July-Ride It

The other day while waiting for a tornad0-toting storm system to envelop us, I manicured the pepper patch, freeing our shishitos from competitive crabgrass and opportunistic chickweed. The peppers tended, I slipped back into the farmhouse as winds started to swirl through our fields, testing the flexibility of the trees.
The nature of our work is such. We encourage seeds to come to life, then tuck them into fertile ground, meeting their needs best we can. All the while the wild world they reside in sets the stage for the growing season and introduces plot points that keep us turning the page. In the case of our peppers, I cozied up with Rich and the kids, wondering if all the work was for naught. Having watched one of the Memorial Weekend tornadoes from a few years back touch down properties away outside our window, I don't belittle tornado warnings. Ultimately, I'm glad for the liberation that this work gives me. If all is for naught, I'm satisfied having spent days under the sun lost in rows of peppers and taking turns with the honeybees to visit squash plants...both of us harvesting for our hives. Passing our days enriched by this work, the puzzles it presents, the ideas it allows us to put into play, and the fulfillment found in sharing its fruits with the good people in our lives...the payoff is the essence of this life, not the bins of peppers never realized.
Less dramatically, but maybe not less apocalyptically, the haze which has sat on top of the farm for the past month, a product of the aggressive wildfires burning in Canada, has presented more than one twist for the growing season. The sun is tamer, making for cooler conditions and lamer deliveries of that photosynthetic foodstuff: unadulterated rays of sunshine. The kids both pipe up on the smokier days, befuddled and even checking in about bedtime around 2 o'clock in the afternoon. The air quality here has suffered in fits and starts, literally taking our breath away on days when the AQI reads high and we are out in the field. I can't help but wonder how the plants are breathing? That question is what leads me to dip back into a cup half full...the cup that my Gemini self prefers to swim in.
Though we seeded the field on the same schedule as the last two years, this was the first year we have had such diversity of crops ready for our market table by mid-June. And though the tomatoes have taken two weeks longer to ripen for us than in previous seasons, the leafy and root crops have taken advantage of these alien conditions to grow into better versions of themselves than they have proven to in a more typical muggy, smoking-hot southern Ohio summer.
And so, as per usual, the toils, triumphs, and failures in the field have proven enlightening on a philosophical level. I know we have become better farmers the more we focus on reacting and adapting versus projecting and trying to force our will on the farm. It's like we are all sailing through life, the vast and wild sea. The conditions are continuously in flux, introducing new possibilities or realities to the course we're charting. It's futile to plan too far ahead when at the mercy of the ocean, and so in order to survive the sail, you ride it out, tacking and jibing with the flow of the wind and the waves.
May we ride the waves as they come, accepting the reality of it all, and catching the drift as it passes.
Updates from the farm:
-Full swing at Farmers Market: The Oakwood Farmers Market is going strong. We are there from 9-1 every Saturday again this month :)). It's been the best year yet with new vendors, music and consistent food trucks. Definitely come to enjoy the party
-General Motors Project Next Door: GM got approval from the Ohio EPA to build on the cleared wetland site a few doors down from our farm. We were disappointed but not surprised. We were happy to see a revised plan to include a native tree planting and a birm as buffer to the west, where our farm lies. Unfortunately "a lowering of water quality in the Lower Great Miami Watershed as authorized by (this) permit is necessary" according to the Director of the OEPA. We are ready to grow this place of ours greener and to accept that we can only do so much to affect the reality of de-regulated corporate America. To all who got involved or who reached out in solidarity, thank you so much. If anything you convinced us that we want to stay and grow here.
-Pollinator Research: We are thrilled to be participating in a University of Dayton graduate research program studying the local pollintor populations, their presence and affect on local farms and farmland from year to year. More to come.
-Sure there is more I'm forgetting here, but it is July and my head is in the field :).