Bouncing Back

I’m feeling more like my real self, the person who loves farming, teaching and being close to the soil. For months I’ve felt like farming was sucking the life blood from my veins. It certainly drained my heart.  On top of the third consecutive shitty growing year (I grow and harvest year round so it’s not just a season, it’s the overall amount of the time I work) we dealt with Steve losing his job for five weeks, adjusted to Taylor leaving home for six weeks and the sad loss of what I thought would be two great new friendships. I stopped saying “next year will be better” because I didn’t have any hope that it might be true.  Instead, I thought about being trapped because I have four greenhouses and a tractor that have to earn their keep.

Late blight showed up early and took the majority of tomato and a third of the potato plants with it. There are weeds that will grow in spite of seven weeks of rain. They thrived when many vegetables died. We bought the tractor to turn it all under so that I didn’t have to look at it anymore.

I quit farming. I did. I really quit. I’m not a quitter but I quit.  The fourth greenhouse is still in a pile. Steve started the ground stakes and one rib is up and standing guard all by itself.  That’s all.  I didn’t do any of the work.  There’s lumber up there lying uselessly on the ground and I didn’t give a damn. I kept telling myself today was the day I’d pick up the effing sledgehammer and pound a few stakes in. It probably would have made me feel better if I had because I could have released some of this pent up frustration, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I don’t even walk up there anymore. When I go out to look for raspberries I go around instead of cutting through the garden and having to be near that stack of steel ribs.  I avoided that area so well that I didn’t know there were a dozen bright orange pumpkins up there.  Steve picked and loaded them into the tractor bucket and brought them down to the house for me. I was almost excited to see them.  Almost.

I’ve been sad for months. (Editing to add: Although farming sucks, life is great! It could be much worse.)

I’ve noted the dent in the weed seed bank as weeds germinate and are tilled in. A few days ago I was happy to see that more weed seeds have germinated since the field was last tilled.  Happy. Not just noting the fact, happy. We’ve been working on decreasing the weed seed bank by tilling the top two inches of the soil. I think between us we’ve tilled four times. There aren’t many new seeds being deposited this year. The only new seeds have blown in from outside the garden, a problem I can’t control. That’s progress.

I’ve established a new wholesale customer for 2010 and will be contacting another.  The vegetables I’m growing for the first customer can be grown in a controlled environment – the greenhouses. I’m getting very excited about that.

Attention Fedco – I’m ready for the 2010 catalog now.

Maybe next year will be better.