Farmers are insane – at least those of us who do organic farming, CSA-style. And I offer the below proof of our insanity. But before I get into that, let me make a few announcements.
Don’t forget to RSVP to this year’s First Annual Fresh Earth Farms Fall Film Fest. We’ve had a great response so far but would love to see even more of you out here. Reply to the evite sent to your primary email address. If you didn’t get an evite please let me know and we will add you to the invitation list.
No Fruit, Cheese, Eggs, Shrooms, Salmon, Coffee or Meat this week. We do have flowers though.
This week’s veggies will include beans, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, eggplants, squash, broccoli, carrots, beets, tomatillos, and new this week peppers! We also might harvest a few other things like kale, kohlrabi and chard.
We are open on Labor Day. Please plan to pick up your produce as usual (unless you pick up in Woodbury). If Monday is your usual pick-up day and you won’t be able to make it you can switch to another day. Woodbury boxes will be delivered on Tuesday. Any of the Monday drop site members who can’t pick-up their box at their usual drop location on Monday can switch to on-farm pick-up during our normal pick-up times (M, W, F 3:30 – 6:30 pm or Th 9:30 – 11:30 am); please let us know if you plan to switch this week.
On to my insanity proof!
Now you are probably thinking that the proof of my insanity has something to do with harvestings 300 pounds of carrots and 500 pounds of onions on a 96 degree day. And you are probably thinking that carrying 500 pounds of onions into a greenhouse on a 96 degree day proves my insanity. Well, you are probably right. But that is not the proof I am offering. My proof goes like this: They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Some people attribute this quote to Albert Einstein, who as far as we know wasn’t insane. Nonetheless, this is the definition of insanity I am basing my proof on.
Before I started farming I believed this was accurate. I mean, how can you do something again and again and not get the same results? If I put a greater volume of water into a cup than the total volume of the cup the water overflows. If I do it again it overflows again. Seems pretty logical that the result would be the same time after time. So if you think the result will be different you must be insane. However since I started farming over a decade ago I’ve realized that you can do the exact same thing year after year and ever year you will get a different result. I’ve come to expect different results. No two years are ever the same. This convinced me that I must be insane!
Let’s look at a two examples from this season – a positive example and a negative example. First the positive: Every year we plant a late-Spring planting of broccoli. Without fail this planting pretty much fails. Broccoli likes it cool. The later in the Spring you plant it the more likely it will get too hot for the broccoli to survive. And it usually doesn’t. However this year we planted it at the same time as all the previous years and voilà we have wonderful broccoli here at the end of August during an extended heat wave. Unbelievable! Who are you calling sane now, huh?
Here is a negative example: We plant watermelons every year. Same melon seeds, same time. Some years we have great melons; some years we have no melons. And most years we are somewhere in between. But in every year we’ve never lost melon to crows – until this year. Here we did the same thing over and over again and this year we got results we would never have expected. Of course doing a Google search brings up millions of links to crows eating watermelons but not here at Fresh Earth Farms. Our watermelon field looks great. Beautiful plants. Small weed pressure. And many orbs of delicious, sweet delicate flesh – most of which have gaping holes in them now. Arg! Are you sensing the insanity?
So as you can see, over the years though we do things the same I have come to expect that the results will be different. This, as stated above, is the definition of insanity. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
As always, please feel free to send in your questions, comments, jokes, brain teasers, etc.