Falling Flat

Spoiler alert.  This story does not have a happy ending.  I have learned and am continuing to learn that in farming, you WILL fail.  You are guaranteed to fail.  I have gotten discouraged, lost my temper, thrown tantrums, cried, sighed and had to swallow my pride.  My wife is witness to all of this and more.  It is a tough lesson - a painful lesson, but a necessary one and one that, if you're teachable and moldable (admitted struggles of mine), you gain experience that helps you in the long run.

Falling flat, in this post, references our 2013 Sweet Corn crop and, well... ME!  You might consider this a modern-day parable of the corn patch.  It might also be subtitled, Mourn for the Corn.  Here we go.  Back in May, things were great, the corn was lush and green.  The weather was tolerable, mild, not too dry, not too wet.  The kind of atmosphere where you want to whistle and smile when you walk to the garden and inspect things. 

Shall we forewarn about the plight of the corn?

The corn in the photo below is healthy, fertile, standing tall, flowering, and bearing fruit.  Sometimes we, as individuals, can be just like this.  Things are going good and we have a little 'pep in our step' and are standing tall, arrogant, oblivious, or out-right ignoring the coming storms.  Oh, the corn crop had its difficulties.  We explained in an earlier post that Nellie, the goat, had discovered she could put her front hooves up on the fence, crane her neck over and eat the tops out of the corn.  I tied tin against the fence to try to stop this and it was only partially successful.  I'll admit that several times I envisioned Nellie on the barbecue pit because of her penchant for eating the leaves of the corn.

But this wasn't really defined as a crop failure.  It was merely a nuisance and something that required some extra work and time to fix. 

Walking Tall

And then came storm #1.   Dark storm clouds rolled in from the west accompanied by strong winds that promptly laid down a lot of the corn.  Talk about discouraging to see this.  In this photo, you can see the tin I have tied to the fence along with the corn plants on the far left that have the leaves eaten off of them.

The winds must have come from two directions as you can see some of the corn laying down in an eastward direction and others in a westward direction.  Sometimes, in storms, your corn (and you) are pummeled from every direction.  Sometimes, you get knocked down.  You fall down flat on the ground.  We all get knocked down.  The question is - will we get back up.  I've read success is defined as "Getting knocked down six times and getting up seven."


Forlorn Corn

Otherwise healthy, flourishing corn in an instant can be flat and in no time at all, the sun is out and all seems fine - except you're still knocked over.  Can you pick yourself up?  Or will you require a little help?  Or are you down for the count?


After the storm comes sunshine... but it is not over.

After inspecting the damage from the storm, I noticed that the corn was all salvageable.  I spent a good bit of time and work picking each stalk up and placing dirt around the base of the cornstalk to hold it up.  The roots on one side of the plant had broken, but the stalk bent, but didn't break.  In storms, I've learned, we need to bend with the wind, but not break.  Slowly I was able to pick the corn up.  I figured with a few days of sunshine and good weather, the plants would right themselves and the corn crop could be saved.

Picking up the leaning corn

And then came storm #2.  Storm # 2 took advantage of the corn in its weakened state and punished the cornstalks with a vengeance.  This time the strong winds broke the stalks in half ruining a great deal of the crop .  Discouraging?  Yep.  You might say that.


The boulevard of broken dreams (Dramatic?  A little bit!)

This time the damage was significant.  Probably 80% of the crop was lost, broken in half.  You can see the soil in the photo below that I had placed around the base of the cornstalks after the first storm.  Virtually every one of these stalks that I had worked so hard to save were broken in half. There was nothing left to do but throw the stalks to the cows who gladly gobbled it up.  In a few short weeks we would have been eating the corn.  Now, our cows are enjoying it.


Cows enjoying heirloom, non GMO, sweet corn. 

In fact, here are Daisy and Rosie enjoying the fruits of our misfortune, proving that one man's (cow's) feast, is another man's famine.


Wow, what a treat!

Falling flat is never a good thing and I can vouch for the fact that it is not pleasant to be knocked down.  From a personal standpoint, there are always going to be trials and tribulations.  You never have to look far, however, to find people who would gladly trade their problems for yours.  Perspective. 

From a farming standpoint, storms come, pests come, weeds come.  Although it is much easier said than done, that's just the way it is and we have to learn to roll with the punches and keep pressing on.


The sun will come up - tomorrow

The third Chapter of the Good Book in the creation story tells us:

Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you shall eat the plants of the field; (Genesis 3:17-18)

And there you have it, because of the curse, you have to TOIL in the garden and yes, there are weeds and yes, storms will come.  So what do we do?  Well, we work hard - we press on...

And God blessed them [man]; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:28)

Not an easy task for sure.  But we have to trust that hardships produce patience.  Patience produces character.  Character produces hope.  Our corn crop may not be a bumper crop this year, but we're counting on a good harvest of Hope!  Hang in there...