Farming Is The Life (Chosen) For Me 8/1/01

earlier years, and then surfing and hanging out at the mall in my later teen years. You may ask, "Well then, what got you into farming? Did any of your family farm or is it in interest you had as a kid?"

No, at least not that I am aware. The only person to grow anything in my memory was my mom who struggled to maintain a small garden in the parched, cracked earth of South Texas, where, to this day, they claim the lack of rain is STILL due to an unusual drought. In this plot she attempted to expand my mall fogged horizon by having me weed the small 10x10 plot she planted each season. She, however, gave up that strategy when she could no longer tolerate me pulling up the plants and leaving the weeds (hey, I just figured that obviously the healthier, more robust plants must be the ones she wanted to keep).

So that experience leaves me trying to recall any defining moments that shaped my career direction. Though I cannot remember a moment of possible career inspiration (besides wanting to be the next Tony Dorsett) I can vividly remember a moment when I realized what I did NOT want to be. That happened on the day that the school district returned to us the results from our career aptitude tracking tests given to all seventh graders. This test, designed to help us more clearly see our career potentials or possibilities, was a complex and sophisticated screening that had each of us fill-in the appropriate bubbles, with a number 2 pencil, that best matched our responses to each of the 100 questions formulated for this personal test given to all 6 million Texas seventh graders. That day in the library I learned that my best career possibilities included: number one, a salesman like my dad, which I swore up and down I would never be (a salesman or like my dad); number two, an architect/designer; and number three, something to do with preaching/ teaching.

I remember thinking, "huh?..."

So, with those results in the hands of my councilors, I was brisked along the educational path that would best help me realize my obvious potential.

It would be rude of me to describe the years soon following that test, but despite or because of those years, I became what I never suspected I could be. I found that I couldn't get enough of the outdoors. Unlike my mall years, I loved to work and sweat. I loved to feel soreness after a good days workout. On top of that, I moved to Oregon, met my wife, got a degree in Fisheries and Wildlife, bought a potential farm and had two kids. If in seventh grade I were to look at how my life was going to turn out, I probably would have said, "huh?..."

The ironic twist is that that fill-in-the-bubble-with-a-number-two-pencil- test has pretty accurately defined what I consider to be my first true profession. All three of those career options are major components of what I do. My newsletters and lectures in the intern program are preachings and teachings about local, organic growing. The farm site and the market booth took, and still take, constant design creation and alteration. And, most importantly, the success of the farm depends on the ability to sell. Every Saturday, you will find me at the Hey Bayles! Farm booth doing what I swore up and down I would never do...being a salesman, just like my dad.

That's Not Funny 7/1/02

Hum...How about the time the garlic was lying out in the field drying and a freak summer storm moved into the area. Excess moisture would have reduced the storability of the garlic, so I covered it with clear plastic to protect it. Good move, except for the fact that I left the plastic on the garlic for three days in the hot sun and baked it until it was ALL nicely roasted and ready to be spread over toastets. Sorry, no dinner party for 800 planned that weekend. Any humor accompanying that tragedy got tossed with the 500 heads of ruined garlic.

How about the time...never mind. I'm not willing to admit to that one just yet.

Then there was the time that I was attempting to land my first commercial account for the farm. I was in Marche restaurant talking the with the head chef, Rocky. I was nervous. I wanted to portray an image of refinement and broad experience so I brought up some specialty crops that I thought an establishment like theirs would appreciate, specifically our Petite Pois. Unfortunately, my limited refinement did not include any experience with the French language and I pronounced them "petite (as in a small dress size) poys", just like the damn things are spelled. His face was blank, like I had just spoken in Martian. I then managed to explain that they were the baby shelling peas. He said, "Oh... You mean "peti pwaus." All I could reply was, "Yeah, those small peas." That would be funny if it were not so pathetic. Good thing I wasn't also growing Haricot Verts at the time.

So what about farming makes me laugh? How about the time when my two kids and their two best friends were wandering around the farm with me. Being three and five year olds, they were very enthralled with the fact that they could eat stuff directly out of the fields and were sampling all the available crops as we passed by them. They would come to peas, pick a few and move on to beets, sample a few of them then roam over to salad mix, all the while commenting on whether that particular item was to their liking or not. At some point along the way, I stooped to tend to an irrigation repair and let them continue their explorations for a few moments on their own. After a bit Ezra calls from across the way, "Wow! Dada, this is GOOOOD." All the others agreed in unison and said that they wanted more. Curios, of course, to see what vegetable had caught their fancy, I looked up to see all four of them standing around a single large plant of broccoli, ripping off handfuls of LEAVES and stuffing them in their face. To this day, when I remember the scene, I unintentionally superimpose deer noggins over the faces of those kids and see them all eating peacefully, with that glassy deer stare, chewing away at broccoli leaves.

I'm not sure if that scene is actually funny or if it makes me smile because it is just so darn cute. Either way, it's one of those moments that keeps me growing, funny or not.

Where The Sun Don't Shine 9/13/01

I put a new field into production this season. Not a large field. In fact, it is a rather small field when compared to my other plots. I call this field the New East. For the past two seasons I cover cropped it with the nitrogen fixing Crimson Clover, limed it well, added phosphorous and manured it liberally. This is the makings of a great corn field.

I had not grown corn for the past two seasons because of economics. My farm is small, under 4 acres, and space consumptive crops, like corn, not only bring low dollar return per acre, but also tie up the field for the entire season. Instead, I have concentrated on growing other crops such as spinach and broccoli. This season I decided "what the heck," I am growing corn for the CSA subscribers, as a little surprise.

Do you remember those hot spring days with the temperature pushing ninety? Unseasonably warm and dry. In fact, so much so that our spinach, a cool season crop, failed repeatedly. With the onset of what appeared to be this never ending heat, I planted the corn seed in the adequately warm soil, only to have the weather pattern change drastically, turning cool and damp. Now we had great spinach weather, but horrible corn weather. The seed rotted in the ground. However, with several re-sowings and a lot of effort, I got most of the field to germinate and, whew, we had corn on the way.

For the past three weeks, I have been waiting for that corn to ripen up. The ears are pollinated and the kernels are present, but they are not plumping up rapidly. What the heck? I checked the maturity date and it should have been ready no later that last week!

Mystified, I put my head into the problem. I poked my head in and out of the rows and up and down the stalks searching for a clue. Today, I found it.

The sun has dropped low enough in the sky that the corn is getting shade from the cottonwood trees. Those trees are some two hundred feet away and looking at them in relation to the corn patch, one would be hard pressed to imagine there being a shade problem. However, a shade problem there is. In fact when one looks out over all the fields at my site, only one field has a shade problem. It's not even the field with the closest proximity to the cottonwood trees! Yet it remains the field in the shade for most of the afternoon.

Now all I can do is wait and hope. Damn! Well, even though you may not get corn from me this season, you will get this. One, you will get a farmer with even more personal experience; and two you will get a farmer who has been smitten with the "challenge bug." You can bet that next season I will take on the corn challenge with a passion.

Though I might not be the smartest guy on the farm, I am one who learns quickly from experience. And after having put my head there this season, I now know that corn don't grow where the sun don't shine.

farmer john e.