difficult week for farming

been dealing with lots of stuff over the past week.
the weather has been pretty terrible, for farming purposes at least. rainy and cold. we got over 5 inches of rain in one week, which is a lot. some of our farmer friends have lost crops like summer squashes, cucumbers, spinach and radishes to name a few, to standing water in the field. we are very fotunate, and have had no standing water, still everything is wet and cold and we have not been able to plant anything in these kinds of conditions. so we're behind in planting, and the crops that are already in the field are just sitting there, not growing. the sun has barely been out last week, and that's what they're waiting for.

all this rain is washing the nutrients right out of the soil, and it's also encouraging all kinds of molds to develop.
in the greenhouse, my plants are getting too big, and waiting to be transplanted in the ground, as soon as we can work it again.

with all the weather related stress they've gone through, we're starting to see some insect problems as well in the greenhouse plants. the eggplants and peppers have aphids, and the peppers seem to be particularly affected. their leaves are curling and yellowing, and i don't like it at all. i spent hours hunched over them, going through each leaf by hand, squashing the aphids. if i could put them outside, the ladybugs wold come and get rid of the aphids, but i haven't even seen any ladybugs yet, maybe also due to the weather.

for more worries in the greenhouse, our 2 beds of early tomatoes were looking beautiful, but yesterday i found 3 plants with cutworm damage, so i spent quite some time putting collars around the base of each plant to prevent further damage.

with all this going on, i am constantly challenged not to get overwhelmed by anxiety. i have to keep reminding myself that, like my friend alice said, this is so much bigger than all of us. she meant that we're dealing with life, and there's only so much we can control (not very much at all). i have to keep reminding myself to just do my best, and let go. also, i need to remind myself to stop, so that i can spend time with my kids. working for yourself is wonderful in many ways, but it can really take over your whole life if you let it. there's always something else to be done, and i'm struggling with the discipline of stopping when i've done enough. with the CSA, i feel particularly committed to having good crops for people, and that can easily translate into anxiety, especially at times like these, when things are difficult. so it's a challenge, but i do need to let go of all my expectation, and humble myself to the fact that despite my best efforts, the results are unknown. fortunately, despite the challenges,  i'm actually loving this lifestyle, and would not trade its raw uncertainty for the illusion of "security" that an office job or something like that may provide.

when i get overwhelmed with thoughts like "what if my peppers die? etc, i also like to remind myself of a favorite quote" keep going, there's nowhere to go". of course.

well, that's enough for now. back to the greenhouse, squashing aphids...
peace

aiyana in the newspaper

last thursday, a photojournalist from the hartford courant, the largest newspaper in connecticut, stopped by our farm unannounced. he spent about 2 hours taking pictures of us doing our work and everything else we do. he talked to us for a while, and said he'd like to come back for more pictures and an interview. the next morning, our neighbor came by and told us that aiyana was in the newspaper. we could not believe how fast he turned it around.
check it out here.

it's lovely out there

i love being in the field around 6pm. the sun casts everything in a lovely soft light. took these pictures a couple of evenings ago:
lettuces

 peas

 strawberries, just planted, our greenhouse on the left, and poplars on the edge of the field

 aiyana with her little patch of garden. she and sena planted sunflowers in the greenhouse a month or so ago, and then they tranplanted in the ground last week. they've been watering and taking care of them.
 aiyana also got two pets yesterday, two cocoons i found in the ground when prepping some beds. they're probably cutworms, or corn borer, insects we don't want around, so i was going to squish them, but aiyana wants to keep them and watch them hatch, so she put them in a container with some food and water, and she's watching them. i'm so glad that my kids get to be outside, doing these things.

peace

it's right on the edge now. getting really busy, and it could be almost overwhelming, but it's not quite. we're keeping everything together, and the weather has been cooperating, and we've had no major setbacks.

we had our first outdoor market of the season on saturday, and it started raining and thundering right as we set up.the market was dead, and we had spent all morning picking and prepping vegetables. that always feels hard. but the rain stopped eventually and the hard-core custommers still came, and we did ok. came back with some veges, and gave them to the soup kitchen. the CSA is much better in that respect. we always know how much to pick and people come rain or shine.

we have four volunteers at our farm, and they come once a week each. they're people who love to be outside, and all have excellent work ethic. they enjoy being here and they're helping us a lot. mostly it's people who are more experienced that ed and i, and we're learning a lot from them. we are very grateful.

this past sunday we started family day again. that means that on that one day we try not to do anything other than spend time together. it's hard - there always seems to be so much that absolutely needs to be done, but we have to discipline ourselves so that we don't burn out, and more importantly so that we can spend some relax time with the kids. yesterday was very simple and low key, and it was just what we all needed. we went to the park, where sena and aiyana rode their bikes, then in the afternoon, ed went out with sena and i rode my bike to the cafe with aiayana. it was really nice.

it's so beautiful outside these days. the sky is blue, everything is blooming and the air smells sweet. it's a nice time to be.

peace

my onions

you know my onions, the ones i started in february and took care of daily in the greenhouse until mid april, and then spent all that time transplanting in the ground? well, they were looking great for the first two weeks in the ground, and then i noticed one wilted mid last week, and then a couple more, until last sunday half a bed (out of a total of nine beds) was wilted and looking dead. ed and i went out there and dug some up to see what's going on. we found these tiny maggots, which it turns out are the larval stage of the onion fly. the maggots tunnel through the bulbs of onions, including tiny seedlings, which they damage and kill. we never had these maggots before. bryan thinks that maybe our compost was not finished well enough, and it ended up causing an imbalance in the soil and attracting the flies, which then laid eggs, out of which hatched the maggots. i also heard that with all that snow we had last winter, the ground never really froze that much, and a lot of insects that would otherwise be winter-killed were not. we're certainly seeing that with ticks, there are so many more this year than in others.

in any case, this whole onion thing, i was so upset on sunday, could not stop thinking about it. i have no idea what's going to be happening to the rest of them, i went out there and checked again monday morning and saw a few more dead. i gave them a little fish and seaweed to try to strengthen them, but there's not much hope. i just kept thinking of all the work that went into them so far, not to mention the fact that i cannot start another crop for this year at this point, it's way too late. so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
i guess this is just part of farming, but one that's still very hard for me to swallow. things do not always go as i wish, of course, regardless of the time and care and love and all that i put into it.

one thing that helped yesterday as i worked on planting strawberries while thinking of the onions, was shifting my thinking from a "working against" to a "working with" pattern. like instead of working against the bugs and other things that may harm the plants, i thought that if i instead feel myself working as part of the whole, then things would just seem lighter, and easier, even though it would not really change what i actually do. just a slight mental shift...i'm still working on it.
peace