Circle M Farm

Thank God for the songs of Johnny Cash to give voice to our sufferings. We’re living “Three Feet High and Rising” here at Circle M where the fierce storms of the weekend, and our bucolic location at the junction of a creek and river, have conspired to give us lakefront property. Too bad the lake had to be on one of our gardens.

For those of you WorkShare Farm Members who’ve been out here planting for the past weeks, you’ll recognize this as the lower garden, still surrounded by that storm fence to keep chickens out of our onions and beets. Well, we don’t have to worry about the chickens anymore.

This is now our third “ten year flood” in twelve months. Twice last fall the waters came up, and our road was closed because the river flowed over the bridge. I had potatoes in the lower garden then and they all rotted. This spring we planted only the highest part of the garden with short season crops, just in case we had the same sort of thing. Unfortunately, the waters are higher now and the rows are easily three feet under.

In fact, the waters came right into our lower barn and trapped half of our sheep and goats inside. Maggie, my eldest daughter, and I lifted, dragged and floated them out last night, much to their discomfort and embarrassment. Goats, in particular, hate water, and my angora does, too heavy to carry, literally moaned as I dragged them through the water to safety in the higher pasture.

Trapped in the barn!

The watering troughs are floating away in the corral of the barn, but I guess we don’t really need them at the moment.

So the animals are now safe. Elsewhere, in the higher gardens, the pelting rains have created puddles but not flooded the crops. The high winds beat up the tomatoes and other taller plants, but they look fine overall and should make it. They may be more susceptible to disease as the season wears on. I thank God we had no hail.

According to the forecast, the river will continue to rise until midnight tonight and then we’ve got more thunderstorms coming most days this week, but I’ve already cried my tears and we’re moving on to Plan B for the gardens. We’re ploughing up a second plot in our horse pasture today, and we’ll be starting more seeds in the house for the lettuces we lost. A spring flood is easier to recover from than a late summer or fall one, because there is plenty of time to replant. The beets will be a few weeks later than we planned and there will be fewer storage onions to harvest at the end of the season, but we’ll have plenty of food for ourselves and our CSA farm members. Just not the food we planned and not ready at the time we planned it!

In the meantime, I’m enjoying the lake.

There are actual waves in the neighbor’s corn field.

Last night’s gorgeous sun set pink on the lake in the lower pasture – a reminder that there is a good side to almost everything.