Reflecting on Spring

I haven't done a blog in a while and there's a reason for that. Spring. It has been a series of long, challenging weeks at the start of the season and by the time the weekend rolls around, our bodies and our minds are running on fumes.

This has been our fourth spring of real farming production and it has been, by far, the most challenging. I've been telling people that it feels like we've been working twice as hard and getting half as much done.

And I'm really not sure why. It's likely a combination of many things.

We're growing more. In an effort to offer more produce to the local area you are growing more of it. We've added new crops and increased quantities on the items our regular customers know and love.

We're too spread out. We're currently growing in a total of five different locations. Each garden is not within walking distance of the other and each has its own unique soil, watering system and pest prevention protocols. That leads to a lot of running around and putting out fires. A lot of wasted time.

We're subject to the weather. Even when the weather is perfect, it's not perfect for what you're doing. We had a wet spring and a June heat wave and nothing seemed to land in our favor. When we needed to germinate seeded field crops it was dry. When we needed to be working the soil and prepping beds it was wet. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir to all the area farmers on this one.

We're developing a new farm. In an effort to grow our business and become more efficient, we are developing the growing space around our greenhouse on Gridley Paige Road. This will be our main headquarters in the future and our main farm for production. What comes with that is a laundry list of projects: building beds, running irrigation, fencing... A lot of the fall work that didn't get done in 2023 got pushed to this spring when there already isn't enough time for everything on our shoulders.

We're too hard on ourselves. This is one Allie reminds me all the time. Our standards for the products we produce are high and difficult, often impossible, to achieve with a small crew and restricting circumstances. I often judge myself on the standards of the farm I see us being in three to five years and not the farm we are today. It's easy to become discouraged.

I'm not afraid of the hard work involved. It's the long days pushing yourself only to find you’re further behind from where you started that chisel away at your spirit.

Has it made us want to quit? No. It's more of a mental struggle for me. Why is this so hard? This shouldn't be this hard. Why can't we be better? I know what needs to happen. Why can't we make it happen?

Focus on the positives. We're growing food! Summer crops are maturing and we have a hefty stock of fall crops on the way. The greens look great. We have tomatoes in June! We're bolstering our efforts on our core customer base at the Clinton Farmers Market and we're able to give food to the Country Pantry. The CSA is humming. Our well is not dry. We are not dead!

This thing called farming is a voluntary struggle. And it's a growing year for the business with growing pains. We're figuring out the systems that it takes in order to bring good, healthy food to our customers—to make our community more self-reliant and vibrant.

As growers, we're fighting for a different kind of independence this holiday week. We want an independence from the industrial food system—the status quo of unsustainably grown, unsustainably transported, nutrient-lacking and often-processed food. We can do better and we should do better. It's a goal worth fighting for and worth struggling through.

That's our purpose. That's why we keep pushing.

—John