Every spring, farmers make grand plans. “We’ll keep everyone updated weekly.” “We’ll post lots of pictures.” “We’ll write thoughtful newsletter articles about life on the farm.”
Then June happens. By July, the newsletter exists only as a sticky note somewhere under a pair of muddy gloves.
People often assume farmers slow down in the summer because “everything is planted.” Those people have clearly never met a tomato. In the summertime, a farmer’s daily schedule looks something like this:
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Wake up before the sun because the vegetables think 5:00 a.m. is perfectly reasonable.
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Harvest until your back begins negotiating with your brain.
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Wash vegetables, pack CSA shares, and stock the farm stand.
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Answer 47 Facebook messages asking, “Do you have sweet corn yet?”
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Explain, for the hundredth time, that no, tomatoes do not all ripen on the same day.
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Chase escaped poultry and repair something that broke overnight simply because it knew you had plans.
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Pull weeds that apparently grow while you’re watching them.
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Irrigate because it hasn’t rained—or don’t irrigate because it has rained too much.
- Wonder briefly what day of the week it is, then eat lunch sometime around 3:47 p.m.
- Continue working until it’s too dark to find the tools you set down five minutes ago.
Somewhere in there, someone cheerfully says, “You should write an article for the newsletter!” Absolutely. We’ll get right on that… just after harvesting three hundred pounds of cucumbers, picking beans before they become baseball bats, tying tomatoes, mowing pathways, fixing irrigation leaks, moving animals, unloading supplies, repairing the mower, greeting customers, making deliveries, and convincing squash bugs that this is not, in fact, an all-you-can-eat buffet.
The irony is that the best stories happen during summer. The problem is they’re usually happening while your hands are full of peppers, your boots are full of mud, and you’re trying to remember why you walked into the greenhouse in the first place.
So if the newsletter is a little light this time of year, know that it’s not because we don’t have anything to say. It’s because we’re busy growing the stories. We’ll write about them this winter… when it’s snowing, the fields are asleep, and we’ve finally remembered where we left that sticky note.
Until then, if you’d like the latest farm update, just stop by. If we’re not in the field… or the greenhouse… or the wash station… or the tractor… or fixing something… or chasing something…
…we’re probably asleep in a lawn chair for the five minutes before someone asks, “Hey, got a minute?”