to sleep. And now and then, there are no ideas at all.
And that has happened many times this year. It’s necessarily been all action here; communication is alive and well, but spoken, only. There’s been just too much to keep me outdoors, and wear me out, and don’t you know that the mind loses energy just as does the body, at the end of the day....
This has been a rare year, and at times, a frustratingly depressing year. Because of the unfortunate climatic activities, starting last February and continuing into the future perhaps, our work load has rivaled the very first few years of our farming adventure. Then, in the early ‘90s, Larry and I would put in 70-hour weeks, as that is what it took to nourish a second farm. Figuring out crops and remedying the lack of barns, coolers, equipment. -- on two farms -- it consumed us, but we were dedicated, and, we had no employees, so it was up to us.
Now we have around 10 helpers, and we are down to 60-hour weeks this year, as that is what it takes, to keep the two farms producing successfully. But more than filling hours, it takes persistence.
I planted green beans 3 times this summer. Not one crop made. That green bean debacle, the least of many this year, has stuck in my mind. I hoped, somehow, the weather would “break” and the bean flowers would set fruit. Useless hope.
But, if I hadn’t kept planting -- like backing out of the stock market -- I would have missed those potentially magic weeks when the beans I did not plant would have hit a cool spell and set like crazy. So, hoping, I planted them, and planted them, and planted them, but the weather ignored my faith and produced the hottest summer in USA-recorded-history, and accordingly, I had no green beans.
(Above: A hose leak caused a sweet spot for the Bermuda grass.)
You
cannot outguess the weather, so you just do what you do, and try to hit
it right some time. Perseverance. A farmer, like a writer, cannot just
sit out the season and wait for the next, the best one, to come.
The best season will come when her fields are bare. The idea will come when there is no chance to sit at the computer. And the ideas did come, but I was in the field.
You know that this applies to all of life. Persistence is another word for perseverance. There are many other words to describe this rule of living. You finish what you start. Stay at it. Don’t give up.
People coming to the farm stand say they are amazed at what we have on the tables. They see in their yards, their gardens, their trees, how hard this year has been. How unyielding, in all of its senses. No matter what was done, the results might not be worth the efforts expended.
(Tomatoes do like dry weather....)
But
they were. No matter what the yields were. No matter that all the green
beans failed to yield fruit at all. No matter that most of the crops
died or were wounded in the February Freeze, or that the okra and
eggplant succumbed to the horrific heat. No matter that the plants were
as confused as the people. No matter that in the field the summer heat
registered, in the sun, at the level of the plants, over 125 degrees.
(This was a great squash year!)
No matter. The tomatoes made a good crop, as did the strawberries, the squash, and now...another season has come. We have bounty. A one-inch rain today, a reasonably gentle soaking rain that turned ugly for only a short while. Our new total since last November: 7 inches. (You apparently get it when you need it.)
(During the "ugly" part, but it's RAIN!)
This new season will have its challenges. Freezes are a month early. But we had rain, and the well still pumps 10 gallons a minute, and the desire to feed people still holds us in a special embrace that inspires us to do whatever it is we must do to help the plants provide.
And, momentarily perhaps, but beautiful nonetheless, we see healthy produce in our fields and on the farm stand tables, and that is mostly the result of perseverance.
Carol Ann
(Above: The front field with Chicories, Succulent Spinach, Lettuces, Sunflowers...)
Back Alas, I haven’t written to you this year as often as in every one of the past fifteen years that I’ve penned the News of the Farm. It has been my habit to sit down at the computer every single Monday afternoon. Then I could reflect on this farm life, without being out there doing it!
If I hadn’t already thought of the first sentence while cultivating the beets or collecting eggs in the Hen House, I’d look at that “Untitled” sheet of “paper” and conjure some idea into being. Sometimes, I’d relax on my bed, and let ideas just drift across my mind, until inspiration crystallized.
With a good thought, the words would outrun my fingers on the keyboard, and they would be full of mistakes. But it didn’t matter as the ideas were in a hurry, not caring how they were spelled. Just get them down, and come back later to twitch them out of their msteakes. Often, the subject with which I started the essay would be highjacked in the third paragraph by another, better, quirkier one, and soon the top paragraphs would be expunged in favor of the new ones.
Spontaneous ideas -- often the best -- are hard to hold onto at times, especially if the writer is sowing a crop or drifting off to sleep. And now and then, there are no ideas at all.
And that has happened many times this year. It’s necessarily been all action here; communication is alive and well, but spoken, only. There’s been just too much to keep me outdoors, and wear me out, and don’t you know that the mind loses energy just as does the body, at the end of the day....
This has been a rare year, and at times, a frustratingly depressing year. Because of the unfortunate climatic activities, starting last February and continuing into the future perhaps, our work load has rivaled the very first few years of our farming adventure. Then, in the early ‘90s, Larry and I would put in 70-hour weeks, as that is what it took to nourish a second farm. Figuring out crops and remedying the lack of barns, coolers, equipment. -- on two farms -- it consumed us, but we were dedicated, and, we had no employees, so it was up to us.
Now we have around 10 helpers, and we are down to 60-hour weeks this year, as that is what it takes, to keep the two farms producing successfully. But more than filling hours, it takes persistence.
I planted green beans 3 times this summer. Not one crop made. That green bean debacle, the least of many this year, has stuck in my mind. I hoped, somehow, the weather would “break” and the bean flowers would set fruit. Useless hope.
But, if I hadn’t kept planting -- like backing out of the stock market -- I would have missed those potentially magic weeks when the beans I did not plant would have hit a cool spell and set like crazy. So, hoping, I planted them, and planted them, and planted them, but the weather ignored my faith and produced the hottest summer in USA-recorded-history, and accordingly, I had no green beans.
(Above: A hose leak caused a sweet spot for the Bermuda grass.)
The best season will come when her fields are bare. The idea will come when there is no chance to sit at the computer. And the ideas did come, but I was in the field.
You know that this applies to all of life. Persistence is another word for perseverance. There are many other words to describe this rule of living. You finish what you start. Stay at it. Don’t give up.
People coming to the farm stand say they are amazed at what we have on the tables. They see in their yards, their gardens, their trees, how hard this year has been. How unyielding, in all of its senses. No matter what was done, the results might not be worth the efforts expended.
(Tomatoes do like dry weather....)
(This was a great squash year!)
No matter. The tomatoes made a good crop, as did the strawberries, the squash, and now...another season has come. We have bounty. A one-inch rain today, a reasonably gentle soaking rain that turned ugly for only a short while. Our new total since last November: 7 inches. (You apparently get it when you need it.)
(During the "ugly" part, but it's RAIN!)
This new season will have its challenges. Freezes are a month early. But we had rain, and the well still pumps 10 gallons a minute, and the desire to feed people still holds us in a special embrace that inspires us to do whatever it is we must do to help the plants provide.
And, momentarily perhaps, but beautiful nonetheless, we see healthy produce in our fields and on the farm stand tables, and that is mostly the result of perseverance.
Carol Ann