Folly

It’s September again. We have made what may be (we’ll see) the last plantings of 2021. If the forecast projects mild, we will go one more round. If things are trending cold, then we might call it here. It’s always hard to make the call. If it’s made too early, then that is anywhere from 1-3 weeks of greens that we won’t have for you that otherwise could have been. If we plant too late, then it’s just a lot of wasted effort, resources, and time that could otherwise be used for porch chillin’, flushed down the drain. Like all things though, you just make your call and you live with it. Maybe come October, we will be sitting at the market stands with just carrots, onions, and kale, knowing that things could have been so much better, had we only made a different choice.

But maybe, the better option is to regard the human condition of making the wrong decision, or an opportune mistake, as just another force of nature. We got hit by a storm. We had extreme drought. The locusts…oh the locusts!! We suffered wrong decisions. We made happy mistakes.

This summer, Mar accidentally planted the carrots in 5 rows, a mistake that we may replicate in the future. Thanks to that happy accident, we didn’t have a gap in the carrot supply this summer that would have occurred had there been the usual 3 rows in the bed. So there you go. We are our own worst enemy when we think we are on top of everything. We are our best friend when we roll with the mishaps.

Towards the end of seasons on farms, we all try to take stock of everything. At this juncture, I think we would all like to think we get by on your skills, whits and work ethic. We would like to think we gamed the system, that we played our opponent, that we knew what was going to happen before it happened.

But maybe things are just blind luck.

It’s September again and despite painful feet, fatigue, and another summer of effort memories coming to it’s climax, I have to say that it is all still mostly luck that we get through it all. In September, we let the chips fall where they may, and acknowledge that it was folly all summer thinking that it’s ever anything other than that.

But I’ll take it. If all that’s needed is a little luck and a lot of happy mistakes, then it’s all easier than I had thought. Hell, maybe I’ll just believe it for that reason alone.

Onward, September.