By Stowell P. Watters
Our farm manager received an email from MOFGA last Saturday that said something to the effect of:
“Dear farm, make sure to remove all plastic from your hoophouses before Irene hits.”
Great advice, really, considering the enormity of the thing that was, at that time, ripping its way through towns and homes along the Outer Banks. We huddled by the computer in the farm house and looked at those nail-biting photos of the maelstrom; all computer-projected in blood red and fire orange and spinning like a tornado the size of Siberia. We could feel, collectively, the pressure of the bullseye which was lowering itself to cover all of New England, could feel it bearing down, foreboding and heavy upon us all. Paul LePage was telling us to take care of our neighbors and Kevin Panics (thanks to Glen Ellis for that one) was telling us to pretty much cancel the future, call the whole thing a wash in the face of Irene. We were informed of grocery store lines.
And Julee, our ever vigilant farm manager, was telling us to leave the plastic on the hoop houses.
“Oh,” we slowly unbent our bodies from looking at the computer screen and stared at her, “OK.”
Marina and I have learned - through countless situations in which Julee’s advice has proved, regardless of seeming initially backward, right on the money - that this woman has got it in her bones. So, like any good employees, we did what our boss said. We trusted her.
As it approached, the storm was downgraded and talked about like last year’s Boston Celtics – oh what it could have been. It was demoralized, made fun of behind it’s back, and treated like a mere tropical when once it had catagories and offshore swellings and News Alerts.
When we showed up on Sunday the wind had proved to be the only real punisher. Wind had knocked out power to the farm, and as a consequence we had to use water from a neighbor’s Artisian well to give all of the green-house babies a drink. Bucket by bucket we did this. In fact, at the time of writing this (right after work on Tuesday) we still do not have power and just today harvested rutebegas, potatoes, kale, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, and everything else we grow without the use of electricity – aside from a generator leant to us by Bill Ellis (thank you sir!) which powered our water pump for washing the veggies.
Some branches fell here and there, a big thanks goes out to Creative Trails; their group hacked and sawed some of the larger pieces from off of our fences, exuberantly I would add. Water carved a gulch in the main route from the processing shed to the rest of the farm, an easy fix with a rake, and some of the tomato trellising fell over in the wind.
Oh, and of course the hoop houses were fine. Julee just smiled, she already knew it without having to check the farm. This might sound like I am kissing….err sucking up, but no, I am actually just sharing with you, good reader, my sense of utter flabergastment with this lady. She knows things in a deep way that is hidden from me, she can tell things about a field from touching the soil, she knows when people are feeling this way or that, and on top of it all, she is one hell of a prognosticator.
Our farm staff hopes you fared as well as we did during the storm, and our hearts go out to all those less fortunate than us - we know the storm was not as mild for many families on the East Coast and many families lost things which cannot be replaced. With fall and ruin comes new growth, new victory and rebirth and all things are at mercy of a constant ebb and flow; this is perhaps the most bold-faced lesson the farm teaches us all every single day we work.
