A couple quick announcements then on to this week’s farm news. And if you read to the end you’ll read some good news (no skipping to the end or the good news won’t appear).
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The early money is on the first day of the harvest season being June 22nd. The final determination will be in early June. Now is the time to place your bets!
Farm News
The most difficult issue to deal with in farming is the weather. The second most difficult issue to deal with is weather forecasts. This past Monday is a great example of the difficulty we farmers have with weather forecasts.
Since sometime last week all I heard about on all the weather forecasts was how we were in for a big change come Monday. After a week plus of dry weather the doomsday predictors were all saying we were going to have a week of rain, rain, rain, nothing but rain. Then they kinda changed it a bit and said Tuesday would be dry but other than that it will be raining, raining, raining — especially on Monday.
So I planned for Monday to be a rain day. I worked the weekend instead of spending time with the kids. I had to get stuff done before we had a week full of rain. Stuff that couldn’t be done if it rained and/or the ground was wet. Then my plan for Monday was to plant our sweet potatoes in the hoop house, plant a third planting of sweet corn in the greenhouse, plant a second round of cukes in the greenhouse, plant a second round of basil in the greenhouse, do a bunch of office work including processing new orders, sending out emails from the prior week and finally having the chance to write a newsletter. After more than a week of dry weather resulting in a busy spring farming season I would finally catch up on all the indoor stuff that needs catching up on.
Then Monday came. It wasn’t raining. It was a bit cloudy but no rain. However the forecast said that we’d get rain in the late morning early afternoon. Seems like a good time to put in some transplants! Free watering! Without the rain we’d have to setup sprinklers or drip lines to water in the plants. How fortuitous! So off we went putting in the popcorn. We worked fast so we wouldn’t run out of time before the forecasted deluge came. When we finished there were a few spritzes of rain, so we thought, “Perfect timing. Now let’s go do some indoor work.”
Yet, the spritzing stopped. Never fear we were told, it will rain this afternoon with even more rain in the evening. So back out to the field we went to put in some more transplants — this time basil. “This will be the best basil ever. With all the rain in the forecast it will root nicely and grow quickly.” Upon completion still no rain. But with rain in the forecast lets keep going! So in went the third planting of broccoli. Still no rain. Well, we were out of transplants so off to do some hoeing. But what a great day! We got all these plants transplanted just in time for them to be watered in by the forecasted rain this evening.
We never got any rain. Despite all the forecasts saying we could count on it we got none. Beyonce got rain. What does she got that we don’t got? Rain. But the forecast said there’d be rain on Tuesday evening. So on Tuesday we transplanted the first round of cukes and a whole bunch of winter squash. As of Wednesday morning there is still no rain. The popcorn is looking a little sad. I haven’t checked the basil or the broccoli. If we don’t get rain early Wednesday we will have to irrigate. Not that that is a big deal but we weren’t planning on it. And if there is rain in the forecast does it really make sense to water the plants? You feel kind of stupid running sprinklers in the rain. Plus if it rains heavily and the ground is already saturated from watering it just makes for waterlogged soil.
So despite our best laid plans and our counting on the forecast being accurate we will have to replan again on Wednesday based on whatever the forecast forecasts. Do we plant in the greenhouse on Wednesday to catch up on the planting we planned to do on Monday? Or do we wait until it rains thus potentially delaying the planting later than we would like? If we greenhouse/hoophouse plant on Wednesday and it rains on Thursday we would have nothing to do on Thursday and feel we wasted a dry day on Wednesday. Aye, aye, aye. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just deal with the actual weather instead of the forecasted weather.
And the good news is we got the Allis model G running really well. I’ll save the story for another newsletter.