Our friend Don, who has helped us with a million projects around the farm, including projects that knock him off his feet, said a few years ago to my fellow farmer, “It’s good to fall down once in a while.”
“What did he mean by that?’ I asked.
“I’m not sure exactly,” my fellow replied, but we both kind of knew what Don meant.
It’s good to fall down once in a while, so you remember what it’s like. Also, it’s good to make a foolish mistake once in a while, as we recently did, getting ready to plant the onions.
First, of course, we sowed the onions, March 1st, and watered them and warmed them in the greenhouse, until they were big enough to come out to the fields, about mid-April. They looked beautiful.
“These are the best-looking onions we’ve ever had,” said my fellow, pleased.
“They sure are,” I agreed, caressing the pretty onions.
Then we composted, disced, and harrowed a garden section, with the help of the horses. We marked the beds, also with the horses, and then the horses rested while we raked out the three onion beds. Actually, I rested then too, as I don’t like raking out beds, and my fellow does. Or probably I was working hard at some other important farming task.
Then we put out the irrigation lines, and finally laid what is called “plastic mulch.” It’s a big roll of plastic, which I stretch out along the bed, and hold taut, while my fellow shovels dirt on the sides to hold it.
For many years, the plastic we used really was plastic, and we had to roll it up and throw it away at the end of the season, which was painful. But onions do not tolerate the kind of weed pressure that some of our crops are sometimes asked to tolerate. We were having a hard time getting any onions, so we gave in to using plastic as a weed barrier.
Happily, a few years ago, we switched to a compostable “plastic,” made of corn or potato starch, that smells much nicer, and keeps the weeds at bay. The mulch gradually breaks down, and when the onions are harvested, we can just pull out the irrigation, and disc the mulch into the ground, which is very satisfying, and which brings me back to our foolish mistake.
Despite the fact that we have been 1) growing onions, 2) laying irrigation, and 3) rolling out the plastic, for nigh on twenty years, this year we forgot to lay the irrigation first. We had the plastic all taut and well-anchored, and were standing back admiring it. Then my fellow looked at me.
“We forgot the irrigation,” he said.
I looked back at him, somewhat confused. “How is that possible?”
“And there’s two of us,” he answered. “We both forgot.”
At least our mistake wasn’t impossible to fix, though a bit tedious, as we fished the irrigation line under the plastic, on our knees, reaching between the shovelfuls of dirt, and tugging the line along.
“That could have been a lot worse,” I said cheerfully, which would be a nice place to end this foolish mistake story.
But when we brought the flats of beautiful onions out, the wheelbarrow was not on level ground. I took off one flat of onions, and the whole shebang tipped over, flipping the other two flats completely on their heads onto the ground, crushing the plants. Then we swore, a lot, because this is a mistake we’ve definitely made before.
We swore, and then we got planting, and hoped for the best. “Sometimes it’s good to fall down,” we bolstered the onions, though falling down is considerably different than being crushed by a large foolish someone else. Still, maybe we’ll all be stronger for it? Or we’ll be wishing for onions come fall, one or the other.
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, May 4-10, 2022