December 9, 2010 – Lessons from Two Years on the Farm

December 9, 2010 – Lessons from Two Years on the Farm Two years on the farm…the lessons that I take from it are several: 1. One year is not necessarily similar to the following year 2. Climate is changing and so the weather is unreliable 3. Can’t expect nature to respond to how it used to 4. I am going to need several more years to write about gardening The first year came with lots of rain and cool weather in winter. My vegetable was not skillfully done, yet, the crop came out beautifully. I had just manured the bare land behind the house, and in a few weeks, a had more lettuce than I could manage. In the end, I was so tired of looking at it, getting bigger and bigger every day, that I harvested everything and took to a friend’s house so she could give them away. This year, the same variety of lettuce (oak leaf) suffered terribly from the hot sun, strong wind, and drought. My daughter’s former teacher came to tell me how delicious oak leaf was, and that awakened in me the taste for this lettuce. The very few units I had gone to my plate. No sales. The broccoli heads were gigantic on my old patch. This year, we tried a different variety, which should have been more appropriate for this weather, but I gathered only a few stalks eaten by bugs. I learned that the changing weather (sunshine, temperature, humidity, wind) and any other variables (soil type, position in the patch) ask of us to be very flexible and thoughtful about the care we provide them.