“We made our evening farm walks through puddles and mud once again this week. After twelve seasons, I know we have a choice when the weather gives us challenges. We can either bemoan the rain, over which we have no control, or marvel at the beauty of the clouds piled on the horizon, stained by the orange and purple of a setting sun. I’ve learned that it’s best to lean as much as possible toward the marvel.
But it’s a heck of a lot easier to do that when you have drainage in the fields. The last time we had a June this wet, before the drainage, we struggled with lakes full of drowning plants and lost about half our crops. That was a really tough year. This time, thanks to drainage, all our plants went in on time and we were even able to keep cultivating on all but the wettest days.
On Tuesday, after getting another inch, Mark walked to the eastern edge of Superjoy to find a spout of water coming out of the ground, as though from an underworld whale. He called John Barnes, who installed our drainage, and he drove down from Plattsburgh with his backhoe and tile snake, the world’s biggest plumbing tools. They soon found the problem – a thick plug of viburnum, honeysuckle, and thistle roots, right near the outlet. They fixed it, and the water began to flow out in the right place again, bringing with it tangled mats of root, and a large, dead frog….” Continue reading this Essex Farm Note.
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