Wilding it

We tilled down several beds of autumn carrots and replanted. The new planting came up like gang busters. The same with the fall beets. Neither of the first two attempts at these crops was particularly satisfying. I looked at the spotty germination and just thought “I don’t want to spend my time weeding that, and I probably won’t”.

So, looking at an imminent loss, first by circumstance, and second my my lack of seeing a scenario in which I would be willing to keep that scenario in a best case situation, I tilled the beds down, and Mar replanted them with a second attempt. This new round came up nicely and I think will be happily weeded. It did put us back a couple weeks, so we’ll be looking for a regularly scheduled autumn for them to mature on time. But without an early October freeze up situation, I think they will work out.

Being Mid-August, the count down, I think for most farmers, has begun. We have 2-3 more rounds of direct seeding to get in the ground, and more fields to get into cover crops, but by and large our influence over the outcome of this season is waining.

We continue to “Mise en Place” for 2021, and so far I think we are doing a pretty good job, even if we continue to be ever behind in the 2020. Fields are getting reclaimed, rectified and conditioned for a better year next year. This is the thing with farming; you only get one shot every trip around the solar system.

With this prep for next year, we are getting to things, and planning on getting to things that have been woefully neglected. With a double whammy of last years weather (which kept the fields unworkable) and this years Covid (which kept the farm crew short), I was not able to make it out to the east fields all spring (what I usually refer to as BRE, or Burning River East). We didn’t have any crops in this field due to their condition and weediness from the previous year, but I hoped to get them into better shape. I made it out once early on to work it down with the disk, and then not again until August. When I returned, the fields had gone to such a spectacular array of grasses and wildflowers, that I couldn’t help but feel unnecessary.

It’s rule one here and many farms like this to not have the soil bare any longer than is completely necessary. If there’s not a crop, there should be a cover crop. Since I wasn’t doing my job, Momma Nature did it, and in spades.

“And where have you been??’ she seemed to say, “While you were away playing farmer, I did your job for you, and better, if I do say so. You’re welcome!”

Granted, natures cover crops are a little harder to get back under control than the ones I would have chosen, but I am still thankful. And Nature’s cover crop “volunteers” have been keeping the soil, adding to it…and wilding it, if you will.

I realize though, that the inverse is actually true; that a cover crop is just a cheap intellectualization of what Momma Nature does by default. Maybe she was actually saying, “Thank the soils you have been away. See now? This is how it’s done!”

For better or for worse, those fields are getting back under cultivation and prep for 2021. Just behind, Momma Nature is there, waiting, maybe wanting, to intervene when I mess it all up again.