I’ve been thinking about aging, about this finite life and the time I have and how I want to use it. I’m enjoying the generational transfers as the children of my friends and classmates grow up and take on the roles of adults. One of the beautiful things about small town living and community is traveling through life with the same people, through the good times and the difficult times.
I’m coming to treasure the get-togethers and community events as the glue that holds us all together. I’m looking forward to summer festival time at Black Oak Ranch, and I’m loving the gatherings for our weekly local farmers markets. This is the year I remind myself about the things in life that are more important than work.
This is also the year that we find we’ve gotten enough experience and time in the field that our work is starting to become easier. Repeat a series of actions enough times and you start to reduce the pain points and find the efficiencies. I’m getting better at coordinating so that when we do have the support of extra hands the work goes smoothly and we get so much done that I’m always in awe of “many hands make light work.” But it isn’t that the work is easy, it’s more that we get so much done that the saying should be “many hands make quick work”.
Looking back it seems like we’ve managed to make the various enterprises happen through sheer force of will, but as I edge towards the second year of my 40’s it’s nice to realize that we’ve developed skill along the way. They say 10,000 hours makes an artist, and with the long days of summer upon us I reflect on the many thousands of hours I have put in to the land, the farm, my life’s work.
As we approach the solstice we’re full steam planting cannabis clones and turning over spring crop beds for summer salad mixes, melons and winter squash. Tomatoes are all caged and we’re pulling and training the branches to remain inside the cage and grow upward. Each cannabis plant gets a small cage at planting time to provide support and prevent branches from breaking, with either a larger cage or netting still to come.
The first of the large Brassica came in this week with a lovely cauliflower harvest, and the bed is already cleared and will be planted to the Crimson Sweet watermelons that are hardening off outside the propagation house. Broccoli will be next in a week or 10 days, then a good string of cabbages. Each week I sow some combination of paperpot trays of lettuce, Asian greens, beets, scallions, salad turnips and arugula, a few trays at a time alternating so that most things get sown twice a month.
One of the most basic rules in plants is that you must give them a few days to a week out of the greenhouse to get acclimated to life outside before you disturb their roots with the shock of planting. Despite this being a core tenet of successful farming, we’ve rarely managed it well because of the additional planning step. This year we’re being more careful about it, and the avoidance of time lost to transplant shock has been a solid gain in plant health and has cut down on time to market for crops that have been able to hit the ground running.
The fruit trees are all doing well with the abundant rains we got, and we have our first small crop of cherries from the trees we planted a few years back. It looks to be a great apple year from the two old stalwarts my folks planted in the 80s, along with the half dozen younger trees that are now producing well. I’m looking forward to pitting cherries for freezing and canning apple sauce with Pops on cool, fall mornings.
I tell myself that it’s too early to start musing about the days of fall to come, but as we edge towards the downhill rush that begins inexorably with the crossing of the solstice threshold, I find my soul turning in that direction. I’ve come to treasure the changing of the seasons, and I’ve also come to reflect on the deep strain of the long work days in the heat of summer. I find balance in the thoughts of the cooling that will come as the days shorten and the workload transitions from planting to harvest and then back to planting as we sow winter veggies and cover crop. So the cycle continues, and even in the hectic rush of planting I pause for gratitude. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!