The Do or Die's

The winter squash is in. We pulled it out of the field and into the greenhouse to cure this week.

Next week, we will probably pull most of the winter carrots out of the ground. It might be a little early for that, but I reckon that they are as big as we want them to be, and that there is no knowing what the weather will do in October.

The beets too. We’ll get those in. And then the turnips and the black radishes.

Then we’ll put away the irrigation, mow everything, do some final tillage where needed, and get all the veggies set for winter storage.

We are trying to front load our work days, and pack the first week of October, so as not to get stuck later in the month with any do or die’s on a 25 degree mornings with a highs of 40. I can tell you, any farmer can tell you…those days are crap. Those days are the days you really think hard about your quality of life choices. “I have mede crap choices” you think to yourself as your hands cease functioning from the cold. “Will I ever learn? I think I’m dying. Am I dead?”

But you have no choice. Not then. Too many do or die’s were in the DOD pile.

Earlier this season, Daisy and I drove out to Rice Lake to get supplies, and get her some work clothes. We passed many farmers out getting their fields tilled for the season. They had frightfully big machines pulling even more frightful cultivators. By this time the fields all over the region where bone dry. Behind these tractors where clouds of pulverized soil, lifting up into the air and blowing away from their field forever.

“See there”, I point it out to Daisy, “”That’s what we are trying to avoid. That’s why we are cultivating slow or not at all until it rains.”

But I look at those farmers, and I know, they are stuck in a do or die trap. Do it now, or don’t do it. Because they only have a short window to plant their one crop for the season. And they are moving fast, because they only have so much time.

Do or die can happen anytime in the farming season.

In the spring, we can wait, because we will plant 20 plantings over the season. If we are late, or we miss one, then we don’t have something for you at market, and that is not good. But we don’t die.

I get stuck in those traps still. But with each passing season, less and less.

We will try to get the do or die’s done in the next two weeks, while the sun is still warming us. We will save the little projects for later, and we will get a lot of them done, if Mamma Nature shines kindly upon us. And if she doesn’t, with our do or die’s done, we’ll take later mornings and extra long lunch with tea. Those little projects will stay there, in project purgatory, not saved, but not damned, until we can get around to them. Someday…whenever.

The do or die’s will be done.