Just Enough

Mamma Nature was kind enough to grace us with some rain. Not enough to break a drought, but just enough to turn right around and do our jobs more proper.

“Just Enough” is the story of every farm that keeps going.

The rain timing was right for so many reasons, not the least of which being all the stupid things I did this week to slow things down otherwise, and not the least of those being running over our seeder in the early morning with the tractor in preparation for fall carrot planting. I heard it crunch under the wheel as I backed up. I looked down, saw the crushed seeder, and thought, “Well, how about that”. I went inside, ordered a shiny new seeder, and sent a text off to our friends at Turnip Rock Farm so see if their same model seeder was available for a day borrow. It was! So I drove down to Amery, picked up a seeder, drove back to the farm, Mar planted the carrots, Daisy and Tommy covered the planting with burlap, we put the irrigation on them, and I drove the seeder back to Amery. A few days later the rain watered them in more. A few days after that, the carrots popped.

Thanks to my…accident, we had “Just Enough” time to get that all done in the window of time that we had.

We did miss our chance to flame weed this planting, but I can’t much complain. The stand of carrots came up nice,. If everything else goes well, including much hand weeding, we will have enough to see us into the winter markets.

We used our “Just Enough” rain to work down summer cover crops, plant more cover crops, and work down all the old beds of salad, arugula, baby kale, carrots etc that we plant each and every week. We’ll prep those beds for some fall cover crops.

I think there is “Just Enough” moisture in the ground to germinate the cover crops that we planted today. However, we will need to get more “Just Enough” if those cover crops are to do more than just be alive.

We have yet more to do, but it dries out so fast out there. And in general, there is more than we could ever get done to do. We’ll hope to get “Just Enough” done then.

To have a farm that keeps going, you have to be willing to tell the world that you don’t need everything that you want. You just need enough to keep on. I don’t pretend to be completely happy with that, but satiated enough to continue. That’s our agreement.

We are exiting July now. It’s not time to take stock of anything yet. We are still deep in it. But I’ll take stock of one thing: I am impressed that we are able to get done what we get done in the briefest of opportunities that we have. Hat’s are off to the crew, who turn right to the task when there is “Just Enough” to get it done.