Category: Challenges

Wine & Grass Seed

  
Photo courtesy of Shelly Boshart Davis. 

It may not seem like a big deal, having a vineyard next to a grass seed field, but the challenges between these two crops have come to the fore front the past few years. 

This week I attended a tour that talked about the compromise and communication it requires to be successful when neighboring farms become more and more diverse in their cropping.   

Monday I will talk more about the issues and why many of us in both the grass seed and wine industry know that we can all be successful in Oregon as good farmers and neighbors.  

Top 10 Ways You know it’s Harvest at our House

Harvest is a crazy time of year for farmers.  We work all year to grow a crop that is healthy and happy, and we have a very short window to get all that crop off of the fields.  Which means long hours, everyday of the week, no matter what.  So I got to thinking today, how if you were to walk into our house, how you would know it was harvest time.  So here are the top 10 ways you will know it’s harvest at our house…

1. You will notice the frozen lasagnas are slowly disappearing out of our freezer, by slowly I mean, we eat a lot of frozen meals during harvest.  It’s fast and easy, and can be thrown in the oven while you run out to check on harvesters or catch up on e-mails or calls.

2. You may see seeds on the ground in our laundry room.  During harvest I can always tell what crop we are combining by examining the lint trap.  Clover seed, grass seed, cabbage seed, are all on the ground in front of our dryer currently.

3. You will not find socks.  I don’t know where socks go during harvest, but they completely disappear.  You will however find socks on the list of things to buy on Amazon, lots of socks!

4. You will see laundry everywhere, sock-less laundry, but laundry just the same.  My best advice for finding jeans or another specific item during the midst of harvest laundry.  First, check the folded clothes basket.  Second, check the unfolded clothes basket.  Third, check the dryer.  And lastly if you still haven’t had any luck, grab your jeans from yesterday, they are going to be just as dirty in the first hour anyway.

5. You will not hear intelligent conversation.  Unless it has to deal with yields, moisture levels, planting plans, and field rotations.  It’s all we have room for in our tired brains.

6. Don’t be shocked to see us leave at all times of the night and early morning.  Like I said we work all hours, all days…did I mention we are tired?

7. You will see farmers tans. It’s not just a saying, these white legs and tan arms of mine resemble a ying yang symbol most of summer.

8. You will see Hoot napping in our pick-up while we move combines down the road.  Yes, if we can, we synchronize nap times with long road moves from field to field.

9. You will see Hoot with us a lot. He’s been quite the trooper, combine riding, checking fields, starting irrigation, this farm boy has had no lack of field time!

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10. Mostly though I hope you will see a hard working family. A family that everyday works together to make it through, tired, haggard, and impatient at times…but together.

The crazy part is that after all is said and done this year, the weather will cool down and leaves will start to turn, we will look back and contemplate all the decisions made for the year, and I know without a doubt we will look forward to harvest next year.  It will hit the very next spring, forgetting the messy house and laundry, frozen meals and exhaustion and get excited for that time of the year when when all your hard work and hopefully mother nature have worked together well enough to get a good crop out of the soil. Because, in the end, this is the life we love, this is the life we have chosen and that’s farming.

 

 

 

The Weather

The weather is one of those things that doesn’t just annoy us farmers, at times it can infuriate, frustrate, and just plain get us down.  Now I say this all with the disclaimer that I really can’t complain too much here about the weather.  It’s fairly predictable when compared to other areas of the country.  But sometimes, sometimes it just breaks your heart what the weather can do.

Farmers take on incredible risk with the crops that we grow.  We work all year to nurture the plants as best as we know how, take care to meet their every needs.  Then we pray that harvest will come and it will go into the combine, come out as seed, and head to the market (just another thing we can’t control but more on that in another post).

So when Matt and I headed out to check on our crimson clover field to see if it was ready to start harvesting for the day, this is what we saw.

FullSizeRender(8)Not anything too crazy, just looked like a usual whirlwind type of damage, a fairly big pile, but nothing that was too devastating.  It wasn’t until we looked up from that pile to see the real damage.  It’s hard to see in the first photo and it didn’t look too bad even then looking from the seat of the pick-up.

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It wasn’t until we walked out to see the true damage of what a whirlwind can down as it races across a field of swathed clover.

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I was devastated.  All the seed for a large portion of our field was now no longer on the stem that is supposed to hold on to it while we harvest it with the combines, it was laying on the ground where it would lay and never be harvested.  The idea of a vacuum jokingly crossed all our minds, but that just isn’t feasible.  It’s one of those frustrating days followed by the days of having to now go deal with the stems, manually pitchforking them into the harvesters so they don’t get plugged taking in such large piles.  Just another thing that you get to deal with as a farmer, grin and bear it is what comes to mind with many of these situations, grin and bear it and pray it doesn’t happen again anytime soon.  It’s that eternal farmer optimism that keeps us all going on to the next crop, the next year, the next challenge.

As Will Rogers once said, “The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer.”