Hurdles, the kind you make for yourself and the ones you don’t

Our first beds, partially harvested. All the basketry
varieties have been cut, but the landscape ones (tall) 
still need cutting

These past two months have been tough. Actually, the whole brief spring has been one big crisis after another. And I hate that, it was not the plan to be stressed all the time over the farm. I have blamed climate change and that is the largest actor in this situation, spring coming early was and still is, having to be dealt with.  

But we’ve also been hit with both cars needing emergency repair and our farm truck/rv tow truck has transmission problems, death to 20+ year old vehicles. We have had a month of no large equipment - the tiller and the mower - available because we have no tow vehicle for the utility trailer. That has slowed everything down, because we are doing everything by hand. 

And then, finally, it was my bet that we could do harvest and planting in the spring that doomed us. Never, never bet against the weather changing into something you’ve never seen before. It will do something like giving you 88 degree days in March to make you lose. 

I finally found a simple storage idea
for drying rods - a garden shelf on its side.

So here we are. Spring is back, just as the willow is getting used to summer. Several varieties of willow will not get new plantings, some will not be harvested this year, and most of the harvested rods are probably garbage.  I’m just cutting them down to make a record for this year and prep the stools for this year’s new growth. I might try to make some hurdles out of the remaining rods, since that would make them useful. But my plan to double our planted bed area is shot and I see I have to do what the smart people do - harvest in the fall. 

I have heard that cutting rods 
when they have leafed out causes
black spots and discoloration. 

And that’s the learned lesson here, schemes and ambitions fall away before the reality - farmers are always at the mercy of weather, what did I expect? I gambled there would be enough time before full spring to hold out harvesting til the beds were ready. I lost that bet, and now I have to wait another year to get the timing right. 

The hardest lesson here though is the one I hate to learn - we are both too old and medically fragile to keep doing this by ourselves. We had a wonderful younger woman volunteer to help one day in exchange for willow and she blew us away with her energy. We were both like that in our forties too, but 20-30 years later we can’t do that. This is now a three person project, at least. Three able-bodies that is. That will have to wait to be addressed. 

A hard-won but still not planted new bed

In the meantime, we are finally getting one last bed in. Yesterday we went out for one more try at killing off the carpet of weeds that has invaded our clean dirt. We managed to get one strip of 6 feet, weeds burned off, fabric down, and 20 new cuttings in before we hit a section of hard clay that would not budge. So, we need a tiller, and again, don’t know how to get it up there. 

Truly, this has been a bear of a spring. Hard to believe it's only the first week of May.

These poor Dickie Meadows cuttings have been in
a pail of water for three weeks. They are so ready!

  We did manage to get a new bed completely planted, about 400 new starts. They are doing fine, and the rain this week (finally!) should perk them up a bit. The work of harvesting is continuing. I still have about 8 or 9 varieties to cut and count. 

The price of gas has made each trip up there more expensive, so the planting has to end soon. Here's hoping our luck improves and the weather stays in spring mode!

 

Our newest bed, 60-70 each of 6 varieties

Last year's babies, this year's two year olds. 
The Miyabeana in back will grow another year,
but the Jaune de Falais is shading out the 
Americana in back, so they need to be cut.