We didn’t lose crops or money directly due to COVID, but we had other issues that were exacerbated by the pandemic. Three years ago we moved to our new farm plot and we’ve been dealing with some preexisting soil issues since then. This has caused crop loss throughout the season, and the market channels—restaurant wholesale and farmers markets—were rapidly shifting due to the pandemic.
My daughter was born in June, and in August the LNU Complex Fire came through our town. We’re used to fire season. There are always a number of weeks where I’m out there wearing a mask, dealing with smoke, and trying to keep the working days as short as I can. But I’ve never had it affect me on a physical level like this. This was the first year where it felt like the mask wasn't enough.
I’m looking forward to continuing our Seed Stewards CSA. This year we’re going to link up with five other farmers for a coordinated eight-month program. Each month’s vegetable box will showcase different varieties of a highlighted crop, so we’ll send out radishes in June from a farmer from Santa Cruz who will talk about the radishes she grows and how they play into her cultural heritage.
We’re heading into another year where there’s just as much lingering uncertainty. More restaurants are closing, and there’s no sense of that market coming back. There is a potential mental health crisis en masse for a lot of farmers, and we don’t have the energy to be as proactive as we were last spring. It’s felt unrelenting, between a dry winter, COVID, planting in spring, and fires happening earlier and more intensely.
I hope we all survive this year and I'm still farming by the end of it. The good part of everyone getting their ass kicked was realizing the bad parts of the ruggedly masculine ways farmers have of working alone, gritting our teeth, and getting through things.
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