I am sitting here this Sunday afternoon trying to make a decision about whether to write a
summer blog or spray the upper field of potatoes with a blight preventing fungicide. If it
rains -as it seems to indicate at the moment- I will write the blog. If it were assuredly dry I
should spray the potatoes. I go to the national weather service and I read the following
statement:
“ A 60% chance of showers and thunderstorms before 2 pm, then after 2pm a 60% chance
of showers and thunderstorms.”
Hello?
I am not sure if the DOGE federal cuts in NOAA and the weather service are the result of
this pinpoint accurate forecasting or not. I find it slightly amusing, because I too have been
guilty of not proofreading on more than a few occasions. In any event we are once again
knee deep in a nasty drought like we had 2 years ago. After a cold and very wet start to the
outdoor growing season the weather turned on a dime on the advent of strawberry season
and has been extremely dry ( especially on the Plainfield end of the farm) and generally
miserably hot. This has been extremely hard on the greenhouse flower stock plants in the
propagation house as it basically can cook the root systems in the pots. Especially hard hit
are the fucshias which have been struggling and dropping leaves. Once strawberry season
hits, my attention gets shifted elsewhere on the farm. I should have asked for shade cloth
on the house back in May, but for the last few years we have done very nicely without it.
June and July have just been extremely hot. Speaking of extremes, back in the monsoons of
May we had an extraordinary cloudburst that dumped .6” of rain...in literally 5 minutes.
There was a lot of wind, but it didn’t last long enough to have significant damage about the
buildings. That was an incredible 5 minutes to witness. There were a few other gully
washers in May that washed out our access roads to the greenhouses and
farmstand...aptly named the Ho Chi Minh Trail by someone 40 years ago. Fortunately, we
have the tools and a skid steer to assist the farm road crew (me and Mike) so that all
thoroughfares are again passable.
Strawberry season was a bust. There were a lot of hypotheses as to why it was this year, but
no concrete answer. Most everyone agrees it was a climate and weather induced effect.
We struggled to watch it unfold and seemed powerless to alter it. I thought there was
something wrong with me that after 50 years or growing strawberries I couldn’t figure it
out. Imagine how relieved I was when I found out all of my colleagues were also having
shitty seasons! Misery, indeed, loves company. Alternately, when I got puffed up thinking
we are finally getting our blueberry growing game dialed in I found out most other growers
were getting epic crops this year. That was humbling. I guess I’m not so smart after all.
There is no question in my mind that no matter how hard you try, or how by-the-book -
correctly you farm, you can never underestimate your luck and how it plays into your
bottom line.
Elsewhere on the farm things are going pretty well. Our new farmstand manager Ali
Schubert has gotten the team up to speed and the stand again is chugging along nicely.
Alex Mentus is the kitchen leader and I haven’t gotten a bad cookie yet! Ray, Tim and Mike
are cropping, watering and harvesting about 75 acres of small fruit and vegetables,
managing a mixed crew of men, women and that special subgroup known as The Ancients
or Old Guys (those of us over 62.) . After the disappointing strawberry crop the blueberries,
black Caps and red raspberries have bolstered our spirits. We never seem to have enough
help to get all the things done that seem to need to be done. No change there from the last
52 years....
I just want to revisit my previous statement regarding the importance and influence of luck
to this farm. (Disclaimer: I am not a numbers guy. I got a D in entry level economics and
Anne took my checkbook away 3 weeks into our marriage because I bounced 3 checks...
but I understand the basic business concepts...I think....: )
We have a field of onions about a half mile down the road. There is a brook there. But it is
so dry now that we cannot irrigate out of it. The onions are ok but on the small size. Now if
we could get an inch of water to them this week we could have a great crop of onions for
winter storage. So after doing everything right to grow our onions this year the difference
between an ok crop and a really good crop comes down to this: 1 rainstorm, happening
this week. I think we need to be pretty lucky at this point. And that is the point. Its bad luck
that the drought continues, even worse luck that the brook which for 50 years has been a
dependable source of water to irrigate is not available to us.
Many people work with figures to structure their business models. We are encouraged by
many to run enterprise figures on our crops to analyze profitability or money loss. I can get
the total figures of our costs, labor, and inputs, figure them into the gross receipts of a
crop like potatoes. I can see after the math whether I made or lost money on potatoes.
What is a factor and is never talked about enough in the luck factor. The only thing we can
say about luck is it is highly variable from year to year. What are the chances of the potato
plants getting enough natural rainfall to bulk up the spuds? Are we going to be lucky
enough to get the potatoes out of the ground before the late blight arrives? There are many
variable factors and chancy things that occur in farming. They come out of both
somewhere as well as nowhere. You cant always plan for them, but you do have to operate
conservatively enough protect yourself.
You just have got to know- and believe - that shit can and will happen. In the meantime,
we are hoping to get lucky with the onions and their lack of moisture. And it looks-from the
sunshine I see on the barn- that I guess it’s now time to spray the potatoes.