Farming is devastating!

Just when you think you have a handle on the moment...BOOM flash flood. Why?? Is this the universe's way of enforcing a sort of zen spirituality on farmers? 

I don't know, but what I do know is that I had a great week and a great weekend. All of the new big crops are starting to come in and our markets are strengthening, yay! Until...

Imagine: you go out to a lovely dinner with friends and come home to find the driveway washed into the pond—uh oh, an ominous foreboding. But, the rain is stopping and there's been bad washing on the road before, so... you figure everything is fine. Then, you wake up in the morning to survey the farm and realize that "oh s**t it was a really bad rain. Actually, a flood. WTF??"

So, you dig in, get down in the mud and start trying to replant all of the sweet potatoes who have been washed down to the roots. Then you get distracted by the huge potato plants that have been flattened by the rain, so you start scrounging to cover exposed baby potatoes before the sun turns them green and poisonous. Then you start struggling to repair all of the down fencing when you notice that the sugar snap trellising is concave and the peas are lying on the ground beginning to yellow. Then you see the rivers running through the baby beats and blurring the rows of just emerging carrots. Finally, you see the beans... oh the sweet baby bean plants... washed. Whole huge sections of two different successions of green, yellow, and purple french filet beans submerged and washed away.

So, then you just start crying. I mean what else is there to do? You're covered in mud, everything's a mess and the universe is definitely conspiring against you. I mean come on, the arm, then the puppy, now the plants??? 

OK. I'm exaggerating. It's not that bad, I think most of the crops are recoverable and for those that aren't, we will replant. But it just feels so unnecessary! Honestly, perhaps even more than the actual loss of crops due to farming weather disasters, I think it's the lack of control that is so devastating. You just can't do anything about the weather. No matter how hard you work, how smart you are, or how much you plan, there are so many things out of your control. So, yes, I think the world is conspiring to try to make me more a bit more zen—a blessing in a (very good) disguise perhaps?