“Rain” was the intended title for this entry, but as the sequence of natural events befell the farm this past week, that innocuous term no longer seemed appropriate. Initially, the idea was to describe the elation an organic farmer, who does not have a firmly implanted irrigation system installed, experiences once precipitation falls from the sky to nourish the thirsty crops so often parched deep into the summer. The situation from this past week may have changed the scope a bit, but in reality, it has allowed for me to describe how the balance sought by a farmer is seldom possible.
To begin, without a regular water source… yet, the farm still needs to bring in water for irrigation purposes. At this point, a rain water collection system has been initiated through gutters directing the flow of precipitation off of Greenhouse 2 into an 1100 gallon water storage tank. For now, I do not wish to get into the complex details of the plan to be established sometime in the future. What should be related is that if rain does not fall for a succession of weeks during the summer, countless hours are needed to hand water the crops. Since countless hours are never available to a farmer, a rain dance is probably a more realistic approach. And since rain dances never work either, all one can ultimately do is… hope for rain.
Now to add just a little bit of science into the situation, it takes 27,000 gallons of water to distribute one inch of rain to an acre of field. At the moment, the land under cultivation on the farm is approximately one acre. An acre inch, as it is called, is the minimum amount of water that typical produce crops should receive each week. Some crops, such as broccoli, should receive two inches, but in order not to complicate this any more, one acre inch will be the goal. It has been determined that if one inch of rain falls on Greenhouse 2, the side that directs that water into the storage tank will collect 100 gallons. Hence, it would take 270 inches of rain to store enough for once acre inch of water, AND A MUCH LARGER TANK!!! Actually, I only mention this superficially to relay the staggering volumes at play here. Without a firmly installed irrigation system, manually directing 27,000 gallons of water to the fields is… impossible.
So, as the inevitable dry weeks, and months arrive during any given summer, desperation is often the result. As the weeds continue to grow, despite the lack of rain, and the damaging bugs multiply, while new plantings and tilling are necessary, the time for manual irrigation is, once again, impossible. All one can do is hope for…
Rain! Last Friday,the first downpour arrived. And it was quite the downpour. In a rather short period of time, an inch and a quarter of rain fell on the farm. This was what I had intended to describe initially. There is an unbelievable feeling of relief for the tired, more accurately exhausted farmer only half way through the growing season when such a quantity of precipitation falls from the sky. It is almost like watching a sporting event, where the team for which you are rooting is hopelessly behind, when all of a sudden, something turns the game in your favor, and you win! To be a little more honest to this analogy, you would also have wagered a lot on that sporting event, an amount equivalent to… a farm!
Once that inch and a quarter of rain was measured, that incredible sense of relief was imbibed like the coldest of beers on a hot, humid day. But the relief was short-lived. After all, it had been multiple weeks since a soaking rain had visited the farm. While an inch and a quarter was a significant amount of precipitation, I was hoping for maybe another inch more. That extra inch would soak deeper into the ground, which would allow me to not think about rain for another week or so. Although I did not verbalize this request… be careful what you wish for…
Sometime in the afternoon, the next inch fell. Once again, it was a heavy downpour, one that thundered upon the plastic cover of Greenhouse 2 as I harvested the tomatoes inside. My wish had been granted. The rain stopped. The harvest was finished. And the farm was moistened to a very happy degree. Yet, in the distance loomed dark clouds and faint rumbles…
As I finished cleaning the harvest around sundown, the next storm blew through. Rain roared against buildings as though slapping them with sticks. It was a third wave of attack, and my sinking heart realized that the fields did not have enough stamina to withstand one more violent onslaught. My reservations over this next downpour of rain was a historical knowledge of how the property works, or rather, how the neighboring property works. Surrounding my farm’s fields are hay fields on higher terrain, that become saturated right around two inches of rain. When that third storm thundered down yet another wave of precipitation, I knew it was only a matter of time before a muddy river would appear running through the normally dry stream bed in the back of the property. And if the rain continued to fall, that river would inevitably swell into the fields themselves…
I left the farm that evening as darkness fell. A rapid flow of water runoff coursed through some newly tilled rows in Field 3. That was all that I could see at that point. I knew there would be other damage, but… I had a farmer’s market in the morning. To dwell on the impending devastation would be even more limiting to sleep. Throughout that evening, rain continued to hammer upon the roof of my house, tirelessly.
By the next morning, the rain had stopped. The farmer’s market was free of rainfall, which helped to relieve some of the anxiety over the damage to be witnessed upon returning to the farm. Once the farm was eventually revisited, it was determined that five inches of rain had fallen. Five inches! To translate that into acre inches, 135,000 gallons of water fell upon the fields the day before! But how much ran through those saturated fields?
The devastation was considerable. Three rows were completely destroyed and another had at least a foot wide by eight foot inch deep gulley through it. How do I know that it was eight inches? Why that is how deep my tiller digs of course. The run-off river took every last bit of freshly tilled soil from Field 3 Row 10 and deposited it somewhere between where it initiated and the small pond a few hundred of feet away. Row 10 now lay exactly eight inches lower than Row9. It is a good thing I did not seed spinach there like I had planned the day before.
If only three rows were affected by such a deluge of rain, it would be acceptable, to a degree. But those three rows were not the only victims. All five of the tomato rows are also surely to be affected, especially because they are heirloom tomatoes. What does being heirloom tomatoes have to do with it? Well, because they split. It is extremely difficult to grow “perfect” heirloom tomatoes because of this fact. The reason that the tomatoes split is due to an excess of water sucked up by the plant and fruit that causes the thin skin to separate from being “over-full”. This can happen with very little water. With five inches, those tomatoes tend to burst apart as if there were a small explosive device detonated within it. The aftermath of such a rain will reveal tomatoes shorn in two, half of which will still dangle from the vine, the other portion will lie splattered on the ground below. It is early September. It is quite possible, due to the short time period until the first frost, that that may be the end of those tomatoes for the year.
What else? The salad harvest which has been eagerly awaited for a couple of months is the answer to that question. That harvest was to happen first on Monday. Unfortunately, the force of those downfalls simply decimated the delicate leaves of the lettuce plantings. It is strange to see a crop that one day was maybe an inch shy of being harvestable, and the very next day it is completely disparaged, and without the activities of an intrusive groundhog!
Is that it? Of course not! As coincidence would have it, the cantaloupes in the fields were just about ripe. I do not know how those large cantaloupes in the supermarkets deal with five inches of rain, but the delicate, organic varieties that I grow…split. Just like the tomatoes. Once a cantaloupe splits, there is a veritable bugle call for all insect pests to attack immediately. As soon as I made it out to the field on Saturday afternoon to inspect the crops, most of the cantaloupes were mushy, bug infested… refuse.
I will stop describing the devastation at this point. There is really not much more to say. As a produce farmer, a lot of time is spent planning the season in the heart of winter, taking into account as many possible detrimental situations as possible. Although a tremendous deluge is foreseeable, since there is ultimately nothing that can be done about it, a mere hope arises that such a force will not make an appearance and kill the farm plan for the year. Luckily, my plans are quite diverse and complex. Whereas some crops might be destroyed, there are many others that have made it through the tremendous storm with little harm. Now, if we could only get a little rain…