Time Warp

This week the fall carrots are getting harvested.They’ll get washed, packed, and put in the cooler to get distributed along the winter.

Next week, we’ll plant and mulch the garlic. After that, most of the major tasks for 2020 will be done. It’ll be down to just the little things; the afternoon organizations, the small fixes, the to do list that is done in bites and chunks. Few all day affairs, at least not individually.

Around the farm, there are the results and echos of what we have done all season. In the moment, when reflecting on that we are largely finished with the season, it all seems like it went by quickly. But when I think back to actual events during the season; getting the first fields worked down with some trepidation, starting up the greenhouses with the days going longer rather than shorter, and especially heading into Minneapolis to salvage what was left of a market weekend, with parts of the city still on fire at the peak of the George Floyd protests. When I think past to these things, the season feels long. Like those things happened a year ago, and not just 7, 6, 5 months ago. If you want to feel tired in a farm season, think back to the beginning, and count all the days you worked. 1,2,3…oh wait. All of them!! Whoops. 

It’s alway both a long slog and a blink of an eye. Each year, time messes with an end of the season mind. It’s made doubly so because farm life can feel so removed at times from the news of the day. If I didn’t turn on the computer, I could be fooled into thinking that everything is just honky dory. And pretty easily at that. I could pass a season quickly with a good case of the ignorances if I just tuned out the news and tuned in the daily. Someday, maybe I will. 

All in all I feel good about the condition that things are in for the farm itself going into 2021. We are set to hit the ground running next spring. That’s a far cry from where we were this spring.  Between this bog post and the next, major farm operation for 2020 will wrap up. These last tasks make for long days. Long days that feel short. Like a farming season.