the feast of all saints

About the time our various goldenrods are thinking of blooming, the farm work begins to involve us exclusively. Sumac reds up first along the ditches, and simultaneously the time-sensitive farm tasks line up: apples to pick, potatoes to be dug, a steer to process, laying hens to cull and can. These jobs are not done before others things must also be dealt with -- green manures sown, herbs and mushrooms gathered and dried, fodder beets cellared for the pigs' winter feed.

So it's hard to add to that list, keeping up with communications online; but such communication is how we, and our fellow farmers, collect information and learn from one another.

So, just a few beginning thoughts:

We have noticed that the lack of rainfall this summer -- about one-third of the twelve inches we expect from June to October, inclusive -- in addition to an unusual intensity of sunshine (far more clear days than we are accustomed to, by a factor of three or four perhaps) -- has had some interesting effects on forage and garden productivity. Predictably, dry conditions have adversely affected some crops dependent on plenty of water. Interestingly, however, the increase of solar energy seems to have favored leaf production in the pasture and in the woods. We've seen an abundance of bloom almost everywhere. Fruit and nut trees that didn't get nipped by a late frost have produced heavily.

And in the pasture, where cool season grasses and forbs produced less well, there have been many warm-season plants to fill the gaps and keep our ruminants fed. One of the advantages of encouraging native/naturalized forages is a rich seed bank from which to draw according to what the climate throws at us. And an advantage to raising pastured livestock is that, whatever grows, there is something that likes to eat it. Hemp dogbane seems to offer little to the human diet, but, passed through the gut of a bovine, it becomes milk and meat -- plus manure for the growing of more forage.

Today, in our calendar, is the feast of all saints, an appropriate meditation for a complex farming year.