Rutkowski Farm

If there’s one thing I love it’s a crazy idea. This was a crazy idea.  For the most part, I enjoy watching other people enact these things….from a distance.

FARMING WITH DYNAMITE!

This year has been like a bee sting to the eye (see left).

It’s not worth sugarcoating…it’s been a hard year of farming.  I’ve slowly come to realize this year that it may not be in our best interest to continue farming commercially.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE the challenges that farming presents, but it’s been driven home to me that my family and (unfortunately) paying the bills have to take precedence.  I could sacrifice time with family and be a better farmer, but I just don’t want to do that.  In past years, I’ve been able to take a lot of my time off from work to augment farming time, but that can’t happen to the same extent this year because of the load I’m facing at work.   At the end of the day, I need to pay the bills.

You might ask why I don’t just make the jump and make my job farming…Trust me, I’ve thought about it.  I see a path to making it profitable enough that we could subsist on it, but the biggest stumbling block I keep hitting would be affordable health insurance for my family. I can’t bring myself to cut the cord.

For now, I’m a bad farmer.  I’m letting the weeds win this year so that I can enjoy my family like most middle class Americans do.  I refuse to feel guilty about that, though it does pain me some every task I miss.

What this probably means for next year is that we will be doing far less farm wise.  No Farmers Market.  At most 1/2 the garlic (and only one festival).  Growing for ourselves.  I want to spend these years off from farming getting better at it at a smaller scale.  Then, when I can come back to it, I can come back full force.

…don’t do it at all” is bad advice grounded in a good idea.

A friend of mine decided to stop farming for other people this year. He cited frustration with not being able to live up to what he knew he could do (ie the advice above) because of time constraints.  He’s happier now.  I’m not sure I’d be.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately.  When my wife and I started our gardenthis year, I went into it with a great deal of trepidation.  Work has been crazy and giving our 2 year old the attention he wants/deserves is a full time job in itself.  We planted 600 feet of potatoes (among other things) anyways.  Up until this weekend, my fears felt very well founded.  The weeds were on the cusp of winning, and we just felt overwhelmed. That situation has mostly changed and tonight I make my final push to get the weeds within a comfortable zone (dead).  Also due to the weather many of those original potatoes didn’t come up.  We’ve filled in the blanks and are now going to have a hell of a time sorting out what’s what at harvest. It’s a strange but satisfying victory.

Farming has taught me a number of things that I think are much better advice than the above.

• Diversification is the best defense against failure.
• If you feel like you’re failing at something, figure out how to change the outcome and get on it! If you can’t change the outcome, don’t worry too much.
• You don’t know what your limits are until you’ve exceeded them.

So…I’m back to that familiar place.  How much do I scale back next year?  Do I scale back next year?  The real trick will be sticking to the decision next season when it’s time to plant.

Crossposted at patentlypre.posterous.com

Oh who am I kidding… It’s on.

Blueberries are looking like they’re going to be a bumper crop this year as long as we can avoid significant mummyberry. I’m not convinced of that, because the amount of maintenance I put in on the blueberries was not as much as I would have liked. On the other hand, we had almost no mummyberry last year, so fewer mummies=fewer infecting bodies.

That said this looks closer to a 1000 pint year as opposed to last year’s 250 pint year.  Yipes. For those that want to know when they’ll be ready, the typical answer is 2nd week in July.

On the garlic front, the scapes on the german white are ready to remove.  They’re perfect eating right now.  I’m going to try and get some out in front of the stand in the next week.  They’ll be cheap. They make AMAZING pesto.

In other housekeeping, we’re just trying to keep up with stuff this year…Having a 2 year old makes it hard to get anything done.  We’re navigating through it.   We may wind up having to put the farming on hold for a few years, but this summer will bear that out. Stay tuned.

We’ve had a fine winter.  All the garlic is resting under a blanket of snow and ice.  It’s been nice.

That said, we’re ready for the Spring to rear it’s ever-loving beautiful head. The unending puches of snow/sleet/ice need to stop and cede ground to the grass and inevitable mud.  I can’t wait for MUD!  I’m actually hoping I see some of it this weekend when I go out to do some work on the blueberries.

I think 2011 will be another good year!  I’m just ready for it to actually start.