I started writing this blog, because a friend convinced me it would be a good way to keep track of all the surprises and events of our first year farming.

This past week, I realized many times how much farming is much like gambling. And how much farming relies on the weather.

Farming is only one part of our farm. We are considered an agritourism farm, so we have a few other areas to balance; the market, farm-to-plate dinners, the grill, the animals, harvest events, etc.

Some of our other neighboring farmers have been encouraging us to open our corn maze by Labor Day. It sounded really early to us, but we are new to this. And they have done it for decades - so their insight means a lot. Many families are looking for stuff to do safely outside. And we just don’t know what activities will even be allowed come October. So we’ve been scrambling this week to see if we can get ready to open our maze by next weekend. We started planning some fun activities to turn the opening weekend of the maze into a whole fun event.

Close up of Sunny with Maybe Bob (both on her shirt and on her lap).

We found an incredible yoga instructor, Sunny, who is going to lead some Goat Yoga classes in the middle of the maze. And a few friends, Erica and Nia, who have goats are going to bring their herds, so we can have a goat extravaganza on the farm. This of course requires work. Today the goats are getting blood tests to make sure they can all be together. The grill team agreed to come in an extra day for the event. Everyone pulled together to make this happen. However . . .

We woke up this morning and saw the weather next weekend is predicted to be in the mid-90s. Not great maze weather. Nor good goat yoga weather. Not even the best grilling weather. So now we’re rethinking if it makes sense. It’s all a big gamble. Now we’re thinking the unveiling of our maze will need to wait for at least one more week.

But like many of our crops, sometimes waiting is the worst thing you can do. We learned that a few days ago. We had planted a bunch of different squash near our pumpkins. We had been busy harvesting cucumbers and didn’t realize that the Hurakan squash should have been picked. By the time we did, we were a couple days late. We had more squash than we could handle, and much of the squash got too big. We still were able to harvest hundreds of pounds for the market, and another 800 pounds we donated to a food bank. But some of it just had to be picked and left in the field. Then . . .

We turned around and did it again. While we’re busy working another part of the farm, the squash again went another day longer than they should have and some got too large again. Thanks to our volunteers Dylan and Ronan who came over and helped us harvest the squash, so we only had a few that got too big. While we have a lot of employees helping us in the market and on the grill, we have only a handful of us working in the fields. So it’s a challenge to figure out how to balance it all.

It’s why I’m so anticipating next year. Now we can at least take some of what we learned this season, and use it when planning what to plant. If we can better predict when each crop will be ready to harvest, it will make planning what to plant so much more successful, then factor in what equipment we have, and hope the weather cooperates.

Thanks for reading! Here are a few photos from the week.

xo,
Kat