talking about the weather

Clare Schaecher

Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 4:00 PM

I’ve got weather on the mind. Mike and I are home on a rain day. The remnants of Hurricane Gustav have been churning over us all day and it’s forecasted to keep going through the night. On Tuesday when it was 92 degrees and hadn’t rained in a week, we were worried about our new seedlings being too dry. Now we’re worried about it getting too wet. Last year Cedar Valley like many farms in the Midwest flooded badly in August rains. We avoided the lowest part on the farm all year out of concern for compaction and, well, a repeat. During our last push of fall planting we ran out of room and we decided to take our chances and plant in the low point. And now it won’t stop raining. I love ironic weather. Mike and I live 20 minutes away from the farm, so we haven’t seen how the land is handling the 3+ inches of rain. We’ll be in a certain degree of trouble if the land floods again, but there’s always a back up plan. No one minds a box full of celeriac right?

Yesterday Mike and I did our Wednesday harvest with volunteer and CSA member John. Mike and I were off of the farm for a few days, so the harvest was a bit like unraveling a mystery – what’s going be ready? At this point in the season, we can anticipate most of the crops, especially because it’s a small harvest: 12 people for Ottawa and DeKalb. Tomatoes, beans, zucchini, and kale are in abundance and necessary additions to the box (otherwise, we’d be overrun!). Everything else was a little less certain. Would we have enough eggplant? Would peppers be better? Which herbs looked the best? In the end, eggplant, basil and garlic made the cut. For most of the summer, the DeKalb boxes were delivered by another volunteer Paul. Paul is working on a masters at Northern and did deliveries for the Osmunds last year. His masters is on sustainable agriculture, and Paul would come out on Wednesdays and do some work and generally get comfortable with “field work” – in the anthropological and agricultural sense (how often does that happen?). A new class schedule means no more deliveries for Paul, which works out well because the season has slowed down and a trip to DeKalb is kind of a treat. Mike and I ended our DeKalb delivery with some coffee and a cookie. How nice is that?