Meet this week’s Mac veggies:
(It’s amazing how slow it can be to get a new computer up and running with a farm and a toddler in the mix! Photo coming soon.)
- Lettuce OR Kale — Your choice between lettuce or some gorgeous tender kale from our fall planting.
- Tomatoes
- Sweet peppers
- Eggplant
- Summer squash & zucchini
- Carrots
- Beets — Choose from many different colors and shapes of beets!
- Potatoes — This beautiful potato has a vibrant purple/red exterior and stark white interior flesh.
- Sweet onions
Lately, the concept of “making mistakes” has come up a lot in conversations here on the farm and with friends. As we’ve become older and reflected more upon our life thus far — our education years, followed by our farming years — we’ve realized how differently we used to think about “mistakes” than we do today.
It seems that in most of American culture (and especially in school), there is a strong focus on getting the “right” answers or doing things “right” the first time. Mistakes are something to be avoided, right? This used to make sense to me, given how much it was a part of my educational experience — at the schools I attended, test results were final and there was no going back to change grades. Raising my hand and providing the “wrong” answer was a humiliating event I hoped to avoid.
But, as farmers, we’ve found out that mistakes are inevitable. In fact, we’ve found that mistakes are actually crucial to our learning and growing process. We realized early on (literally, within the first few days/weeks of starting our farm back in 2006) that in order to move forward with the farm, we had to be ok with getting things “wrong” at times.
Our first (very expensive) lesson in making mistakes came almost immediately, when we purchased an extremely large greenhouse that turned out to be ill suited for the land we were renting.
Getting it constructed was a huge challenge, because we didn’t own any tools yet (not even simple hand tools), so we were buying and renting things as we went — only to find out that it was too lightweight for the windy site. As soon as it was standing with plastic on top, it started threatening to fall down on us as spring winds blew against it.
Meanwhile, we desperately needed some kind of greenhouse space so we could start our seeds for the season (spring was ticking along!). We’d spent several thousand dollars on this greenhouse, and it was not working — in fact, it was a problem.
Accepting this big initial mistake was extremely challenging. Casey and I both agonized over the situation for days — we felt a mixture of fear, frustration, doubt, gut ache, and shame. To have just started our farm and already have such a big expensive problem to deal with!!! It felt defeating.
Eventually, we talked it through and realized this: the mistake is not the end of the world, but we do need to accept that we made a mistake and rectify it. In this case, we needed to do so immediately.
So, we swallowed our pride, called the company we bought the greenhouse from, and negotiated a partial refund for as many parts as we could return. Some of the pieces we had to keep, because of how they’d been used on our site, and in a few more days, we used those leftover parts to construct an adequate (and much smaller) greenhouse. We were able to sow our seeds and get them to germinate quickly, and our season finally felt like it was on its way!
What we learned was that doing something “wrong” (especially the first time) isn’t actually a defeat — if we have a goal, we just have to keep trying, even if it means undoing work or “losing” money (or pride!). The only way we could be defeated was to give up and quit. I know this “lesson” sounds like something from an inspirational poster, but believe me it is a lesson that felt brand new and fresh and very real to us in the midst of that first season!
Since then, we’ve made countless mistakes — we bought the “wrong” tractor at first; we hired the “wrong” person to drill our irrigation well; we built greenhouses without anchoring them in concrete; etc. At the time of each of these incidents, we didn’t have the knowledge or experience to know differently, and each time we had to spend extra time and money fixing the situation.
It hasn’t been easy — making mistakes has been expensive and emotionally and physically trying. I suppose that we could look back and regret each of the mistakes and waste further emotion in feeling “bad” about it all. But, we’ve learned along the way that “mistakes” and “problems” are an inherent part of the learning and growing process — they aren’t an unfortunate by-product but an integral aspect of learning.
Obviously, as we make decisions, we always aim to make the best possible decision with the information at hand. And, often we do choose well.
But, each time we have had to step back and take another hard look at a decision or action, we’ve gained a much deeper understanding of our farm in ways we wouldn’t have otherwise.
For example, watching greenhouses fall down in the wind (multiple times, no less) has given us an intimate knowledge of steel strength and wind forces. We now know why we have to spend extra money for purlins and thick steel when we build additional greenhouses on our farm.
There are still moments when we face a problem or a mistake and get that sense of “uh oh” in the pit of our stomach, but we’ve stopped fearing the possibility of mistakes. And, much of the time, we can now face such challenges with little or no negative emotion.
Challenges and problems-to-be-solved are part of our daily life, and we’ve come to expect and plan for the unexpected. We now know that our budgets of time and money have to have lots of “fudge” in them, because — well — there are things we do wrong. Add the unpredictability of nature and it’s quite an exciting life.
Fortunately, the “big” mistakes seem to come less frequently these days — we’re more settled into our systems and infrastructure, minimizing the big changes and big purchasing decisions. Also, our sense of perspective has changed so much as we’ve farmed longer.
We know that as we expand our acreage and add new enterprises over the next few years that we will probably enter another “frequent mistake” phase of our farm’s life. We’re sure that animal operations will especially introduce new kinds of mistakes, which we will be less cavalier about (life being involved raises the stakes for us).
But, we also know that fearing mistakes is a form of paralysis — it inhibits risk taking and experimentation. Embracing the possibility of being wrong or making mistakes allows for movement forward, growth, progress, new ideas, creativity, and a whole lot of fun! (Yes, fun!)
In spite of knowing that we will inevitably make mistakes (potentially even some big ones), we are so excited to experiment on the new land … and, just today (Monday) we got to get started on that process a little more tangibly! The renting farmer is harvesting the cannery corn this week, and Casey has started working up ground behind him!
We have about 75 acres to work up and drill to a cover crop this fall, which feels like so much ground for our “little” 54 horsepower tractor (not so little, but much littler than the 250 hp tractors these other guys use!). Casey already got 20 acres disked up today, and he and the crew are going to take turns finishing this process over the rest of this week. Then, we’ll drill it to oats and red clover, which we will leave in place for two seasons to let the ground have a much needed “rest”!
Lots and lots of work to do, but it’s a good season to do it. Fall officially arrives this week, bringing it with it a new kind of hurried work — harvesting for winter (squash! potatoes! beets!) and sowing cover crops. Once the rain arrives, we have lots of deferred maintenance and cleaning to do around the farm.
Even though we’ll be busy on the farm for many more weeks, the feel of the air is invigorating and naturally makes all of this fall work feel more relaxed. There’s something so joyful about harvesting for winter, knowing that it’s the last step of many steps over the year. Similarly, sowing cover crops feels like a conclusion to the year, cleaning house, preparing to rest.
Hopefully you too are enjoying the beauty of fall and its special golden light. And, I hope that this week you too will embrace a potential-filled challenge in your life and maybe think about it in a new way — whether that be as a student or teacher in the classroom, in the workplace, or even just in your own home or garden.
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
P.S. Help us correct any mistakes! If you haven’t yet, we’d love for you to fill out and return the 2011 CSA Survey! It’s available on our blog as well as in print form at the pick-up!
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Final payments due Oct 1!
For those of you paying over the course of the season, your final payments are due by October 1. By this date, we need you to pay off your remaining balance. Make checks out to “Oakhill Organics” and bring to pick-up or mail to us: P.O. Box 1698, McMinnville, OR 97128. Here are the basic payment installments:
- Mac Medium share ~ $157
- Mac Large share ~ $243
- Mac Double Medium share ~ $304
- Newberg share ~ $180
Email me if you have any questions about your balance! farm(at)oakhillorganics(dot)org
