Water, Water, Water

The market started sleepy.  I had thought when I woke up, it was just me. The pick hadn’t been that hard.  We had the lack of rain to thank for that. There’s always one week where the beans and peas overlap with bumper crops from each, and Howard and I each put in about twelve hours in the field.  I had thought it was going to be one of those weeks, but it wasn’t.

The peas were ready.  Sometimes I think peas are like morning people, and Friday morning, the snow peas almost popped into the bucket themselves. The beans, however, gave me that one-eye-half-open sideways look  and made it clear that nothing hiding under their coverlet of leaves was going to be a bean heading off for market., and all they were dreaming of was water

So, first thing Saturday morning, the customers reminded me of the bean crop. They were dazed as they passed the stall. When I’d say “ Good morning”, they glanced over at me confused, muttering about needing coffee.  The early morning people weren’t ready for market. 

All the growers were talking about was water. The rain that had accompanied last week’s full moon had been spotty.  Some were smiling, noting that everything, including weeds had taken off within hours. They had lots of energy.  Some, like Howard and I, were morose. The rain had rained all around us. We had taken a little trip last week to Breslau, where it was pouring and continued to pour until we turned right onto the bone-dry pavement of Silvercreek.

It was ultimately a good market for us.  Our peas and lettuce are such show-offs that they eventually woke up the sleepy socks, or more probably, the later risers who, thankfully, unlike our beans, had rolled out of bed and down to market.

However, it did make me think about all the conversations that Howard and I have had during the summer.  They are always mostly about water.  Howard says that we talk a lot about how plants need good soil, and they do - but what they really need is water. 

Our conversations are about too much rain or too little. .  .

Since we don’t irrigate and are on a well with limited capacity, we don’t have much control over water. Pretending to be King Lear shaking our fists at the darkening sky that passes us by hasn’t helped much. 

What does help is helping the plants cope.  Howard does a lot of hand weeding around the plants so that they get what water there is.. He plants the tomato seedlings in a deep mulch of straw and prunes off sucker branches more severely in dry spells. We choose carefully where to plant each plant variety.  The cucumbers, squash, and corn got the more naturally moister soil at the bottom of the field. The lettuce is planted closer to the fence where the hose can reach. 

Water is everything.  It affects the taste. There was one year when our first crop of beans had too much water. They looked good, but they didn’t have any taste. 

But this year, everything is sweet. A dry summer is a sweet summer. The beans may be sleeping right now, but we are hoping for some rain so they can survive this week and wake up enough to be picked by Friday, and on Saturday, join the peas and lettuce, sweet, full flavoured, and ready to wake up everybody’s taste buds. 

Photos

We use an organic fertilizer . It improves the taste and yield of our plants.   Here, Howard is applying the fertilizer to the roots so that it adds both water and nutrients to the plants.