It has been dry. You guys know this one – the last two years have been extraordinarily dry. After the incredible amounts of snow and ice the farm had over the winter, we thought the pattern had changed at last, and we looked forward to free water that falls from the sky like in the days of yore.

However, as soon as the freezing temperatures stopped, so did the magical sky moisture. Over the entire month of May, we got a combined total of just over 1/10″ of rainfall here.

Earlier this week, a huge rainstorm moved through the area …

… but a narrow corridor of dry was right in the middle of it, and we remained within it, receiving just a brief burst of rain – a meager 0.08.”

But, as Otis was fond of pointing out – “better than nothing!” He was pretty excited to see real raindrops falling on the field:

So, we we run the drip irrigation daily – to keep the shallowly-rooted baby crops alive and growing, as well as the 400 tiny trees and shrubs we planted at the end of April, as a future windbreak and privacy screen. We feel lucky to have our infrastructure and experience at levels where we feel equipped to ride out drought.

It’s been a busy spring, but not a bummer spring … the drought is a pain but really, so is almost everything we do and deal with out here living this lifestyle; it’s another opportunity to remember to reframe perspective and see how lucky we are and how beautiful our lives can be.

Silver linings on the lack of rain clouds aren’t insignificant, either … the weeds in the field are barely even emerging, outside of the thin moisture lines from the drip irrigation, so the crops are getting a good head start on them. Plus this is a bad mosquito year – probably the most we’ve had since the epic monster mosquito massacre of 2014 … but we know they’d be insanely worse if it hadn’t been so dry here. So when we watch the huge thunderclouds rumbling past just a little bit to the west or the east, leaving us dry … we just run the irrigation again and shake our heads with a smile.

In other news, hmm well we picked up bird watching this year – set up an array of feeders, and started checking off every new species we spotted. Turns out we live in a major migratory corridor and all kinds of colorful tropical birds come through here, so it’s been fascinating to learn about them all with Otis (if you like birds, I strongly recommend the Merlin Bird Identification app for your smartphone … it can listen and tell you what birds are vocalizing around you automatically, it’s sweet.)

Seems like it’s been forever since the end of last season, but shocking that it’s already time to get things boxed and delivered again. Time does it’s weird thing; wait how are the Boys already so big and my hair so gray?!

Your weekly CSA boxes will be starting up on the second Tuesday of June … get ready because here we go again!