42. Well, Hello, 2022!

No need for 2021 retrospectives, Best Ofs, or gripes. We’ve made it another year, doubled production, and that feels good as Hell.

Of course, there are always ways to improve, and I hope to do my best this New Year. One way I can improve is to remind myself that I don’t know all the things. For instance, I just learned about the Persephone Period—the time of the year where daylight drops below ten hours a day. Where we are located, that means late November through late January. With daylight hours being that limited, it means that plant growth slows to a halt. Whatever is growing presently will stop its maturation, but then slowly begin to grow again once sunlight hours begin to increase.

Why does this new insight matter? Well, because I am a sucker for a warm front and have a bad habit of wasting seed, planting hopefully when there’s no way in Hades (see what I did, there?) that the seed will germinate because I put them in the ground before there was enough sunlight to spur the magic of the seed to open. Yes, even in winter, I am planting. How else does one farm all four seasons? Duh! But since I learned about Persephone Days, now I will hang on to those little winter-hardy seeds for another month, and wait until there are more than ten hours of sunshine in a day.

More news for 2022: I am trying my hand at some new and gnarly veggies that may not sell well at market, but could be a ticket into restaurant kitchens in the area. In the coming new year, aside from it being “The Year of the Fruit” (more on that theme in a bit), I will be experimenting with celeriac, fennel, broccoli raab, dry beans, popcorn and dent corn, artichokes (which I successfully grew back in Ye Olde Cincinnati), and, as promised, fruits of all sorts.

2022 should be a successful year of fruit, since many of the fruit and nut trees in the orchard will have been in the ground for two or three years, as well as the berries, and they weren’t babies when they went in. Plus, I’m lucky enough to have been included in a strawberry trial through Purdue University, where they’re studying strawberry production in various areas of the state. I get 200 strawberry plants and row cover for them, and all I have to do is cultivate them, sell them, and report back on how much I made, and how much it cost to raise them. Not too shabby a deal for a small farm like mine.

Additionally, the Hubs is starting to talk small business in the form of a renovation LLC, which I am 1000% behind, and would love for him to get certified in green and net-0 building (then apply it to our home so we can go solar—rubs hands in fiendish, Earth-loving glee). I can help, of course, by being the paperwork guru, as well as managing the landscaping, which will be native and edible. He’s hoping to get his pops in on the idea, as we’ve gotten word that he’s planning on retiring this spring.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

2022 will be another year. There will be challenges that will seem too big to handle—until I handle them; there will be setbacks that break my heart and make me think that I will never recover—until I recover; there will be successes that I will immediately forget about—until I remember them fondly the very next season when I’m planning the farm for 2023. Essentially, I will count each win and loss as such, learn to grow from both, read the Stoics, and always remind myself of my insignificance in the long term, and my significance to those around me in the short. And of course, to just let it be.

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43. January Round-Up or “Stupid Eye”

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41. Spreadsheets and Planning and Dreaming and Listing