Last week I wrote about our irrigation system, how important it is and how grateful we are to have it as this drought continues. Two days later, the farm well started sucking air. The well technicians came the next morning and sunk the pipe another 5 feet or so. “That’s all you’ve got,” they said. It wont go any deeper. The prospect of the well running dry is terrifying.
I am tired. Of course, I am, it is September after all. But really, I’m tired of things being hard. It feels like it has been an exceptionally difficult year. It started hard with three inches of ice in January that brought down one of our high tunnels. “It wont break us,” I told another farmer. It was hard when we had the driest March and April we’ve ever experienced. We always thought we could count on spring rains. We lost our employee, Kayla, and that was hard on everyone. June was hard when we were painfully understaffed and it wouldn’t quit raining. A hot July. A hot August. And now no rain. The garden is struggling.
We can persevere through all of these events individually. But there is a cumulative effect. I’m tired of every weather event being exceptional. Exceptionally wet, exceptionally dry, exceptionally hot. And I’m afraid this volatility is the new “normal”. I am afraid for what that means for us and for others and for the security of our food system as a whole.
And I hate to complain when we have a thousand things to be grateful for, and we do. I know we do. I have always been one to lean in to hard things. I chose to start a farm, after all. Shame on me for complaining that things are hard when I chose the hard path. But my emotional resiliency is already being sucked dry (much like our well) by my concern for the state of human rights in this country. Getting up each day and functioning at all is hard enough. I am ready for soft. I am ready for easy, or at least easier.
There are silver linings, of course. We hired some really great people in June. That might not have happened if we hadn’t been so desperately in need of extra hands at that time of year. I am sure there are other good things, too. But goodness knows I can’t think of them right now. We are just going to keep on doing the best we can to cope with less than ideal circumstances. This wont break us.
Small Shares
- Tokyo bekana and arugula mix
- Komatsuna
- Butternut squash
- Grab bag – members will get different veggies and we didn’t have enough of any one thing
Full Shares
- arugual
- komatsuna
- tokyo bekana
- butternut squash
- radishes
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