Reflections on Daylight Savings

Daylight Savings always throws me a little off kilter. When I woke at a quarter to nine on Sunday, which is a little late for me, and then realized that it was actually only a quarter to eight, I was pleased. This gave me plenty of time to bake a delicious fresh raspberry and dried apple coffee cake for breakfast. Fall daylight savings is my favorite because we get a free hour. Conversely it also means that it is nearly dark at five and, recently, very cold. This is dual edged sword. I really love it when the season changes and the rains come that replenish our aquifers and change the landscape from the dead brown of late summer and early fall to the bright new green of winter and early spring. Yes, this is another story of how, as the season changes, the farm follows suit.

If you pass by our fields you will see that what was green and lush a few weeks ago have since died. Most of the stalks, leaves, and roots of this year’s crop have already been tilled under to provide carbon and nutrients for the soil that next years crops will thrive on. We are also adding gypsum in our fields, which was mined in Nevada, as a calcium supplement. And, as soon as a large storm is predicted, we will have to rush to quickly plant a cover crop of mixed legumes. This will grow throughout the winter to be tilled back into the soil early next spring to add nitrogen and more organic carbon material.

Before we can do that we need to prepare some beds for crops that we will be planting in late winter when the ground is still wet. Once the rains start we won’t be able to use the tractor in the fields because it will compact the soil and destroy the microbiology that we depend on to keep our soil healthy.

As we roll up irrigation, pull out trellising, and glean through some of our last crops I can’t help but think what we should be doing different for next season. Did we grow too many tomatoes? Was it worth our time to plant that third bed of watermelon? Should we grow more onions next year? What about some crops we have not tried like artichokes, endives, or sunchokes?

There is still a lot to be done to finish up this season and as my friend and coworker Max aptly pointed out yesterday as we were hulling dry beans, the days are only going to be getting shorter and shorter. Every day I wish I had more time to finish off all the projects we have to do before winter sets its teeth and it seriously gets cold and wet. Well, as much as it does here in sunny Los Altos Hills.