Author: Angela Smith

The big news this past week was, of course… it rained!! We had a solid one inch fall over the course of a couple of hours this past Saturday evening and I admit that I may have shed one or two tears of relief and gratitude when it came. I grew up about one hour east of Lake Michigan which meant that we had lots of thunderstorms every summer. I developed a fondness for them and I hadn’t realized just how much I missed the sound of rain until this past weekend. There were a scary five minutes when nickel-sized hail fell – we know some farmers who have lost entire crops to hail in the past here – but luckily this mostly just damaged some of the larger-leaved veggies like winter and summer squash. I think they’ll be all right; the surface area of their leaves is so big that I doubt a few holes in them will have much impact on their growth.

We are now officially halfway through the summer. It feels like I was just prepping the first bed for a spring crop of arugula and now I am seeding a second succession of crops for the fall. These next two weeks are when we usually have a bit of a slow down on the farm. We’ve more or less weeded everything and put the gardening tools that were littered all over the field back where they belong. We’ve started to catch up on the “if we can get to it” chores and we’re spending more time in the kitchen, making jams and freezing veggies for the winter. Soon our days will be filled with lots more harvesting as the crops that are ripening now require picking nearly every day. The storage cooler will be filled to the brim and we will have trouble deciding what to make for dinner because there will be so many options. But for now, we relax a little and catch our breaths.

We’ve been spending more of our time lately out of the production field, working on other parts of our land, restoring pollinator habitat and knocking back invasive plant species that often outcompete the native plants that we’re trying to save. While at first glance this other work doesn’t appear to have much to do with farming, in my mind it’s instrumental to the type of agriculture we’re doing. Some call it “ecological farming.” To me, this means that we have to think about how all the parts of our land fit together and impact what we’re doing, not just what’s happening where the crops are growing. The question we ask is: how can we integrate biodiversity, soil regeneration, natural enemies of pests, and so on to ensure that we can produce healthy food and protect nature at the same time?

Happy Independence Day! I knew July was coming, but honestly I didn’t expect it to arrive quite so soon. Living on the land means that nowadays I primarily mark the passage of time in summer according to what is blooming, which insects are showing up, and when things need to be harvested. For instance, now is the time to remove invasive wild parsnip from the prairie before it sets seed and multiplies. I saw my first Japanese beetle on some cabbage the other day, right on schedule, and the fireflies have been busy trying to find each other in the evening sky near our barn. The elderberry bushes are full of flowers and there are all sorts of bees everywhere. My favorites are the teeny tiny ones. They are out there foraging alongside the bigger honeybees and holding their own. I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog. I saw this one pollinating a zucchini blossom early this morning. You go, little bees!

What a difference 20 degrees and some clouds can make! We are grateful today to have some relief from the hot, dry weather that has been the norm this past month. Our plants are thankful, too, as it’s been rough out there. Still, they are trying to do their best for us and we are starting to see more and more flowers and baby vegetables. There is always a bit of a lull at the end of June as most of the cool-weather spring crops are no longer tasty, but the mid-summer veggies that everyone looks forward to – tomatoes, peppers, summer squash – aren’t yet ready. They will be soon though, I promise!