Clockwork

Before starting farming on my own ten years ago I had already spent a couple seasons on farms in this area and elsewhere. And, despite that farming experience and having grown up spending my free time wandering the outdoors of the DC suburbs, I hadn't spent any particularly focused time paying attention to the minutiae of the Mid-Atlantic seasons. So when it came around to August, and suddenly there were grasshoppers everywhere, whole flocks of them rising up in front of the trucks as we drove through the grass, I was a bit surprised–and amazed by their density. How could I not have noticed such an entomological bloom before? I chalked it up to the vast fields of grass out on the farm as opposed to the neatly mown cul-de-sac lawns of my childhood.

The following year, when I struck out to farm on my own, I eagerly awaited the return of the grasshoppers in August... but they never arrived! Had I mis-remembered and was actually somehow astounded at several grasshoppers flitting away from me in a field, now an unremarkable sight? I was confused. And then I forgot about the grasshopper clouds, one of those memories that feels true but might in fact be a function of its time in one's life filtered by the vividness of being in a new place. I forgot about it, that is, until 2016, when in August, as on cue, again there were dozens and dozens of grasshoppers stirred up from where they sat, invisible, but now floating clumsily out of harms way whenever we drove past, looking like little brown butterflies until, near the ground, wings folded away and all of a sudden a regular old grasshopper dropped to the earth. 2016 was a Grasshopper Year.

I used to assume that each year the same animals appeared at the same time like clockwork, a product of the Newtonian seasonality of climatic cause and effect, inevitably the correct species materializing at its proper time. In fact, I used to assume the same of plants on the farm: that given identical inputs of seed, water, and calendar, results would be predictable from one year to the next. But it turns out--as all the returning CSA folks already know--each farm year is different, a product of unseen and unknowable factors.

2018 was a Wasp Year. Wasp nests in the shed, expected. Wasp nests in rolls of irrigation line, unexpected (and painful!). Wasps residing inside the tubular metal frames of farm equipment so often that, before hitching the tractor, I began to sight down the framing tubes (from a distance) to be sure they were clear of wasps. I dispatched wasps with boards, with poles, and when necessary, with wasp spray.

This year, there are no wasps. Nobody has been stung anywhere on the farm, not even once, and when it became clear that this was not a wasp year I began to feel safe and secure yanking old pieces of metal from the weeds and reaching into storage containers. What would have been dangerous in a Wasp Year holds no risk at all this season.

Because this year, it turns out, is an Ant Year. I have never thought of anthills as anything but a somewhat comical nuisance of working outside, a surprise to deal with from time to time (“OH! --ants here. Hm.”), but of no real consequence. This year, though, there are ant colonies in the potting soil bags and between stacks of wood, in a box of seeder parts (then scurrying away down the one blade of grass leaning up against the box), and in crates of onions curing in the greenhouse, no matter that we elevated them off the ground; under regular CSA-bag delivery spots forcing temporary relocation and, most recently, even living inside the weatherstripping of a seldom-used walk-in cooler door. This is entirely unusual, and no longer surprising–“OH. Ants, of course.”

Each year I scratch my head a little and try a little less to understand the unknowable, yet perhaps somewhere in that secret is the reason that each vegetable, equally mysterious, does not offer the same result from year-to-year even though I follow more or less the same planting schedule each season.

2020 is a Lettuce and Squash year, as you well know. Never in the history of the CSA has there been lettuce for you every single week! But peppers? Where are they? 2019 was a Pepper Year--there were so many that we sold boxes of seconds peppers for weeks--but not this year. We've had Sweet Potato and Carrot years, and even Eggplant Years (the most confounding vegetable). No matter how much I try to have just the right amount of everything, invariably a few vegetables end up defining the year with their abundance–or failure. Fortunately it always seems that whatever conditions depress one vegetable will boost another, so that on balance there are always the right amount of vegetables. I like to think it keeps the CSA exciting and fun--kind of like tie-dye, always plenty of color, always interesting, but the pattern unknown until the fabric unfolds.