Farm Update: 12 July 2015

Little by Little

“Feeling the burn,” so to speak. It’s hot enough now mid-day (30 deg C — I no longer remember what that means in your Fahrenheit) that it’s not ultra-productive to work outside during those hours. I’ve started to follow the example of my cat and sleep most days instead for an hour or so. There’s something about the sun that creeps up on you. Suddenly, you’re not okay anymore.

In a lot of ways, this video by a friend sums up more or less how I feel vis-a-vis the garden this time of year as well:

Last week, a chef I sell to was kind enough to show me some lettuce from another farm which is much more developed/established than mine. It was like this perfect, impossible lettuce/mesclun mix that only seems like a remote fleeting fantasy relative to my current experiential world. The kind of lettuce you dream about, lust after. The kind of lettuce your competitor is somehow able to sell for $13/kilo when you’re trying to hawk yours for almost twice that price… It’s moments like that which make you just not sure how you’re supposed to compete. At least the pigs were happy to get mine.

But it all evens out somehow in a cosmic way — I found out also last week that I’ve been selected as a delegate for Canada and Quebec by the Slow Food Youth Network to attend this year’s Terra Madre event in Milan, happening in October at the end of the World Expo:

Evidently, I was the only person in the province to apply. So not all efforts are in vain, and I suspect I will gain more by attending this event than I would have by being able to sell that extra $50 worth of lettuce…

I’m also working on an article for Small Farm Canada magazine about starting a wild foods business. I’m by no means the expert on the subject, but I think getting into wild foods — especially edible weeds — could make a really good sideline for other small-scale producers to get into. It’s just fun, also!

Speaking of wild foods business, I tracked down a very good lead on a chef in the city who would probably be into buying this kind of stuff from me, but I decided to hold off for now. I’m at that point in the summer where fatigue is kind of always just outside the door. I know from other past experiences (working as a technical director for a summer theatre a few years back) that the best thing to do at this point is simply:

Trust in the routine.

Stick to the schedule. Real artists ship. And all that kind of stuff. There’s a time to expand, a time to cut back and a time to just keep straight on down the road no detours. So that’s the plan for now.

I had another small farm nearby call me last week to help them out in a pinch with filling out their weekly CSA basket, as they’ve experienced some crop loss. It was kind of fun to be able to help them out without having to have the pressure myself of regularly providing for a CSA. And in fact, the money I made from that made up for the theoretical $50 I lost on my pig salad. It seems like there’s kind of always something that pops up, though it’s not always predictable which direction it will come from.

I’m starting to have a real sensation of being able to see the end of the season, especially with the Terra Madre/Slow Food trip in October. I mean, I know there’s still half of july, all of August and September, but that event gives me sort of a concrete thing to shoot for that’s beyond just making enough money for the season. And that’s big, because there comes a time when you go out in the garden and your brain automatically starts converting everything to theoretical dollars. Which is, of course, important if you’re trying to run/start a business. But it becomes a pain sometimes too. You just want to tell that part to shut the hell up, and that this isn’t the only reason we’re doing this anyway —

And that’s when you’ve got to stop and taste the wild raspberries.