Date: September 15th 2008

In Your Share this Week

Beans and/or Soybeans
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Potatoes
Onions
Spaghetti Squash
Peppers (green, colored, and/or hot)
Summer Squash
Watermelon

Farm Notes
Remember the old Johnny Cash song?
“How high’s the water, mama?”
“Three feet high and risin’”

That’s pretty much where we’re at . . . except the water is finally falling. Over the past 24 hours, all of the streams and rivers in our area burst their banks, and at least 80% of the bottom field is under water as I write. I took some photos this morning that I’ll post on www.foodandfarm.blogspot.com a little later . . . by tomorrow morning at the latest.

As you know, it’s been raining nearly every day for 10 days now. We were pretty OK with that until the nearly continuous rain over the past 4 days, which added up to over 9 inches – all falling on soil that was already saturated.

The straw that broke the camel’s back (or the drops that burst Walnut Creek’s banks) came Sunday morning, about 3 inches falling from 7 a.m. until noon. Luckily Henry had gone down with the family early Sunday to move all the irrigation hoses, baskets, pails, pitchforks and other assorted equipment to high ground. But Sunday’s rain, coming on top of all the other rain, caused the worst fall flood our fields have seen since the “500 year flood” of 1993.

Fall floods are rarer than spring floods, but their effects on the vegetables are more devastating. In the fall, the fields are fully planted with everything from tiny seedlings to full size plants. Many of the seedlings were to be the greens and roots for your end of season shares. Many of the full size plants, such as burdock and sweet potatoes and celery root have been growing all season long and nearing their harvest time. In the coming days Henry will see which vegetables are likely to make it and which are too waterlogged or damaged to survive . . . we’ll let you know next week what the verdict is.

In my tour of the fields this morning I saw lettuce seedlings fully underwater, their root tips just barely clinging to soil. I saw winter squashes that had been torn from their stems and deposited along the rows of trellised tomatoes. I saw a silvery minnow caught in debris and deposited at the high water mark. And I saw caved-in holes that looked like tiny lunar craters, but were the evidence of the tunnels where moles and voles had been living. Henry saw a mole paddling furiously, but, unfortunately, swimming in the wrong direction – toward the raging river instead of toward higher ground.

The severest destruction I couldn’t see. It’s the section of the field nearest to Walnut Creek, where the creek makes a bend, and where the water has the most force. Everything over there is still under a lot of water, the force of which may have ripped out an entire stand of full-grown okra plants along with a good portion of the soil in that section of the field . . . or not . . . time will tell. You certainly can’t see the four-foot tall okra plants when you look in that direction.

But all bad things have their good side. Like the flooding of the Nile, which laid down the fertile soil along the banks that fed civilizations for thousands of years, the flooding of our creek also lays down new silt and soil. And while it kills various forms of “good” life in the soil (earthworms, most of whom have been drowned), it also kills the “bad” things. Henry saw large clusters of squash bugs that had crawled to the tops of the tallest plants, and were then swept away by the waters. That’s one thing to be grateful for.

Another is that it rained cats and dogs in Evanston all day Saturday causing nearly all the customers to stay home. This negative occurrence is also turning out to have a silver lining. Henry said he knew it was going to be a bad Evanston Market day when Bud, our faithful 6 a.m. customer, didn’t show up until 6:10. Bud and a few other fearless souls came to the market, but Henry probably sold a tenth of what he normally does that day as it was raining so hard that they shut down the Edens Expressway and Sheridan Road. It ended up being the all time record rainfall recorded at O’Hare in a day – seven inches. The silver lining is that many of the vegetables that made the round trip up to Evanston and back are in great shape and so your share this week will not reflect the sorry state of the fields.

Since nearly all of your Share Items are either old favorites, or items I’ve given recipes for in recent emails (Spaghetti Squash, Soybeans), I’m going to forego the Food Notes this week . . . and go over to the Normal Theater where they’re showing “The Future of Food” and I have to speak during the panel discussion afterwards . . . maybe I’ll see some of you there.

Hope your basements are dry,s and you are all safe and sound.