Reasons for Optimism

I had a conversation this Winter with an individual who was very aware of our weather struggles last year and is also aware that changes will likely result in difficult conditions on a fairly frequent basis in the future.  After some discussion, they asked me, "So what makes you think this coming year will be any different from last year for you?"

The easy first answer is that we have to believe this coming growing season WILL be different than the last.  Otherwise, what would be the point of even trying?  Even if the weather gives us a similar level of challenge to last season, our farm WILL change how it does things in an effort to persevere regardless of those conditions.

In other words, if we focus on what we can control, rather than the things we cannot, there should be plenty of reason to be optimistic for the 2019 growing season.  Now that I have your interest, shall I give you some examples?

Vince Knows His Place
A full season with a tool that responds to a bottle neck in our labor stream.  That alone should be enough to provide a reason for optimism.  The power harrow (which we have named Vince) will be with us the entire season and that alone is reason for some celebration.

Our windows for soil preparation have always been on the smaller side, but they have gotten smaller over the past several years.  Vince gets rid of some extra steps and actually will result in less tillage (which is better for healthier soil) despite the fact that it is a bit of a beast.  In the past, we have found ourselves using a combination of tools to prepare beds for planting.  The tool depended on the crop, the location, the soil conditions and a few other variables.  In the end, while we didn't want to, we often found ourselves over-using Barty with his roto-tiller attachment.  That's not great for the soil, but if you get backed into a corner, you sometimes find yourself doing the less than optimal thing.

Here we are with the very first FULL growing season with Vince at the farm.  We have enough experience to now know how he works and what he is best at.  Knowing your tools and feeling confident about how best to use them is one good reason to feel some optimism.

Happier Plantlings
Last year featured a disastrous foray into a soil starting medium that caused us no end of problems.  The medium itself was probably fine in other circumstances, but it did not fit our operational procedures at all well.  The net result was that we had some poor quality plant starts for some of our key crops.  The onions, for example, just didn't put on bulk.  In fact, very few of the onions we started made it to harvest.  But, we were lucky enough to be able to pick up extras from our friends at Grinnell Heritage Farm last Spring.

The photo at left shows one of our onion beds just after it was weeded by our flex tine weeder.  The bed looks pretty clean and the plants look fine, even after they got beat up by the weeder.  We had a decent onion crop - even if we had half of the plants we were planning on putting in.  Many did not store as well as they normally did because of the late, wet conditions.  But, we still had high quality onions in reasonable numbers.  If this years starts are anywhere near our normal quality and conditions are the same or better than they were last season, those onions are going to be great!

Yes, I know it is dangerous to count chickens before they hatch, onion starts before they germinate and season results in March.  But, this blog post IS titled "Reasons for Optimism."  We need some optimism so we can get into this year with a good will to make our hopes reality.  This does not mean we fully expect everything to go exactly as we planned, nor does it mean our mental pictures of success will align perfectly with the reality that will be the 2019 growing season.  It would be foolish to expect the Winter time mental picture of perfection to be a daily reality for us in June (or pick a month).  We are realistic enough to have a picture of 'reasonable success' that resides super-imposed over both the 'perfect success' and 'imminent failure' that are in our mental files.

Raised (Bed) Expectations
There are other techniques we have used in the past that have had some success to combat very wet weather and we expect to use them even more going foward.

Last season, we raised the planting area for more of our crops than ever before.  However, if you will recall, we mentioned that planting bed preparation has been a labor bottleneck that we needed to address.  That leaves us in a bit of a quandry.  Many of our crops survived the wet simply because we DID raise the planting area.  So, you could argue that we're adding time back onto that bottleneck and we won't have made any real progress.

Well, argue all you want.  We're still going to raise all of the beds on our farm for next years crops.  You could argue some of our shorter season crops might not need it, but we can't predict when (or if) we will get excess rains that could cause us problems.  Heavy rain events are not just for Spring anymore, so we need to be prepared with all of our annual crops.  The great news is that Vince can help us with this by preparing the soil a bit more evenly for hilling.  And, our other processes have been adapted fairly well to these raised planting areas.  It should work out just fine!

Keeping Up With the Weeds
The last couple of wet seasons have shown us that we cannot keep up with the weeds with things the way we are.  We've got good cultivation tools now and we know how to use them.  But, if it stays too wet to use them, the weeds don't wait for you to cultivate.

We've been trying paper mulch (Weedguard Plus) at some level or another for several seasons now.  The product has shown marked improvement and we are getting better with adapting our systems to the use of paper mulch.

Last year, we focused on paper mulch in the field tomatoes and were were duly impressed with the results.  We have used straw mulch every season prior to this and found the amount of labor to be significantly less with the paper mulch.  In fact, our workers generally do not care for spreading the straw anyway, so they aren't crying about this change.

This season, we expect to go back to paper mulch in the vine crops since that was our Achilles last year when it came to keeping crops clean.  The tomatoes will get the same treatment as last year and the peppers will likely join them.  This is not to say that paper mulch solves all of the weed problems, nor is it without risks.  But, we think this is one of the correct responses we can provide that will result in a better season.

Better Blooms
There will be flowers.  Lots of them.

There will be zinnias.
There will be borage.
There will be sunflowers.
There will be marigolds.
There will be nasturtium.
There will be 4 O'Clocks.
There will be calendula.
There will be alyssum.
Lots and lots and lots of flowers.

How can you not have some optimism when you see flowers in your future?  Even last year, there were flowers.  Perhaps they weren't what we were hoping for when the season started, but they were present.  The zinnias bloomed until it got so wet that they drowned.  But, this year, they will be in raised beds.  That should help them.

And, our reasons for optimism are often linked.  If we increase the number of vegetable rows with paper mulch in them, there will be more time to keep the flowers weeded.  Yes, there is still a great deal of work involved, but we are talking about reasons for optimism, not reasons to ignore reality. 

When the Lettuce Was Good It Was Really Good
It felt like everything was a failure at times during the 2018 season.  But, that is actually a long ways from the truth.

Our CSA customers had a pretty good season until we got to the end of October.  We had to pull back from several potential sales to make sure they had product, but that's not the point.  The point is - we had some pretty darned nice produce last year.  It just wasn't what we wanted or needed.

The point here is that we still produced some quality veggies in a year that was among our most difficult.  If I can show you pictures like the one to the left from a year we both feel was a tremendous struggle, then imagine what a year with adjustments (and hopefully less weather extremes) could provide!

Another example of success in a difficult season would be the poultry.  The turkeys and broiler chickens were good sized and high quality all season long.  Other than our first broiler batch, we did not lose very many young birds.  Our laying hens continued to lay consistently all year long despite poor pasture conditions starting in September and cold weather this Winter. 

Despite 2018 being what it was, the Genuine Faux Farm produced some quality food for some wonderful people.  Now, the Genuine Faux Farm farmers have ideas about how to address some of the biggest issues that raised their heads during a difficult year.  They have more tools, even more experience and energy to make it happen.

Will some things go wrong?  Of course they will.  But, we intend on making MORE things go right.

Here's to a positive attitude going in to the 2019 growing season!