Yesterday Addison started tomatoes for his greenhouse and about a month ago I started the first slug of ranunculus, anemones, and sweetpeas for my flower hoophouse. They are looking good and I will transplant them out soon. We’ve gained nearly an hour of daylight since the winter solstice and growth is really picking up in the greens hoophouses. The extra light picks me up a little too.
I must admit to some overall fatigue as a farmer. I have been growing food and flowers for the people of Belfast for over 30 years. Though each year we learn a little more about how to do a good job I am gutted by the odds stacked against us: Big Ag, the climate crisis, the shortage of affordable housing in our area, the costs of everything rising annually, the awkward social media self-promotion, the need to be more efficient, faster, and smarter to keep up. What is keeping up? Making enough money to keep on going for another round. Food—fresh, startlingly beautiful, flavorful, healthy, and vital—has an invisible price cap, a terrible tipping point where it spills into a luxury good class, and it no longer feels like we are growing and cooking food for the people of Belfast. As our business faces another round of price increases to benefit our workers with paid leave time—a good new state law on the surface—we struggle with the necessity of charging more for our products. Our business increasingly feels ephemeral rather than durable. Chase’s Daily and the farm each received money to offset Covid-19 losses in the last year. Despite the uncertainties of the future we have the cash flow to begin the next season. I am trying to feel the wind at my back, the rebound of energy, and the restoration of hope and optimism that mark a lifelong farmer after a few months of downtime. I am listening to No-till podcasts, watching videos on utube of successful farmers with no weeds, and trying to imagine our farm into a more resilient organism. I scrawl notes on bits of paper about tarping, cover crops, vole control, and the always just out of reach solar array. I try to think “lean” and a little dispassionately and strike a few plantings of greens from the planting schedule. Maybe, I think, we don’t need to grow as many onions?
Increasingly, we are turning towards selling plants as a way to make enough money to prop up the growing of food. There is more wiggle room with plants. We rarely grow or propagate them at a loss—we can charge, unabashedly, what they are worth. And plants keep me coming back for more—affirming the joy I take in my work. And there it is—the foundation of this business—we love what we do. During this time where everything feels wobbly growing plants, for food or beauty, is a lifeline.
I hope as the days continue to grow longer and the long cold spring creeps along our business will be able to rebuild. This is a hard one to write. It is hard to share how vulnerable we feel.
