Hot and getting hotter
Hello!
Your farmers are enduring yet another scorching hot week. With afternoon heat indices in the 100s, we’ve been trying to work on low-key tasks during the hottest parts of the day, stay hydrated, and take care of our bodies. It’s extremely challenging to work in these conditions, and we want to be sure that everyone on our crew is able to put their personal health first. One of our crew members started to feel sick after overexerting himself one morning this week, which was frightening. Fortunately, he was fine, but it was a reminder to us all that safety comes first. We have a tendency to want to push ourselves to work through the heat and try to get everything done, but in my years of farming I’ve come to see that when we try to push ourselves in extreme conditions we not only risk overheating, but we also tend to make more mistakes.
Of course, the heat isn’t just hard on the people growing your food and flowers. The plants get stressed out too! It’s been extremely dry recently, so we’ve had to irrigate heavily and stay very vigilant about ensuring that everything on the farm is getting enough water. The heat and sun make this especially challenging. Fortunately, we’ve got lots of irrigation timers to help us in the process, but there’s still a lot to check up on. Experiencing the stress of heat and drought can lead plants to drop buds, causing production to slow. Some plants, like dahlias, simply dislike hot weather.
All of that is just to say that farming in this weather is hard and every year we see more extreme temperatures and periods of drought or intense rain. We are farming in a changing climate, and as much as we do to adapt, at times it can feel impossible. As I see small farmers on the west coast struggling with record high temperatures in the 100s, cancelling farmers markets and entire work days, living with massive wildfires, I can’t help but wonder how we can possibly adapt to this. Meanwhile, workers on large scale farms are working for low wages, picking fruit and vegetables in the middle of the night to avoid the hottest daytime temperatures. Several farm workers in Oregon and Washington have lost their lives this season as a result of working in extreme conditions.
Climate change is real, and it is affecting us now. Here at Two Boots, we are lucky to work in an environment where workers lives and well-being are a top priority, but we know that in the future this weather will only get more extreme, and we wonder how we will be able to work through it. Perhaps, in time, the plants will adapt to hotter, drier days, but will we? The challenges that climate change bring affect every aspect of life on Earth, and as a society, we must make drastic changes to mitigate the damage.
Sunday, August 15th, 8:00 am - 11:00 am: Johnny’s
We’ll be back at the market this weekend with a glorious summer bounty.
This week we’ll have arugula, basil, beets, spring mix, shishito peppers, tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes.
We’ll have loads of bouquets, in addition to bunches of celosia, cosmos, dahlias, lisianthus, rudbeckia triloba, and hydrangeas by the stem.
Enjoy the weekend,
Amelia and the rest of the Two Boots Farm crew
The tomato harvest continues to roll in— stop by market to get your fill of these sweet cherry tomatoes!
