Greetings Urban Eaters,
Water is life to us farmers. Just last week at market I was talking with someone about the difference between using a soaker hose or a drip tape verses having a good rain. Plants aren’t fooled by our meek attempts to mimic rain. They respond immediately and distinctly different to a natural rain and reflect this by shooting skyward, stiffening their “backbones” and displaying their knack for speedy growth tenfold.
Though sometimes, as many have experienced this year or last, this life-giving force can become the very thing that can take life away. And combined with poor draining soil, as we have at our tiny farm, the end results are rarely praise worthy. So, with the torrential rains of last night and early this morning, I walked the breadth of our tiny farm today, sometimes in ankle-deep water wondering how the earth can both give so much and take it away. Greens that were supposed to have their first harvest this morning found themselves drowning in flooded fields. Tomatoes, though picked and watered regularly throughout the week were cracked, and fallen from the plant due to the amount of water taken on by the plant. Pumpkins sat in soggy mulch and grasses.
I’m unsure what happens after this.
Some things will inevitably rot and die. Some things will get sick. And some things will continue to survive, despite this compromise. This certainly has been a growing season to remember.
So for now my time at market is postponed. Hopefully we can return for a couple or more markets if things recover well. I’ll keep you all posted.
But before I sign this, I want to say thank you to each of you for coming to find me week after week at market this growing season (when I’ve been able to attend). Your conversation and your lively spirits and kind words are the reason I keep at it. I appreciate you all, and hope to see you before the season truly wraps up.
All my foodie love to each of you,
Farmer Kim
Scrap Yard Urban Farm