Is it August or March?

We're reaching an impasse. This season is starting to feel like a disaster. It's August 3rd and here, in Santa Rosa, these days we're lucky to break 80 degrees. We have fog until noon and then a cool afternoon sea breeze that drops the temperature immediately. Our tomatoes are sitting there shivering, conserving the energy they should be putting into ripening fruit just to keep them alive. Melons are cracking before they ripen because we haven't had the heat needed to up their sugar and ripen them, so the melons actually outgrow themselves and explode. Don't get me started on this year's ongoing battle to get cucumbers to grow successfully - yet again, not enough heat for the plants to thrive and more bugs this year than animals at the zoo.

Luther Burbank once declared Santa Rosa to be the most ideal place for growing things in the whole world. I'm afraid that's no longer the case. The weather has become so irregular that Santa Rosa no longer seems to be an ideal place for growing heat loving Summer crops, of which we (try) to grow so many. Hopefully we'll get some heat eventually this Summer or Fall, but it's getting awfully late in the season to still be in the red. I wish I could say that Jeff and I didn't depend on the income we earn from our farm, but we really do depend on that income. Farming is both of our full time jobs and we both put in 80+ hours a week. We are pretty frugal folks and certainly don't require riches to feel adequately compensated, but as of today, we have put more cash into the farm in the form of soil amendments, equipment, irrigation, tools, plastic mulch, seed, rent, utilities, and insurance than we have gotten out. We have a lot riding on the outcome of this growing season, our future business development depends on us being able to make enough to fund our next step forward. You may be asking why we always feel the need to be moving forward. The answer is this : we want to constantly move forward because we want to constantly get better at doing our job, which is growing real food for people to eat. We believe in the importance of what we do, for our community, our nation, and ourselves, and want to do it to the best of our abilities. To reach our potential as farmers, we need to improve at consistently growing large quantities of high quality produce, which, first and foremost, requires that we be able to sustain ourselves in our daily living, which allows us to operate a sustainable farm.

I don't mean to be dire, but something needs to change. We either need the local weather to become more consistently warm and dry in the late Spring and Summer months, or we need to farm in a climate that is more suited to our needs, or we need to make a large financial investment in greenhouses and other season extending and stabilizing systems. I really hope the weather turns around soon and we can finish the season in real style. Keep your fingers crossed for us and keep eating those Redwood Empire Farm veggies.