Apprenticeship Program - Articles

Article: Farming - The Simple Life

After I’d read over last year’s suggestions for communication - a couple of members said they’d like to hear about our difficulties as well as the successes. I laughed to myself and thought, had I been remiss in this area? Certainly, the first words out of most farmers mouths (to each other at least) are the quintessential laments which fall into four categories: weather, equipment, agencies or staff. This bonds most agrarians and establishes a fair playing ground where everyone is reminded that the grass really isn’t greener despite appearances. After a while though, these stories just keep repeating and over time one tends to engage a little less in the actual details in favor of nodding silently emoting same old same old. But for the sake of setting the record straight, I’ll just paint a picture of what really got those little basil bunches into the box. 

The Song of May: A rainy April backs up all the tractoring work so that Bill is tilling in huge cover crop and we are continuing our plantings as scheduled into soil with large clods sometimes the size of softballs and moving to one side huge wads of breaking down rye grass. This is not good news for seed germination or plant growth - but onward we go - making the hard choice of which crop gets the worst bed. We had happily sold our old flail mower for $3000 to some other farmers and were just thinking about what upgrade we’d get with the money as the weather warmed and the cooler compressor, of course, breaks down. The repair guy is days out and we lose some salad mix that was going to market to dehydration. Don of Don’s Service says a new one will cost about $3000. EZ come.... We love this guy though because he’s honest, fast, skilled and DOES show up. And this time manages to fix the old one for under $400! In the mean time, everyone - all 8 of us - proceed to pass along a cold virus, so that each morning another crew member is missing, and we rejuggle the days tasks and wonder who’s next while everyone eats a lot of garlic and Vitey C. We miss one of our main in-the-know staff, Stacey, for the whole month as she needs to leave the state because her hay fever is so bad. A few key tasks fall between the cracks. 

Then the REAL heat spell. First day to turn on irrigation in the field. Our 7 HP irrigation pump goes down and after a whole day trying to fix it and 3 trips to Junction City, the professional guys (you avoid calling because their hourly wage is significantly different than yours) say it’ll be until Thursday (It’s Monday) until they can come. (They say a new pump is about $2200. EZ come....) This timing is VERY bad news as little lettuces will not last a day without water. We proceed to take flexogen hoses and begin hand water the field. It takes about 1 hour a bed and we’ve about 80 planted. The math doesn’t look good. In the mean time, we’d ordered the pump and the guy asks all kinds of technical questions we guess at. Basically we’re at their mercy. Then just as Bill’s about to leave the pump house and give up for the day, he notices it is at a significant tilt, and tries one more thing - to level it out - and bingo! the pump works! So we get the old one working, but it still has problems and the new one was already ordered, so the guy switches it on Thursday. Later we find out he installed the wrong phase (single not two) and have to get it switched again the following week, which was NOT exactly free since it was unclear as to whose mistake it was in the first place. As I write this, Bill is calling our wholesale accounts and canceling all orders because of heat stress on the greens during a month that is normally lush with these babies. It’s so hard to disappoint, but they are understanding and life goes on. And June’s begun.

So there’s the nitty gritty and I barely got started on the other categories! Boy that was fun. You just gotta go with it. So much thanks for joining us and sharing our stories, because really, as you can see it’s rather an incomprehensible miracle that basil occurs at all! Savor. - D.