My four year old daughter was just telling me from her Sunday school lesson that God doesn’t punish you if it’s an accident. Then she talks about the bad angels who hated God and were punished. I try to explain that while intending to do wrong and mistakenly doing wrong may have different levels of “badness”, there are still consequences either way. Like not checking the weather forecast closely because you knew the next day was supposed to get to 80 and then having a whole bunch of your seedlings die in the greenhouse because it was too cold for them. The first mistake of the 2014 CSA season had consequences.
One of the things I like most about farming is the lessons it brings. Real life lessons about how the world really works. Growing things helps you get down and personal with the truth that “you reap what you sow.” In this case, the tomato and pepper seeds that we had painstakingly sowed kept warm and watched grow; the seedlings we had then transplanted to larger containers and had covered up with a second layer of plastic in the greenhouse on cold nights (but not that night); these plants (most of them at least) are dead! Sow a tomato seed. Water the seedling. But don’t keep it warm enough at night, and you’ll end up having to do all your work over again!
Waking up Thursday morning to this picture of mayhem was quite discouraging.
I’ve got to admit, I know you think farming is all glamor, the high life, full of excitement and ecstasy….what you don’t think that?….well, work with me….although it may seem an ecstatic experience shoveling manure and pulling weeds, but sometimes we farmers have down days.
I was bummed out about the loss. Oh the CSA season is ruined! I was scrambling to think of where I could buy hundreds of pepper and tomato plants without breaking the bank and mad at myself for my own carelessness. I wish my daughter had it right about not getting punished when we make mistakes. That was literally hundreds of dollars in plants!
Well the long story is, we were very fortunate that we had majorly over-planted and had extra seedlings just a little smaller than the ones we lost, because I’m extra cautious that way and because we had planned to offer the extra plants for sale. When I checked on the seedlings still alive in the house, I found that we have more than enough to cover the loss and we may even have extra to sell after all. We just have to transplant them.
Since then we’ve also been blessed by a lot of helping hands that have made the situation much more bearable. Here’s Mom Redfearn and Ezra transplanting some of the indoor survivors.
This time of year is the hardest time to stick with it. Seeds barely want to sprout, you wonder if anything will ever come of all that work because the harvest is still so far away.Thanks everybody for your help! it was a great encouragement to keep on going.
I can tell you one thing, I’ll be paying much closer attention to the daily forecast for the rest of the CSA season!
