Shorts

The number of people who have actually seen Rob wearing shorts, especially since he became a farmer and stopped playing volleyball, is a fairly small number.  But, the title of this blog post has nothing to do with wearing shorts.  Instead, it has to do with the fact that we have not put anything on our blog for a while and we need to put some thoughts out there.  So - we'll do a bunch of 'shorts' in one post!  How inspired!  Ok.  It's a cop out.  The farmer just doesn't want to commit to one topic.  That's just the way it's gonna be.

Why the gap in blog posts?
There is really a fairly simple way to determine why there have been relatively few posts as of late.  Look at the weather and ask yourself if there has been a chance for Rob to sit down at a computer.  There was one such opportunity over the last couple of weeks, but it was spent on other important tasks.  Maybe there was a second?  Essentially, during Summer months, Rob tries to write posts ahead of time and schedule their release.  Once those posts run out...

Energy Vampire
The recent drift incident on the farm (see a couple of prior posts) encouraged us to do our best to get people activated to pay attention to chemical applications around them.  The problem with this is that it assumes we have 'extra' energy to spend on this task beyond what is needed to do all of the farm work.  We wish we could do more on this AND we wish we had more energy to get everything done on the farm.  As it is, we just do what we are able and hope it is good enough.

Here is what we have shared on Facebook and on our CSA emails this week:
Support your farmers during NEVER AGAIN Week on the farm. July 27, 2012. July 29, 2017. June 27, 2018. These were all confirmed chemical misapplication situations on our farm alone. Agri-chemicals are tools that need to be treated with more respect and caution than they seem to be given currently. Drift and missed targets threaten our health, our workers' health and your health.
Be prepared to call the Pesticide Bureau if you witness chemical misapplication on the road as you drive, on bike paths as you ride, near schools, rivers or by your home. Make the problem known by taking time to act.
Pesticide Bureau
515-281-8591
pesticides@iowaAgriculture.gov

Compost Builders
The picture you see above is actually 'old news.'  Sadly, we've fallen down on the picture taking job.  Interesting enough, the last pictures I have on the computer came from our documentation of ... take a guess... the drift problem we had on the farm. 

Nonetheless, you can see Mount Evermess, one of our compost piles, towards the back of this picture.  Our compost piles have been VERY happy of late as we have been pulling a significant amount of weed matter out of our fields and placing it into our compost piles.  In fact, we started a new pile in the northeast today.  We're looking for a new name for this pile - so suggest away.

Just so you know, we have Mount Evermess and Mount Brushmore.  We had one we dubbed Mount Rain Here, but it started raining and didn't stop.  So, we got rid of that one.

Lilypalooza 2018
The daylilies are putting on a show at the farm right now and we hope to get some pictures to share so we can make our annual Lilypalooza posting.  We've been thoroughly enjoying these flowers, though we wish we had the time to weed some of the perennial beds so they looked better.

That actually leads us to:

Tom Sawyer Week 2018
In the past, we would host "Tom Sawyer Days" to try and give people an opportunity to volunteer at the farm.  Over time, that idea seems to have faded with many people moving on in some fashion or another.  We are still quite willing to host volunteers who would like to help out at the farm and the time is ripe for it.  We have lots of weeding to do, but there are other projects as well.  So, if you would like to help us make one of our daylily beds look absolutely spiffy, let us know!

Trapped
One of the themes of our lives on the farm right now is that we are in the middle of pesticide/fungicide spray season for all of our soybean/corn growing neighbors.  That means many of our thoughts go to that topic - thus we can't escape it when we write.  I was tempted to apologize until I realized that people need to hear how much the threat of a misapplication can change my attitude and the day to day choices we make on the farm.

For example, we will not leave our farm unattended during this stretch of time.  In the interest of food safety, we have to keep an eye on applications of chemicals within a mile of our farm (sometimes further out on windy days).  This may well be a topic worthy of its own post someday.  But, think of it this way:

How many of you leave your house on a daily basis and think nothing about it?  What if you had a single neighbor who was infatuated with the color lavender and how it looks on stone bird baths?  What if they had a penchant for painting any stone bird bath lavender... whether they owned it or not?  You LOVE that bird bath, but you DO NOT want it to be lavender, so you re-consider that trip to the grocery store.  Or maybe one of you stays home to keep an eye on that lovely bird bath while the rest of the family goes to a movie.

Now, consider that we have multiple neighbors that like the color lavender....

Alas, now you see why I haven't been writing blog posts - I stooped to using bird baths and the color lavender.  What next?  I suppose I could tell you that I dreamed I was weeding the zinnias.  Or was I really weeding the zinnias?  Tune in next post and find out!