a small market garden in the city of cleveland

What can I say it’s been a tough summer.

The first half of this year – from late April to early July – was pretty smooth sailing. The crops looked and tasted good, we were hitting our revenue goals at the farmers market while more or less managing to keep our sanity.

Then the heat came.

When it’s this hot and dry nothing happens. Seeds don’t germinate, greens go to seed and if you don’t rise at the crack of dawn good luck working outside for more than an hour or two. We’re growing on a small amount of space and we don’t dedicate much of it to fruiting crops, since they tend to sprawl out and take more time thus limiting their earnings potential on a square foot basis. What we do grow a lot of – all sorts of greens and root crops – have a hard time in the heat and we’ve been suffering along with them.

Our frustration peaked this week when we got back to our packing shed to wash and store the harvest. I was in a foul mood, seeing how little was growing in the fields. In an attempt to wake me up, Virginia turned from her carrots and sprayed me with the hose. I picked up a handful of salad greens and hurled them her way.

It got ugly.

Earlier in the week I built a compost screen that fits on top of our garden cart. Using a couple designs on the internet and lumber laying around the farm it was a satisfying project that only took a few hours.

After the salad greens hurling incident I ventured into the afternoon heat to test it out with a compost pile we built in early spring. No matter how many times you’ve witnessed the magic of finished compost it never gets old.

Last night I started reading a book called Topsoil and Civilization, which links the rise and fall of history’s great civilizations with the degradation of their soils and food production capacities. This is why ancient civilizations that produced enormous cultural achievement and agricultural surplus are now desert wastelands subject to archeological excavation. Makes sense to me.

I mention that because in the swing of our day to day it’s too easy to forget that life on land comes from the soil. So perhaps the most spiritually fulfilling and practical act we can take is in its regeneration. At least that’s what life feels like with homemade compost running through your fingers.

Last night a big rain came and from the looks of the forecast it may have taken the last of the deep summer heat with it.

We can always dream.