Folks…this ain’t normal.
That’s the title of one of my favorite books by Joel Salatin, author, regenerative farmer & rancher and general food system disruptor.
But it’s also a phrase that keeps looping through my mind.
We saw temps well over 90 degrees this past week. In the Colorado mountains in early June.
This ain’t normal.
The week before I was protecting veggies from nightly freezes. Dutifully covering them each night with frost protection and uncovering them every morning.
Overnight we’ve replaced our farm’s winter wardrobe with one made for summer heat.
Work schedules shifted to 6AM so our farm crew is up by 4 to get here. Even then we’re chased from the farm by intense heat well before the harvest is finished.
And It’s not just a matter of our own comfort.
Greens wilt under the blazing sun just as much as we do.
We use extra water to keep both people and veggies hydrated which means extra time spent on labor intensive manual watering.
Shade cloths & mulches shield the soil & plants but even these added steps aren’t enough when the temperatures rise too high.
At that point all we can do is retreat to a cooler space and take a nap, preparing for another round of work until it’s too dark outside.
But, our plants can’t walk away so they’ve adapted in other ways.
They shut down, stop growing and conserve their energy when the temperatures rise.
Some bolt, triggered into thinking this is their last chance to reproduce. Our peas, once filled with flowers, have suddenly stopped flowering, focusing all their energy into filling out the existing crop.
In the past few days we’ve lost beds of arugula, asian greens, and spinach and we’ll see far fewer peas this year.
These losses will show up in how much food our little farm can produce for our community and that’s always hard…watching the hope and promise of a new season so suddenly change.
But, signs for optimism exist.
I’ve always missed the warm season crops we struggled to grow.
Tomatoes ripen in late August, just in time for early September frosts. Basil, cucumbers, peppers, winter squash, corn. All of these fall into the category of crops too risky for a cool season mountain farm like ours.
Maybe, one day, that will change.
This year, we’ve added basil and it’s producing well in this heat. Garlic scapes are here several weeks earlier and we’ll likely have summer squash by the 4th of July.
All we can do is adapt as quickly as possible and here on the farm we’ve been operating at a sprinters pace to keep up with these changes.
You can order our veggies Saturday - Monday on our online market and pick them up locally Wednesday at Red Feather Lakes and Friday in Livermore.
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