If you live around Wichita, you don’t need a weather report to tell you how the second half of summer felt. The heat held on. The rain didn’t come.
At Gaeddert’s Farm, the harvest ended two weeks early. Fifteen acres went unharvested after drought, heat and poor pollination took their toll. Then I got a heartfelt email from our friends at Serenity Farm. Spring hail, followed by the dry summer, had left them unable to fill their mid-August CSA shares.
I thought about those farmers while looking at my own garden. I picked what I could from the okra, tomatoes, peppers and basil, then let the rest go to seed. Even a few steps outside to tend it felt like too much some days. I kept waiting for cooler weather and a little rain.
For farmers, the stakes are much higher. They can mulch, build healthy soil, shelter crops from the wind and use drip irrigation to make every bit of water count. That work matters. But when hail, heat and drought arrive in the same growing season, care alone can’t save every crop.
You can see the loss in an unharvested field. You can feel it when a farm has to tell its members there won’t be a box of vegetables this week.
Growing food in Kansas has always asked a lot of people. This season asked more. So I’m preserving what my garden gave me, paying attention to the growers who feed us, and hoping we all get a gentler season next year.
