Rain and The Right Tool for the Job

It's been hard to escape the rain recently. Until this week, it hasn't really bothered me since our week-long rainy stretches seemed to be separated by week long sunny stretches; pretty much perfect veggie farming weather. On Friday, though, we got over 3 inches of rain and we've gotten another 1/2-1 inch since then with the clouds not supposed to break until Thursday or Friday. (UPDATE: Thursday and Friday are now forcast for rain.) June is prime time for weed growth (crop growth, too) and the only time we can do any effective weeding is when the soil surface is dry. You might expect that rain and clouds don't make for dry soil. On top of that, the rain and lack of sun have kept the soil really warming up, and this leads to a general lack of nutrients and slow growth for crops. (For the same reason that we keep food in the fridge: retarded bacteria growth. Organic farmers rely on soil bacteria to break down complex soil components into nutrients that plants can absorb; the cool soil keeps this bacteria from really getting going.)

Ever the optimist, though, I have to say that all of our spring crops are LOVING this weather. Kale, chard, broccoli, cauliflower and lettuce really love this cool, overcast weather. The ample moisture and lack of heat, too, helps our transplants get established and set out some new roots.

Perhaps most importantly, though is that weather like this helps us make decisions. Farm in Maine is all about crisis management; there's so much to do and so little time to do it that it's easy to sideline tasks and projects which aren't absolutely critical or pressing. Long rainy stretches make it impossible for us to weed and plant, and therefore free us up to tackle less critical tasks. The past few days have seen us catching up on things like our bookkeeping, transplanting, greenhouse tomato pruning and trellising.

There's a few farm pics inside the full post...

We're borrowing this '67 International Cub from some friends who aren't farming this year. As much as tractors can be maligned for being noisy, stinky and energy in-efficient, the amount of work they can do is amazing. This one is over 40 years old, has had about as many paint jobs and can do in 15 minutes what last year took 2 people over 3 hours to accomplish. (Hilling potatoes.) We're also using it to help weed between the pathways of our beds.

A new trowel would seem like such a small thing, but when you're transplanting thousands and thousands of plants (a quick estimate is that we're setting out 150,000 plants this year), it can make a huge difference. Our old transplant trowel was nice, but it had a few annoying design elements that made it less than satisfactory. This one is wicked rugged, long and has a profile which matches that of many of our transplant cells and blocks. Most people would probably never think about these things, but after transplanting a few hundred thousand plants over the years, it starts to bug you.

This is a simple tool that I built after seeing it on another farm website . It helps us make little holes in our seeding trays into which we can drop seeds. Normally we would have to do this with our fingers. Not difficult or especially time consuming, to be sure, but it was just one more small, annoying task that stood between us and what we wanted to get done. We call it a "dibbler".

Here's a tray all filled with soil and freshly dibbled.

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A Perfect Moment

I've always said that I would be perfectly happy to be a farmer who grew nothing but cover crops. They really appeal to my Midwestern, soil conservation roots: large swaths of lush green plants waving in the breeze, holding the soil in place against wind and rain erosion, mellowing that soil with their plunging, penetrating roots and -- after all is said and done -- nourishing that soil as they're tilled back into it, adding precious organic matter, returning nutrients they've used and feeding the teeming multitudes of beneficial soil bacteria.

Generally, I have these "what if..." moments about cover crops while I'm on the tractor, mowing or tilling another lush, beautiful stand of something or other. I'm so struck by the simple beauty of it all (aside, of course, from the roaring, diesel-exhaust-belching tractor) that I just get lost in my thoughts. Recently, I had such a moment as I mowed a cover crop of winter rye and hairy vetch. I drove through the field, seeing the vibrant green and purple blossoms of the vetch contrast with the blueish green stalks and bearded tops of the rye; smelling the sweet scent of the freshly mown, succulent vetch; swallows swooping overhead (catching insects which the tractor had disturbed into flight); the sun shining, then not, then shining again; watching Chloe (our dog) lope through the dense stand, thoroughly enjoying herself, her head bobbing as she tried to see where she was going (she stands to mid-thigh on me and the vetch was easily over waist high in much of the field), but knowing that she didn't really care. How could I not get lost in the beauty of it?

But then, as the diesel fumes caught up to me and vibrations of the tractor started to jar my bones, I was happy to be done with it. The rye and vetch were gone (mown and lightly mixed into the soil), the dog had bitten a porcupine (and the porcupine, of course, had bitten back), the tractor needed fuel, and I needed a break from that hot, noisy machine. On my way back to the house, I took a detour for a walk through the other field -- the one full of beautiful, heathly vegetables growing in beautiful, healthy soil -- to remind myself that it's not so bad to be a veggie farmer after all.

Chloe, sitting in the rye and vetch.

Vetch blossoms.

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