Rainy Days

Storms have been rolling in for weeks now making the days cold and the nights rainy. In the hill field that we call Mary Jane's it's easy to see the clouds moving across the countryside even if they don't bring us a drop of rain. When it is raining in the town next to us, you can see a sheer wall of grey mist being dragged over the horizon. It makes for dreary days doing tunnel work, like planting peppers or tomatoes or weeding.

Unfortunately, we couldn't escape the dreaded form of precipitation. The largest hail we've ever had fall on Windflower (at least in our years) came crashing while we strung tomatoes in a high tunnel. It wasn't wind-driven, but it dented some things up pretty good, like cars and roofs.

Daren was amused . . . and amusing.

Thankfully, Ted was worried enough about the rainy weather that he wanted to leave all the crops covered for a while longer. Not that row cover can stop giant hail, but it helped. There wasn't much damage to crops that we could see. The high tunnels had bulls-eyes all over the plastic though.

What the Hail?

We have redefined the "h" word on Windflower, and this last week of rainy, thundering weather is a reminder to all that language like that is banned until the danger season passes over us. It seems that every year once we begin to plant stuff in the ground that some size h@!L falls. I find it ironic that the word carries similar meaning to the word it mimics.

The rain itself has brought severe flooding to nearby areas. Luckily, Windflower is on higher ground, but a town to our west has houses on the riverside that are likely using boats to get to their front doors. It's quite a sight. The baseball field and park were flooded, too. When I drove by, they had just opened the road again.

Next week looks like a rainy one also, so it's gonna be a messy planting time. Be sure to add your vote to the poll at the end of the page so we know what to plant more of!

Planted

This is a warm spring. Over the few days of the weekend the tomato plants in the greenhouse have taken over the walkways. Nothing can wait to be planted, but it’s risky business. As soon as we feel safe, the frosts will come a final time and ruin any hard work we are eager to do. But we have been planting mustard greens and choi. Bed by bed, the fields are filling up. They stand for our success like stripes on a military uniform, and we wear them proudly.

This week, we had a three-man planting team on the four seat transplanter. With four rows of plants per bed, it was tough work. Not to mention, a valve broke on the water tank and was spewing all over once the tractor got to the field. There was nothing to plug it, so we lost half the water before a new valve was found. Then, it rained. That shouldn’t be the normal kind of planting day through the season, but who can say?

I remember worse years, where hail cracked windshields and storms we weren't supposed to get came right over us without warning. That panicky feeling isn't something I'll forget easily. The June before of 2004 brought a storm to my family's house just five miles down the road from Windflower. The winds were near to ninety miles an hour. The hail that fell was two inches in diameter and sounded like machine gun bullets coming through my bedroom windows. It was terrifying. That was before I came to Windflower.

It was one year later that I found an ad in the tiny local newspaper for a vegetable farm worker. There was no phone number and i remember feeling bummed because I needed a job while my husband was away at boot camp. The next week, the ad was still there and the phone number had appeared. I had lunch with the Blomgrens a few days later and joined the crew of four. We had around two hundred shareholders.