Weather like this is enough to make a farmer go crazy. We may be past the last frost date, but apparently we're not through with hail and torrential downpours. Right now is when we should be planting most of the summer crops (tomatoes, squash, melons, cucumbers, basil, etc), but wet and cool weather is not ideal for planting anything, really. The only things that thrive in weather like this are slugs and let me tell you, I've had my fill of the slugs. Slugs are really difficult to control when it's wet and soggy and, as far as I can tell, they hold no benefits for anything. They eat everything, they multiply faster than you can imagine, and they're just plain gross. The slugs are so annoying, not even the chickens will eat them.
I'm trying to stay positive, though. A year of above average rainfall is a blessing and will help us grow incredible dry-farmed tomatoes this summer. We are also lucky to be farming on a slope, which will allow us to get into the ground soon enough. Even though the bottom part of the farm is currently a duck pond, the upper parts will dry out in a matter of days. We can also get around the weather by starting a lot of plants in the greenhouse that we would typically direct seed into the dirt. For example, beans can tolerate being transplanted, so we will give them a really good start in the greenhouse and put them in the ground when the weather and time is right.
While we've been waiting out the weather, we've been busy recruiting for our "farmy." Jeff and I realize that there's only so much the two of us can do on our own and, given our goal to grow as much as we possibly can, we have decided to invite willing volunteers onto the farm. Once we accepted that we can't accomplish everything on our own, the most incredible, enthusiastic, interesting people started appearing and offering to help us out. Over the past month or so, we've started cultivating the coolest crew of energetic folks who want to grow stuff and get dirty in the process. We have our young veteran who is teaching us as much as we're teaching him, we have our high school students who want to learn about farming and do their part for the planet and community, as well as a slew of others in the prime of early adulthood who want to be a part of what we're trying to do.
It's so clear to me now that Jeff and I are trying to do something special and unique - we want to feed as many people in our community as we can. It's not enough for us to just sell our produce to a wholesaler or restaurants or even just to the farmers market. We need to grow enough produce to sell to our neighborhood, to the people at the farmers markets all over the county, to restaurants, to our CSA members, to people passing by on the highway, to everyone! Eating healthy, local, delicious food should not be an option for only those people who can fit it into their schedules and lifestyles. Eating our food should be an option for everyone, which means it needs to be accessible to everyone! By accessible, I mean that I want even the people who don't realize the importance of eating clean, local food to end up eating clean, local food. Last summer, I considered myself successful when people would stop at our roadside stand and by tomatoes on their walk home from the 7-11 next door where they were buying beer. They may not care whether their tomatoes come from Florida, Mexico, the Central Valley, or our little farm in Rincon Valley, but in the end, they ended up eating healthy, amazingly flavorful tomatoes that were grown right here.
We're so passionate about locally grown food that we are even trying to help give people the knowledge they need to grow their own gardens. We don't want to be in competition with other local farmers or with people who want to grow their own gardens. We want to do our part - by growing as much as we can and educating as many people as we can - to give the conventional, unsustainable, monster farm corporations a run for their money. If we do our part and other local farmers do their parts and we all grow as much as we can and make it easily accessible to the real people who live all around us, then the food revolution will really be rolling.
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