Rain Makes Berries

When I was in college, I took Geology and Oceanography as my sciences.  I had biology twice in high school; I didn't even want to tackle chemistry.  Turns out I really loved it and even seriously considered changing my major.  Looking back I kind of wish I had.  What can I say; I've always been a dork.  I remember my professor saying that eventually water was going to become the most important, sought after, and fought over resources in the world.  When I look at last year’s crop, I believe it.  I think it rained maybe four times all summer and things, especially the corn, just dried up in the field never making a crop.  It was awful.  I see things like that and think, how can people not believe our climate is changing?


So what is that saying, when Muhammad won't come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Muhammad?  It's a proven fact that plants need air, sun, and water to live.  We have plenty of sun and plenty of air, and if nature doesn't provide the rain it's up to us to make it happen. 


When we first bought the farm, we knew we wanted to dig a pond to use for irrigation.  It was supposed to be a simple pond.  Well, if any of you know The Husband, you know it wasn't just a simple pond.  A month later we have a 20+ foot deep hole in the ground.  It was an odyssey to have the thing dug.  The up side was he got to use the excavator, which always makes his day.  Then comes the fun part, watching it fill up.  We knew we'd tapped into some underground streams, you could see them flowing in.  However, as mentioned before, it might have rained four times so the underground streams weren't exactly at capacity.  It wasn't until we got thirteen inches in just a couple days last September that it filled up. 


Then we had to get a pump to pump the water from the pond to the berry field.  In comes Berry Girl to save the day.  It took two missions to Clinton, but I was able to complete my objective and secure the necessary parts. (Everyone knows that superheroes must have a sweet ride to cruise to missions on, well, I have a Mercury Mariner.  Fitting pump parts into this thing was a challenge.  I think someone needs an upgrade, I'm just sayin'.) 


So now we have our pond and our pump.  As per usual, The Husband puts his over analytical mind to the task and comes up with a plan to lay pipe.  Him and his dad take on this mission (I will not have any part in this), and several arguments later the pipe is laid.  Fast forward to now.  Our berries are blooming, and we even have tiny green berries (!!!), so if it freezes, we have to a) cover the berries up with row covers or  b) run water over them all night long to create a protective coating of ice over the fruit so it is not damaged.  We choose option a usually.  So far this year that has not been a problem (knock on wood).

If you look right in the middle, you'll see a tiny little berry

Our problem is the dry weather.  I know, I know, it rained last week, it's supposed to rain tomorrow and Wednesday, but it's not enough.  We've had a dry winter and the climate forecast is for a warm spring (yes I look it up, I’m a bit of a meteorology nut too, I’m a dork remember).  We haven't forgotten last summer.  We're preparing to irrigate.  We planted our berries on black plastic which allows us to get the maximum effect while using less water.  Irrigtion is great, but it only holds out as long as the rivers/ponds/aquifers do.  So the next time you say, I wish it wouldn't rain, think about your local farmer and how sweet those berries are going to be in about a month.  Think about what you eat tonight when you sit down to supper.  Without rain none of it would be possible.  What is that song...rain makes corn, corn makes whiskey, whiskey makes my baby get a little frisky?  What if we change it to rain makes berries, berries make wine, wine makes my baby get, ah, well you catch my drift.

Mortal Enemies: Episode 2

I am a night owl, not a morning person.  It's so bad I don't even like to talk the first fifteen, twenty minutes I'm awake, but at nine pm I get a second wind.  I normally go to bed around midnight.  The Husband however is the complete opposite.  He falls asleep at nine-thirty on the couch and I wake him up at midnight to go to bed.  However, the past couple of nights I've been waking him up to go on covert missions.  He gets up and gets into his diesel truck and 'sneaks' down the tenth of a mile road between our house and the berry field, armed with his rifle, a horn, and an intense need for revenge.  The Objective: eliminating the threat posed by another mortal enemy...

The Deer.

When I was growing up I loved deer.  I liked that they are so pretty and graceful.  I liked the way they seemed to leap when they run.  I liked that they were kind of introverted creatures, like me.  However, I have learned that I bought into a myth.  The only time deer are introverted is when it's hunting season.  All the rest of the year you can find them grazing right beside the road, running out in front of your car, punching holes in my plastic, and mowing my berries down like a kid going through Halloween candy.

Deer hoof vs. Plastic



Every year we have a problem with deer.  It's normally worse with the sweet potatoes.  Deer love them.  When the vines have just been transplanted, they love to eat the tender shoots.  Later, when the potatoes are grown they paw them up out of the ground.  All of you hunters putting out deer corn, you need to be putting out sweet potatoes.  Trust me.

Now that the berries are right down the road from us we can keep a better eye them.  This is good and bad.  When you can walk out of your house and see them lurking towards your field in search of those tasty leaves, it can get under your skin.  Revenge for all those years of eaten sweet potatoes and berries infects you, and you find that you have turned from a docile farmer to a deer assassin (play any Muse track here, my suggestions: Assassin, New Born, and Uprising).  We've shot at them, scared them off, put up a fence saturated in disgusting deer repellant stuff (the fence actually worked until it got partially blown down by the hurricane force winds we had last week).

Hence the covert missions.  We ambush the unsuspecting creatures about one am, just as they're getting to the sweet spots.  It scares them off (although I envision them running in the woods snickering under their breath about what a sucker we are, waiting until we're back in the house and coming right back out for round two) and makes The Husband feel better so I guess all in all it's a valiant effort in the war against the mortal enemies. 

Mortal Enemies Episode 1

Right now on the farm we're gearing up for the next crop, which is strawberries.  We planted them in October and they have been dormant in the field waiting for it to warm up enough to start growing.  Well, as we can all feel, it's getting to that time.  However, along with the strawberries come those pesky problems that all farmers fear.

Weeds and Deer.

These are the mortal enemies of farmers everywhere, and yesterday I decided to put my battle gear on and fight the hard fight against one of these foes, weeds.

I figured, hey, I'm at home, I need some exercise, why not?  It's reasonably warm, The Boy is dying for fresh air, why not let him expend some energy and me burn some calories while maybe saving us a couple bucks (since gas is $3.30 a gallon!!!).  Well, it's not as easy as it looks. 

First off, the plants are set in a 2 in diameter hole in black plastic.  My strategy for the battle was to go through all the little pant holes and pull the weeds out.  I did about three rows a week ago, but I've been out of town/it's been colder/I'm just lazy, so I knew what to expect.  Secondly, the weed is a fickle foe.  Some of them pull up no problem.  Some of them break off at the root, so really, you have accomplished nothing, kind of like WWI.  Some of them attach themselves to the berry, so you accidentally pull off leaves with the weed or in one case, you uproot a berry plant (don't tell The Husband, I performed first aid: I replanted it and crossed my fingers).  The real problem with all this is you are working within that 2 inch hole.  You don't want to make it larger, it will cause problems down the road, however it is sometimes impossible to accomplish this feat. 



One of our medium sized plants, weed free



First Blooms

All in all, between myself The Boy (who thought it was great fun to pull off the dead leaves [see pic 1] and crunch them up, sometimes it really doesn't take much to entertain him) and The Husband who came in at the last minute to help, we got half the field weeded.  We fought the good fight and while the weed will come back to fight another day we have weakened it's stronghold in the field.

Stay tuned for more on the second mortal enemy...The Deer.

The Beginning

So this is my first ever blog.  I never thought anything I did would be important enough that people would want to read it, and it still might not be, but one thing I noticed during our corn maze this year was that people are interesting in farming and how we go about doing it. 

I thought for this first post I'd tell you a little about me.  I grew up around farming.  My uncle and granddaddy farmed, I lived a mile off the road with no neighbors except for my uncle's corn, wheat, soybeans, and tobacco.  While I grew up in a rural community surrounded by farmland, I never in my wildest dreams ever thought I'd have an active part in it.  I went to ECU (pirate nation!) and got a degree in history.  I had my own plans.  Enter The Husband.  I chose him over my plans and didn't go the academic route.  Instead after graduation I came home and got a job.  We had The Boy.  Then the second best thing that has ever happened to me (with The Boy being the first) happened.  I got laid off.

One thing I learned about myself was that I didn't like working a 8-5 job.  I didn't like sitting at a computer all day making someone else rich, while I had to watch everything I did for fear I'd get fired.  I like being creative and being able to do my thing my way.  I like the idea that what I am doing is helping someone somewhere, not just lining the pockets of the folks I work for.  So when The Husband decided he wanted to go with one of his crazy ideas (there was a time he seriously talked about farm-raised fish, thank God cooler heads prevailed) and raise strawberries, I found the opportunity I'd been looking for.  It expanded when we were able to buy his family farm and start our corn maze.

So that's pretty much how I got involved in this project.  I'm a historian turned farmer who is still trying to find her way.  I'm an accountant, manager, drink deliverer, part runner, berry hauler, IT department, you name it I do it.  I'm the Berry Girl.