For photo Friday here are a few photos from a very quick…I’m talking 36 hours here…trip to Washington DC to tell our farm family story!
Such an amazing opportunity with the USFRA and Smithsonian! More on Monday…
How Does a Farmer know it’s Time to Irrigate?
When to water and how much to water is always a question on the farm. Especially when you have a large mix of fresh crops like squash, green beans, peas, etc. These crops take anywhere from one to six irrigations (waterings) depending on the weather, time of year they were planted and when they will be harvested. Irrigation is no exact science on our farm, but I want to say we are getting closer.
Irrigation timing has always been something that heavily relies on “rules of thumbs”. For instance if the squash is wilting by 3pm, they need water. Or on the beans, “Just go every 10 days with about an 3/4-1″ and you should be fine.” And there is always the tried and true, stick a shovel in the ground and just plain play in the dirt and squeeze some soil to see what is there for moisture.
A field of squash that we are getting ready to irrigate.
This year however, with the help of the Natural Resource Conservation Service we were able to get some funding to help us pay to install sensors in the ground that allow us to monitor how much moisture is in the soil. This type of technology can get pretty fancy, ours however are very basic. The electrodes are installed into the ground in the row of the crop, you can see this in the photo below. Ours are installed at 8″ and 18″ deep. 
Next you hook up the reader using two alligator clips and it reads the moisture saturation in the soil at each level. The higher the number the lower the saturation of moisture in the soil.
Here is a video of me checking the electrodes.
As you can see it doesn’t take much time to get the information that we use. This information is then put into a graph on my computer so I can monitor where the fields are on a day to day basis.
It’s been a learning curve mashing together our old rules of thumb with these new readings to give us the best timing for irrigation. I would say that the best thing it’s done is given us a number to fall back on when we’re triaging which irrigation to start up and when. It’s a quick way to see which crops need to be irrigated first, and which can probably wait a day while the others get a drink. Farming has always been a mix of old traditions and new technology, this is just another way that our farm is moving forward with both the past and present ideologies working together.
Harvest Excited, Harvest Tired
I finally sat down and took a deep breath today. We are in the heart of harvest here and there’s a part of me that thrives on all that we accomplish in a day. And there’s a part of me that’s just exhausted and wishes I could sleep for days. I am harvest excited and I am harvest tired.
Catching a quick lunch in the shade of our seed truck.
There’s a part of me that sees harvest as dragging on forever then there’s a part of me that laughs at that part because we aren’t even close to being done. There’s a part of me that gets so excited with good yields and very frustrated with fields that aren’t producing. Because for us, this is it, this is when it all either happens or doesn’t for our whole year.
A very rough, very awful cabbage field….wondering where the crop is? So were we unfortunately.
Harvest has been long, long days, long nights. Days filled with paperwork that still has to get finished, bills that still need to be paid. Logistics of who goes where and what needs to get done, what fields to irrigate, what fields to harvest…a constant triage of priorities. Then evening comes, the boys in tow, and dinners and family time out in the field. Which moves us straight into nights of infant cries, and the many needs of a toddler at 3am. We are smiling, because that crazy spirit in us, that now 4 generations of harvest, heat, dust and dirt…we just can’t shake it.
And the truth is, I already know I’ll be sitting in the same pickup, watching the same beautiful sunset next year, looking forward to the harvest on the horizon. I am continually excited at the potential, and feeling of a years worth of hard work, just hoping it all pays off. This farming thing, it isn’t easy, it’s tough on levels that you put your heart and soul into. It’s something that maybe only a farmer understands and only a farmer would sign up for. It’s our life though, at times it’s beautiful, at times hard…but either way here we go again for another day!
NuttyGrass 