The desire to dig in the dirt sometimes garners the pejorative description of “nostalgia for the mud” among those whose tastes run to the more comfortable and refined. “Nostalgia for the mud” has a different connotation, though, for Texans. We get a little more literal about the phrase, since we don’t get enough moisture on a regular basis to have much in the way of mud.
It may be a somewhat arbitrary way to track things, but if you start from last November, the Brazos Valley is now at the tail end of the driest 8-month period in recorded history, and there is simply no end in sight to our current drought.
The good news, though, is that La Niña is now over, so any dryness we experience from here on out will be because we are normally dry at this time of year, not because of any abnormal atmospheric events. Small comfort, true, particularly since droughts can be self-perpetuating – dry ground warms up fairly quickly, and has already caused all kinds of temperature records to be broken all over East Texas this Spring. In addition, since the ground lacks moisture, the phenomenon of afternoon thunderstorms springing up as a result of daytime heating building huge local cumulonimbus clouds can’t take place – no moisture, no storm clouds.
What’s a microfarmer to do?
Plan for the future, that’s what. We have taken note of the weather, naturally, because it dictates much of what we can and cannot do in our garden, but we reject wholesale the bellyaching of people who refuse to accept that this is the new normal. Even in the middle of a drought, we have still received more rain year-to-date than plenty of folk who farm in the middle of deserts all over the world, who manage to produce beuatiful fruits and vegetables.
We recently harvested our meager sweet corn crop, for example, and were grateful for the few ears we managed to salvage. All over the Brazos Valley, folk who make their living from the monocrop monstrosity known as modern farming fall into one of two categories: those who planted cotton instead of corn this year, and those who are in danger of going broke. Corn was a terrible investment this spring for anyone who spent money on seed (we didn’t – we used old seed from a couple of seasons ago).
Tomatoes, on the other hand, are growing profligately, in utter defiance of the drought, and are producing some of the sweetest, juiciest fruit we ever remember tasting. Same thing for jalapeños, which are currently keeping us in some of the best homegrown salsa anyone anywhere has ever tasted.
We have started cutting and drying amaranth seed-heads, and will be threshing them over the next several weeks. This is especially important as Myrtle’s place recently became gluten free; homegrown grains are becoming a prominent part of our garden. As fate would have it, this dovetails nicely with our need to grow crops which don’t particularly care two figs about whether it rains much or not. Amaranth, sorghum, millet, buckwheat, quinoa, these are all crops which, once established, can thrive without a whole lot of attention. And the summer trifecta of amaranth, sorghum and millet also doesn’t particularly object to the stress of 100°+ temperatures – each of these crops is perfect for a climate which is semi-temperate two or three months out of the year, semi-tropical two or three months out of the year, and flat out arid six or eight months out of the year.
We have mentioned before the three distinct growing seasons in the Brazos Valley, but we are starting to appreciate that there are “microseasons” as well. For example, bush and pole beans of all sorts do okay from March through June, but require different treatment depending on when you put them in the ground. Velvet beans, being tropical, require tons of sun and water, and can take anywhere from three to six months to come to harvest.
And then there's grain. Amaranth, which we are harvesting now, can go all summer. We'll have a “mini-season” for buckwheat, which will go in the ground in early to mid September, to be harvested in late October. We'll start putting quinoa in the ground in October, and stagger plantings until January, so that we'll be harvesting some kind of grain from now until next March, when we plant more amaranth, sorgum, and millet, and start the whole cycle all over again.
We'll be planting avocados, raspberries, and evergreen huckleberries next winter in hopes of making our fruit and veggie harvest become year round, too. And while strawberries have been the bane of our existance for four years now, we're going to try again this fall, in hopes that if they take off prior to next year's heat wave (May or June, depending), maybe, just maybe, we can harvest more than just a couple of berries from them.
Under no circumstances, however, will we assent to the presence of mopers. Yes, it is hot enough for us, thank you very much. Next question!
Happy farming!
The good news, though, is that La Niña is now over, so any dryness we experience from here on out will be because we are normally dry at this time of year, not because of any abnormal atmospheric events. Small comfort, true, particularly since droughts can be self-perpetuating – dry ground warms up fairly quickly, and has already caused all kinds of temperature records to be broken all over East Texas this Spring. In addition, since the ground lacks moisture, the phenomenon of afternoon thunderstorms springing up as a result of daytime heating building huge local cumulonimbus clouds can’t take place – no moisture, no storm clouds.
What’s a microfarmer to do?
Plan for the future, that’s what. We have taken note of the weather, naturally, because it dictates much of what we can and cannot do in our garden, but we reject wholesale the bellyaching of people who refuse to accept that this is the new normal. Even in the middle of a drought, we have still received more rain year-to-date than plenty of folk who farm in the middle of deserts all over the world, who manage to produce beuatiful fruits and vegetables.
Tomatoes, on the other hand, are growing profligately, in utter defiance of the drought, and are producing some of the sweetest, juiciest fruit we ever remember tasting. Same thing for jalapeños, which are currently keeping us in some of the best homegrown salsa anyone anywhere has ever tasted.
We have started cutting and drying amaranth seed-heads, and will be threshing them over the next several weeks. This is especially important as Myrtle’s place recently became gluten free; homegrown grains are becoming a prominent part of our garden. As fate would have it, this dovetails nicely with our need to grow crops which don’t particularly care two figs about whether it rains much or not. Amaranth, sorghum, millet, buckwheat, quinoa, these are all crops which, once established, can thrive without a whole lot of attention. And the summer trifecta of amaranth, sorghum and millet also doesn’t particularly object to the stress of 100°+ temperatures – each of these crops is perfect for a climate which is semi-temperate two or three months out of the year, semi-tropical two or three months out of the year, and flat out arid six or eight months out of the year.
We have mentioned before the three distinct growing seasons in the Brazos Valley, but we are starting to appreciate that there are “microseasons” as well. For example, bush and pole beans of all sorts do okay from March through June, but require different treatment depending on when you put them in the ground. Velvet beans, being tropical, require tons of sun and water, and can take anywhere from three to six months to come to harvest.
And then there's grain. Amaranth, which we are harvesting now, can go all summer. We'll have a “mini-season” for buckwheat, which will go in the ground in early to mid September, to be harvested in late October. We'll start putting quinoa in the ground in October, and stagger plantings until January, so that we'll be harvesting some kind of grain from now until next March, when we plant more amaranth, sorgum, and millet, and start the whole cycle all over again.
We'll be planting avocados, raspberries, and evergreen huckleberries next winter in hopes of making our fruit and veggie harvest become year round, too. And while strawberries have been the bane of our existance for four years now, we're going to try again this fall, in hopes that if they take off prior to next year's heat wave (May or June, depending), maybe, just maybe, we can harvest more than just a couple of berries from them.
Under no circumstances, however, will we assent to the presence of mopers. Yes, it is hot enough for us, thank you very much. Next question!
Happy farming!
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