Rain, Rain Go Away

A wise old farmer by the name of Don Wickham (Bill's Dad) has a saying:

"A dry year will scare you to death.

A wet year will starve you to death."

There seems to be a misconception that a lot of rain is good for farmers.

The reality is that we'd like about an inch of steady rain each week.
In the past week (Thursday to Thursday), we've gotten 4.25 inches (so far).

 Here are a few snapshots of what too much rain has done to some areas of our fields.

The picture above shows what the erosion from too much water has done to our early planting of beans. Thankfully, the beans at the end of the row -- in the top right corner of the picture -- are looking good. Our later plantings of beans were not affected. That means we may have a smaller quantity of beans available early in the season.

 This is what too much rain has done to some of our spinach. As Bill says, it is toast.

The spinach in the bottom of the picture is dead. Glad there's some further down the row that looks green. We planted a large quantity of spinach this year, which will help the situation.

Another complication of the rain is that we have not been able to do any field work this week. When the ground is wet, we cannot plant or weed. We plan for successive weeks of planting to give our CSA members a steady supply of crops. We were not able to complete any of this week's planting schedule.

 At this point, the rain is a challenge, not a disaster. But we will be most relieved if we have a dry weekend!