Seasonal Timings

  Every year at this time I'm struck by the profound power of seasons and timing.  June comes upon us with imperatives completely outside our control.  That is both exhilarating and terrifying.

  After two months of virtually no rain, we finally received about three inches over about five days.  What a godsend.  It wasn't enough to break the drought, but it was enough to start things growing again.

              With rain in the forecast, I jumped on our raised garden beds and planted all of them in a day.  Beets, squash, green beans, tomatoes and other vegetables went in ahead of the rain.  With all that wonderful gentle moisture, the seeds sprouted immediately and are already showing leaves.  Had I planted during the drought and cold period, they would have struggled.  Had I waited until after the rain, the damp soil would not have been as fluffy and easy to move around.

                  That one day, right before the rain and after things warmed a bit, was the perfect 24-hour window to get those plants and seeds in the ground.  Humbling and gratifying are the two words that come to mind in describing this kind of dance with nature's cycles.  Our schedule, or work plan, is not predicated on bureaucratic licensing or reports.  No arbitrary deadlines.  Here on the farm, what we do is determined by a seasonal cycle completely out of our hands.

                  Submitting to that timing requires an appreciation for nature's juggernaut that comes and goes on its own.  I can't manipulate it.  I can only respond.  In a day when people are ga-ga over Artificial Intelligence and screens seem to dominate our existence, being reminded that Star Trek manipulation is not reality tucks us into a deeper understanding of what is tangible and true.  Winter's cold always leaves by June.  Rain always follows droughts.

                  The other huge seasonal and timing-oriented activity this time of year is making hay.  For the uninitiated, hay is nothing more than dried forage.  As raisins are to grapes, hay is to grass.  Imagine if you hadn't mowed your lawn until now.  What would it look like?

                  As spring arrives and the weather warms, forages begin growing . . . rapidly.  We designate some fields for hay, letting the grass grow as abundantly as it can.  While the accumulating biomass is amazing to watch, it has a definite finish line.  The grass and clover grow, set seedheads, and then turn brown.  That spring growth cycle finishes into a lignified, cardboard-like, unpalatable senescence.  

                  Just like grapes must be picked at their prime to make good-tasting and nutritious raisins, forages must be mowed and dried at their prime to make palatable and nutrient-dense feedstock for cows.  They don't want over-mature grasses any more than we like over-mature sweet corn or chewy green beans.  Cows like tenderness too.

                  In hay making, then, timing is everything.  We mowed our first fields last week and baled them on Saturday.  Those bales go under roof to be protected from weathering and fed out next winter.  Yes, we're working and thinking months ahead.  On the farm, everything is about leveraging today's production to create a buffer for tomorrow's shortfall.  

                  Whether drought or blizzard turn off pasture production, we need to be ready for the day when the cows can't graze outside.  This window of grass maturity and prior to senescence is quite narrow.  We have only three or four weeks to get everything mowed and stored in order to catch the forage prior to lignification (turning to cardboard, so to speak).

                  Rain is the bogeyman during hay season.  While we pray for rain to grow it, we pray for rain to stop while we harvest.  Hot and dry is ideal for making hay.  But, just like the garden planting, we don't get to pick what the weather will be like. Sometimes a week of cold rain sets in right in the middle of hay season.  Everything stops and we wait.  

                  I remember one season when we waited until August.  We called it the year without a summer.  Its abnormality made it memorable.  Normally by the first of July we're finished with hay and the pressure is off.  Making hay is the most critically-timed activity we do here at Polyface.  We want good hay.  Making hay requires hours driving equipment, which means more likelihood of breakdowns.  Few things test emotions like hay ready to bale and the baler has a breakdown.

                  In that case, the window of opportunity can be just a couple of hours.  The hay has to be baled before dew starts falling; if the sun-dried forage gets wet, it will mold in the bale.  You can't begin until the dew is off and you have to finish before the dew falls.  While this can seem like a hopelessly hazardous task to the uninitiated, we farmers view it as a dance with something way bigger than us.  Sometimes we get our toes stepped on and sometimes we don't.

                  We can't manipulate the game.  We can't turn it off.  Winter is coming as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow.  The exhilarating challenge, then, is to submit, successfully, to plans bigger than us.  Fitting into that position, going with it, and popping out having partnered with God-ordered designs shapes our psyche in profound ways.  We don't control; we adjust.  We don't own; we borrow.  We don't demand; we ask.

                  As a Polyface patron, you invest in this seasonal timing.  Thank you for engaging in this age-old provenance choreography.  We don't fight the seasons.  We don't fight the timing.  We adapt, submit, and embrace a nature-us partnership that builds soil, immunity, and thriving.  Here on the farm, sometimes this seasonal timing becomes stressful.  The windows seem too narrow.  The end seems too soon.

                  But you, our faithful patrons, lift our spirits to keep observing, timing, and adjusting, enabling all parties to thrive.  When we've missed the window, you show up with orders and a smile.  That's "wind beneath our wings" that carries us forward to love this life and not become frustrated with it.  You keep us here for you.  Thank you.