In my reflections on 2018, one word will always encapsulate this year for me: RAIN.

Rain made it the hardest year yet for our farm. By the book, it was the second rainiest year on record for southeastern Pennsylvania. But dissect the numbers a bit, and it’s soon clear it was actually the dampest year ever by a long shot. But isn’t rain a good thing for farmers? Not always. Here’s why.

Average annual rainfall for our area usually hovers around 41 inches.   According to jcweather.com, here in Philadelphia we have received 60.92 inches of rain to date (of course that doesn’t include the rain that’s currently falling as I type this post; how fitting that it rains on the last day of the 2018).  In 2011, the rainiest year on record, it rained a total of 64.33 inches.  

I remember 2011. I was flower farming then too. That was the season of hurricanes (a la Irene and friends) barreling through every few weeks in August and September, dumping nearly five inches of rain at a time. I had two weddings that year that had to cancel or move because the roads were too flooded to get to the church. It was horrible! But it wasn’t as horrible as 2018.

If you dig a little deeper into the statistics (shout out to my data-driven partner for doing that), it paints a better picture of why 2018 was an incredibly hard year for farmers in our area. In 2018, we had 192 days with precipitation.  That means more than half the days in 2018 had precipitation!  The heaviest rain fall at any one time was 2.28 inches. Meaning those 60+ inches of rain came in drips and drabs over the course of the season. It felt like Chinese water torture!  Every time the thunder rolled, I felt like I was loosing my mind. 

In comparison, 2011 had only 162 days with precipitation (30 days less than this year). Most of that rain fell heavily during late season storms, after crops were established and the growing season was winding down. Between storms in 2011, we had weeks of sunny weather to dry us out.

Reflections on 2018

In 2018, we never saw the sun for more than a few hours each week. The soil has been bogged down with moisture from May still through to today. We had record humidity levels all season. The air was thick with trapped moisture. Many crops rotted in the ground. The ones that lived never flowered properly. Those 192 days of precipitation plus all the other cloudy days when it didn’t actually rain meant no sun. No sun means no flowers.

So 2018 tested our metal and our umbrellas. We’ve been tested before. We’re strong. We don’t give up easily. We still hosted 16 inspiring floral workshops at the farm, provided beautifully-designed locally-grown flowers for over 40 weddings and events, and got abundant weekly flower shares out to our 36 Flower CSA members.

But instead of being able to rely solely on our own farm’s flowers for our wedding designs, we had to reach out occasionally to some farmer friends who have more growing space protected from rain by hoop houses and greenhouses. We adopted more no-till practices when turning over planting beds, something we will continue even when it’s not rainy. We’ve become masters of moving massive tarps around to shelter beds we wanted to dig in order to plant bulbs. We’ve developed a system for leaving our dahlia tubers in the ground over the winter rather than having to dig them up in thick mud, which would have likely damaged the tubers and created future drainage problems in our soil. We learned how to use cover crops to loosen the soil for better long-term drainage. In a nutshell, we’ve learned a lot.

So we are evolving. That’s always been the name of the game in farming anyway. It’s just been a tighter race lately to stay ahead of the curve. I’m both anxious and eager for 2019. Our climate is changing. Growing seasons with extreme weather patterns are becoming more common. Ten years in and I’m wondering how to change my tactics to make it another 10 years.

The beauty of this little blog of mine is that it’s become a repository for observations over the seasons of my flower journey. I poke around in the archives from time to time to gain perspective (you should try it too!). I just rediscovered this relevant end-of-season blog post I wrote in 2012. Despite what seems like constant change from year to year, somehow the philosophical foundations of farming have stayed the same for me. It’s all about keeping your mind and heart pliable and being willing to let go.

“Yet again I am struck by how much farming has in common with Zen meditation. Create. Observe. Erase. Rediscover. Start again. Create. Observe. Erase. Rediscover. Start again. Always creating. Always erasing. Somewhere along the way, one begins to sense the fundamental nature of existence, how everything is just as it is and nothing more.”  ~Me, circa 2012

Here’s to hoping 2019 will be more of the same (ideally minus some rain) and nothing more. If only I can be so lucky!

Thank you for your support and following along!!

A rare blue-sky sighting in 2018!